At Point of Order, Michael Stern: Pardons, Self-Pardons and Impeachment, Parts 1-4 (I missed this series from last month but it still seems relevant).
Part 1 (with some discussion of posts on this blog relating to self-pardons).
Part 2 (focusing on the idea of impeachment for abuses of the power, which is really the key to this series; here is an excerpt)
There can be little doubt that impeachment will lie for abuse of the pardon power. See In re Aiken County, 725 F.3d 255, 266 (D.C. Cir. 2013) (Kavanaugh, J.) (“The remedy for Presidential abuses of the power to pardon . . . [is] ultimately impeachment in cases of extreme abuse.”). As much was suggested by the Randolph/Wilson colloquy cited in my prior post, in which Wilson said that a president who corruptly pardoned his co-conspirators would be subject to impeachment, although it is unclear whether he meant impeachment for the pardons, the underlying crime, or both.
Randolph’s concerns about potential abuse of the pardon power were echoed by George Mason at the Virginia ratifying convention. Mason said “the President ought not have the power of pardoning, because he may frequently pardon crimes which were advised by himself . . . . If he has the power of granting pardons before indictment, or conviction, may he not stop inquiry and prevent detection?” 3 Elliot’s Debates 497. To this, Madison replied:
[I]f the President be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person, and there be grounds to believe he will shelter him, the House of Representatives can impeach him; they can remove him if found guilty . . . .
Id. at 498. …
Part 3 (discussing President Trump's pardons)
Part 4 (assessing whether the House should open an impeachment investigation).
RELATED: More from Michael Stokes Paulsen, at Liberty Law Blog, on impeachment: Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist, and the Power of Impeachment and The Ratification-Era Understanding of “High Crimes and Misdemeanors”. From the introduction to the latter:
Yesterday, I set forth Alexander Hamilton’s treatment of the scope of the constitutional power of impeachment in The Federalist: the broad range of offenses embraced by that power (including “political” offenses against the system of government, injuries done “immediately to the society itself,” “encroachments” on the powers and prerogatives of other branches, and “usurpations” of authority or of the Constitution); the fact that impeachment proceedings “can never be tied down by such strict rules” in the “delineation of the offense” by the House of Representatives or “in the construction of it” by the Senate; the fact that the power of impeachment implied “awful discretion” in these matters; and the crisp distinction between impeachment proceedings and the operation of the criminal law – even though the misconduct of a civil officer sometimes might render him subject to both.
The Federalist essays touching on the impeachment power – Federalist 65 and 66, concerning the power generally, and Federalist 79 and 81 addressing impeachment as a check on misuse of judicial power specifically – furnish powerful historical evidence in support of a broad understanding of the power of impeachment, and the sweep of the phrase “high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
But these were not just Hamilton’s views. In this post, I turn to other ratification-era debates, and some early post-ratification statements and commentary, all of which support Hamilton’s core conclusions. Significantly, nobody at the time questioned Hamilton’s assertions concerning the sweeping breadth of the power of impeachment. To the contrary, all prominent statements concerning impeachment in the state debates over ratification of the Constitution appear to be in essential agreement with Hamilton on these points.
This is mildly stunning; the historical evidence rarely lines up in this manner. There may have been some disagreement over whether the impeachment power should be so broad; and some questioned whether it was right to vest so broad a power in the Senate specifically. (That had been a concern Madison expressed at the Constitutional Convention.) But no one ever doubted – all in the ratification debates consistently affirmed – that the impeachment standard itself conferred broad discretion in the house and Senate, reaching a broad variety of potential types of misconduct including “political” misconduct not prohibited by ordinary criminal law. The illustrations employed in the ratification debates of impeachable misconduct all support a broad understanding of the term “high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” So too do important constitutional debates in the First Congress – early post-enactment, roughly contemporaneous evidence of the generally understood linguistic meaning of the impeachment standard.
Posted at 6:11 AM