Opinion: Did Trump dangle a pardon over the border? Democrats are set to investigate.
By Greg Sargent Greg Sargent Opinion writer covering national politics Email Bio Follow Opinion writer April 16 at 2:33 PM We have learned from numerous press reports that President Trump may have repeatedly — not once, but repeatedly — pressured officials to break the law by walling out asylum seekers entirely.
On Friday, CNN reported that Trump may have offered a pardon to his acting homeland security secretary, Kevin McAleenan, if he got in trouble for carrying out Trump’s border-closing directive. It should be noted that Trump denied the claim, and that CNN and the Times both clearly stated that this might have been a joke.In a new letter, they demand that McAleenan make himself available to the committee for questioning about this matter. And they’re also looking into reports that Trump also pressured his former homeland security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to close the border in violation of the law. Her refusal to do so was reportedly one reason Trump ousted her. 1.
The letter also demands that any of these others who might have witnessed these conversations should be prepared to testify as well. “It would certainly be an abuse of presidential power,” Daniel Hemel, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School who co-wrote a good paper on whether the pardon power can be abused, told me. “The Constitution requires the president to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. If Trump said what he is reported to have said to McAleenan, then he tried to use his presidential power to see to it that the laws aren’t executed.
The letter adds that our obligations under international law require this, and that “to instruct DHS officials to do otherwise would explicitly violate these provisions and the law.”
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