A legal analyst for MSNBC has what sounds like a hare-brained idea: she thinks that a recent Supreme Court ruling means that if he wins the presidency, Donald Trump can “probably take money” for giving pardons to those convicted regarding the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Yes, that’s right. Melissa Murray is suggesting that Trump would be motivated to sell pardons, and that he could do so legally after the Supreme Court ruled that presidents cannot be prosecuted for official acts performed as president. Contrary to popular liberal misconception, that SCOTUS ruling did not give presidents legal carte blanche to break any law and get away with it.
Murray debuted her novel speculation on the uber-liberal cable news network on The Weekend on Sunday, which aired September 9. She is a law professor at New York University, and told the hosts of the show that the court “actually made it possible for him to do this.” Murray’s view is mere speculation, and seems unlikely to be agreed upon by most legal scholars.
She continued, saying the July presidential immunity decision is “so sweeping” that a president could “probably take money for issuing pardons.” How did she come to this conclusion? Murray starts with the fact that the SCOTUS ruling says presidents can’t be prosecuted for “official” acts done as part of the presidency. She continues by adding that since the act of pardoning is an official act that the constitution allows a president to carry out, that therefore taking money (a bribe) for a pardon would be legal. This seems like an extreme reach.
But it is perhaps not a surprising reach for the co-author of The Trump Indictments, Murray’s 2024 book.
She warned the MSNBC hosts that the Supreme Court is “not coming to save us,” and that “authoritarianism is literally on the doorstep.”
Trump has indeed promised that he would review the more than 1,400 January 6 convictions, as he believes, as many Americans do, that they were politically motivated and that peaceful people were over-prosecuted as the government wanted to whip up hysteria by calling the rioters “insurrectionists.” But it seems unlikely Trump would stoop to taking bribes to do so, nor is it clear why a man so rich would need the money.
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung seemed bemused by Murray’s extreme predictions, asking sarcastically who she was, and if she were a “Democrat donor.”
The Democrats are still viscerally angry over the SCOTUS decision and are scheduling new hearings about it.
Leftist media outlets, too, are still speculating about whether Trump will pardon himself if convicted of any of the cases against him.
