Member of the House of representatives of the US Congress Jeremy Raskin (Democrat, Maryland) proposed to amend the bill on the subordination of presidential forgiveness to the norms of the law on bribery, according to which the American leader Donald Trump will lose the right to his own pardon. This was reported by the newspaper Politico on Wednesday.
“The pardon that the President will grant to himself is invalid and has no effect, and does not deprive the courts of jurisdiction and does not grant the President any legal immunity from investigation or criminal prosecution,” the publication quotes the text of the amendment. “It is imperative that Congress make it clear right now that no President of any party can use his own power to pardon himself or reduce his own prison sentence.”
According to another amendment to the bill, proposed by the Chairman of the Special Committee on the intelligence of the US House of Representatives, Adam Schiff (Democrat, from California), the President's granting of a reduced prison term or a full pardon, committed in exchange for “some value”, would be punishable under the bribery law. This measure was published after trump by special decree relieved his former adviser Roger stone of the need to not only serve a prison sentence for articles related to giving false testimony to law enforcement agencies, attempts to interfere with the investigation by the US Congress and intimidating a witness, but also to pay the remaining fine. The court ordered the stone to spend three years and four months behind bars.
In addition, the Schiff amendment assumes that the US Department of Justice will notify the US Congress of cases related to the President or his relatives in which a convicted person was granted clemency. Such a requirement is expected to determine whether personal interests influenced the presidential decision. At the same time, the bill, the newspaper writes, if adopted, will probably be recognized as unconstitutional.
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