Jed Shugerman was quoted in a FiveThirtyEight article about President Trump’s pardon power as it relates to self-protection.
It’s not clear whether the president can be charged with a crime like obstruction of justice while in office, but that doesn’t mean a pardon can’t cause political problems. Jed Shugerman, a law professor at Fordham University, said that it could be grounds for impeachment. And although a Trump pardon would be unlikely to be challenged in this way, Shugerman believes that self-interested pardons could violate a section of the Constitution that says the president will ensure that the country’s laws are “faithfully executed” — which could be interpreted as a legal obligation against self-dealing.