House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) on Wednesday warned President Donald Trump against pardoning himself, saying that it was obvious that Trump shouldn’t attempt to do so.
“Do you believe that the President has power to pardon himself?” a reporter asked Ryan at his weekly press conference.
“I don’t know the technical answer to that question, but I think, obviously, the answer is he shouldn’t, and no one is above the law,” Ryan responded.
The President declared in a tweet Monday that he has the “absolute right to PARDON myself.” But it’s a complicated legal point to make, to say the least, and Trump pardoning himself may only amplify calls for his impeachment.
Trump’s tweet came a day after his lawyer Rudy Giuliani argued that Trump “probably” had the legal ability to pardon himself, but that he had no intention of doing so.
And Giuliani’s claim came after the New York Times published a 20-page letter from Trump’s legal team, sent in January to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, arguing that the President could, “if he wished, terminate the inquiry, or even exercise his power to pardon.”