Highly partisan Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is setting a “dangerous precedent” that will likely lead to more “politically targeted prosecutions,” GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy writes in a new op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal.
If President Joe Biden wants to avoid this danger and truly unify the country, he will pardon his predecessor and potential challenger in 2024, Donald Trump.
“If he fails to do so and I am elected president, I will pardon Mr. Trump on Jan. 20, 2025,” the Ohio entrepreneur and anti-woke crusader wrote in the column, published Wednesday.
It’s a bold political statement from the youngest candidate in the chase for the Republican nomination, a political outsider most pundits have labeled a long-shot competitor at best. But Ramaswamy has proved nothing if not bold since announcing his campaign in February, driving a media strategy that has paid off in “off the charts” fundraising and a top 5 position in a new poll of New Hampshire voters.
The second-generation Indian-American has been one of the biggest defenders of his political competitor, the first of the declared or presumptive presidential candidates to excoriate Bragg and his band of merry Democrats for their zealous investigation and prosecution of Trump.
Ramaswamy does so again in his piece in the Wall Street Journal. He notes Bragg campaigned on going after Trump, ultimately convincing a Manhattan grand jury to deliver an indictment “using a dubious legal theory.” On Tuesday, Trump was arrested and booked on 34 counts of falsification of business records related to hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016 to cover up an affair that allegedly happened 17 years ago.
As Ramaswamy notes, the trumped-up charge is a misdemeanor that Bragg has conjured into a felony by tying it to an “intent to commit another crime.” Just what that mysterious crime is, Bragg doesn’t specifically say, although legal experts and press reports suggest it relates to campaign finance violations. Bragg claimed Trump’s payment to the porn star “was illegal” and exceeded the federal campaign-contribution cap.
So, how do we get to a presidential pardon that Trump-hating Biden surely would never issue, regardless of how politically driven — and White House connected — Bragg’s investigation looks.
As Ramaswamy notes, normally the president has no power to pardon a defendant for criminal charges brought under state law. But this case is different, he asserts.
“The New York felony charges appear to rely entirely on claims that Trump violated federal law. Without the purported federal crimes, the state charges would be misdemeanors and the statute of limitations would have lapsed. That means if the alleged federal crime is pardoned, the state felony charges fall too,” the 37-year-old former biotech CEO wrote in Wall Street Journal column.
He points to the broad powers under Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution authorizing the president the ability to pardon “all offenses against the United States, except for cases of impeachment.” The power has been affirmed multiple times by the Supreme Court.
As Ramaswamy notes in the column:
States can’t constitutionally convert federal crimes into state felonies for the purpose of shielding such crimes from presidential pardon. The U.S. Justice Department has concluded that a pardoned offense can’t be used to convict a defendant under state law of being a felon in possession of a firearm, as the California Court of Appeal agreed in Harbert v. Deukmejian (1981). If a presidential pardon were ineffective in Mr. Trump’s case, states could circumscribe the presidential pardon power entirely.
Unlike the New York charges, this legal theory is intuitive: Federal courts have repeatedly held that states can’t legally penalize defendants for pardoned federal crimes.
Biden has avoided questions on Trump’s arrest. Questions surround the White House and his campaign about possible political motives and coordination with Bragg’s office. In short, it’s not a good look to have your friends in lower places investigating and prosecuting your political rival.
Ramaswamy offers Biden some advice to remove the cloud of politics and the even the more dangerous prospects of political weaponization of prosecutors.
“Mr. Trump may try to pardon himself if he is elected, but that would be politically awkward, legally contested and unprecedented. President Nixon’s Justice Department opined that a self-pardon is constitutionally impermissible. Better for Mr. Biden to pardon Mr. Trump now. If he doesn’t, the next president who isn’t Donald Trump should,” Ramaswamy concludes in the piece.
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
Photo “Vivek Ramaswamy” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.
