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If a President can pardon his- or herself, then why was Nixon pardoned by Gerald Ford? Why didn't Nixon just pardon himself before resigning? Why wasn't he immu

• dragonwriter 13y ago
  > If a President can pardon his- or herself, then why was Nixon pardoned by Gerald Ford? Political optics, for one thing: they had the vote counts in and knew if he hung around the Senate was going to convict him and kick him out of office, so he was going to be out in any case. Resigning and having the new guy -- who had some credibility with people who had long ago lost any trust in Nixon -- say that a pardon was in the interest of the Nation looked better, while Nixon pardoning himself would have been even more divisive. There's also, IIRC, at least some dispute about the extent of the scope of the exception to the pardon power that applies in cases of impeachment, and, while I'm not sure that it would have been resolved in a manner unfavorable to Nixon, pardoning himself while he was under an impeachment that had not yet been rendered moot by his resignation (as the impeachment power only extends against civil officers, not past officers) might have sparked an even longer and deeper crisis if someone thought to test the limits there.