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5 days agoI mean, it seems to me that this would be more reason to oppose obviously political prosecution. If the alleged offenses can’t be tried at this point anyways by your own point, then it’s even more blatant that this is an attempt at election tampering.
I mean, that’s a broad question. Personally? Practically? Politically? Constitutionally?
Legally-speaking, this is not something the President can unilaterally do. Theoretically they could amend the Constitution to accomplish the former and allow for the latter, but the chances they could actually do so are next to nil.
Could a President do it anyway? Well, maybe… It seems very unlikely that this would survive public scrutiny, and even the corruption-captured Courts would have a very difficult time trying to justify any of it under existing frameworks.
The “retroactively” part would probably be a particularly difficult hurdle. The US Constitution has protections against Ex Post Facto criminalization, and revocation of pardons would almost certainly violate that principle. Ditching that protection would be wildly unpopular, since it would allow for things like passing a law that would, for example, having ever received an abortion in the past. Or, having ever so much as touched a firearm.