Washington D.C. [USA]: United States President Donald Trump’s lawyer and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani on Sunday said that the US President could have the power to pardon himself, but does not have any intentions to do so.
Giuliani, who recently joined Trump’s legal team, told ABC’s “This Week”, “He’s not, but he probably does. He has no intention of pardoning himself, but that doesn’t say he can’t”.
“That’s another really interesting constitutional question: Can the president pardon himself? It would be an open question. I think it would probably get answered by, ‘gosh that’s what the (US) Constitution says.’ And if you want to change it, change it,” he added.
Giuliani’s comments come after a report that Trump’s lawyers argued in a letter to special counsel Robert Mueller that the president could not have obstructed justice because he has constitutional authority over all federal investigations, The Hill reported.
Giuliani’s statements come after a report emerged earlier that Trump’s lawyers wrote a letter to special counsel Robert Mueller, who is probing the alleged Russian meddling of the 2016 US election, saying that Trump has constitutional authority over all federal investigations and could not have obstructed justice, as per the report.
The letter, which was accessed by The New York Times argues that the US Constitution gives Trump the broad authority to, “if he wished, terminate the inquiry, or even exercise his power to pardon.”
In response to that, Giuliani confirmed that Mueller had not responded to the letter of Trump’s lawyers so far.
On May 31, Trump pardoned Indo-American author-filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza, who was accused of making an illegal campaign contribution to the US presidential election in 2016.
D’Souza was sentenced to five years of probation, including eight months living under supervision in a “community confinement center” and a 30,000 dollars fine for violating federal campaign finance laws in 2014, as reported by the CNN.
He had been an infamous personality since the time he accused former president Barack Obama for adopting “the cause of anti-colonialism”.
D’Souza was earlier indicted for illegally using straw donors, a person who illegally uses another person’s money to make a political contribution in their own name, to contribute to Republican Senate candidate Wendy Long in New York in 2012.
Trump has pardoned several people under his administration including former Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby in the Valerie Plame CIA leak scandal and former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio accused of violating election laws. (ANI)