Pardons can grant clemency for a conviction, but a conviction is not required to receive a pardon. See: Ford’s pardon of Nixon. The key part is that it requires those granted a pardon to accept it, which necessarily requires that they admit the crime which is being pardoned. If the individual receiving a pardon rejects it, the pardon becomes invalid.
Nothing in the Constitution allows pardons to be nullified because they occurred while the President issuing the pardon was impeached. The statement mentioned in the Constitution refers to the ability of the President to prevent or reverse an impeachment, conviction after impeachment or disqualification following a conviction after impeachment. Ford’s pardon of Nixon didn’t stop any potential trial on the impeachment; it only prevented any federal charges from being filed against Nixon. Nixon could have still been convicted and disqualified by the Senate, but since he had been elected twice he could never have been re-elected President due to the 22nd Amendment and he was never running for another federal office at any level, so a trial in the Senate would have had no practical impact on Nixon other than keeping him from holding any other federal office in case he got the idea.
Trump could pardon individuals in a quid-pro-quo to prevent them from disclosing information that would indicate Trump had committed impeachable offenses. The pardons granted would be completely valid. However, the issuance of those pardons could still be considered an impeachable offense since impeachment is a political function, not a criminal one.
Suppose Trump had been impeached for Obstruction of Justices after he pardoned Roger Stone. It’s very easy for me to imagine that the pardon would be included in the OoJ facts.
See Indy’s comment above. Also, there’s a chicken-and-egg argument for Clinton being impeached for his pardon of Marc Rich - the issue being that Clinton wasn’t going to give it until he was ultimately on the way out the door (so there was never going to be time to actually levy impeachment charges), but that there was fairly good evidence that Rich and/or people associated with him indirectly paid Clinton for his pardon and so such conduct would have otherwise been impeachable as it would have been a crime had the deal involved anyone other than the President.
Agreed, I still like the fear explanation, especially in a context where he has little to gain. Plus probably a touch of “those guys failed to keep me in power so they’re losers”
Well, it would follow that he wouldn’t pardon anyone. And yet he did. Probably for money, which was paid in some untraceable way (I’ll assume some of his advising team is smart).
He pardoned one of the fathers who illegally paid for his daughter’s acceptance to college. Pardoned a bunch of people who frauded Medicaid or Medicare. Pardoned a guy who owned an entire floor of Trump Tower. An insider trading guy. Etc.
Heck, these people could have easily donated heavily to his “stop the steal” fund, which in no way “stopped” the non-existent “steal.” Perhaps that is the only reason for this fund to exist. Makes a helluva lot more sense than stopping a steal.
Bet he thought they were always losers. I mean he could have retired to MAGA country and spent his days wallowing in MAGA love in rural America. He literally could have moved to a place like Gatlinburg, TN or Branson, MO and set up shop and charged people $50 to meet him and made a fortune. That’s not what he did though because he never liked those people to begin with. He liked that they liked him and that’s it. What he really wanted though was for people like Jeff Bezos and Jaime Dimon to like him. Unfortunately those type of people are smart enough to see who he is from a mile away.