President Donald Trump is well within his constitutional rights to grant pardons, and, in fact, there should be more pardons and less talk about indicting the president once he leaves office, according to legal expert Alan Dershowitz on Newsmax TV.
"I certainly hope he doesn't get indicted; that's what banana republics do: They indict their presidents after their presidents lose an election," Dershowitz told "Saturday Report," saying "there is no real possibility" of Trump being indicted. "Let's let the president go on; let's have him finish his term.
"I hope comes to the inauguration; I hope for peaceful transition, and already we see a peaceful transition going on. Let's move on to the next administration: No incriminations, no prosecutions."
Media criticism of President Trump's recent pardons are ignoring the amount of former President Barack Obama's pardon total at the end of his first term and the constitutional authority to correct miscarriages of justice with restorative justice.
"The media is just wrong: President Trump understands better than previous presidents that the pardon power is part of the system of checks and balances," Dershowitz told host Carl Higbie. "He understands when the executive and judicial branches get out of whack, it's the job of the president to restore justice."
Trump's pardons to date, even if they have been tied to the Russia investigation, are neither corruption nor unwarranted, Dershowitz said.
"No only is it not corrupt, it's absolutely proper," Dershowitz added. "The president feels very strongly that the Mueller commission acted improperly – and if that's his belief and he believes that strongly, and he has a basis for it, he should be pardoning and commuting people who were the victims of an injustice.
"That's not corruption."
In fact, Dershowitz wishes "the president in his last days would grant even more pardons," praising the pardon review process the Trump administration has in place.
"I think he should be praised and commended, and I think he should give more pardons, more commutations, and exercise his full power under the Constitution," Dershowitz added. "That's what he's supposed to do."
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