By Hal Brown
I am still not dismissing the possibility that Donald Trump will resign on the final day of his presidency after making a deal with acting president Mike Pence to pardon him. Trump would only do this if he could be convinced that a self-pardon wasn’t a sure thing and that this would have a very good chance of failing if he was charged for committing a federal crime by the Biden Justice Department.
Trump has already lost confidence in the Supreme Court being toadies he can count on. Someone might be able to convince him that they would rule that the Constitution did not allow a presidential self-pardon.
If Trump was thinking rationally, and there’s every reason to believe he isn’t, he’d be meeting with Pence right now to talk about resignation and a pardon. Pence isn’t stupid and I think he would make his pardon contingent on Trump not doing anything prior to the pardon to make him politically “unpardonable” from the perspective of the desire of Pence wanting to run for president himself.
While Richard Nixon was clinically depressed in his last days he wasn’t irrational. He didn’t do anything that would make it politically impossible for Gerald Ford to pardon him.
What would make Pence break from Trump after five years of worshipping him as a kind of demigod?
The answer is obvious. He wants to be president. To do this he will need to keep the Trump cult on his side and the best way to do this is to convince Trump to resign so he can pardon him as be seen as the hero that saved Trump from the evil Biden Justice Department sending him to prison.
If Pence wants to be president he can’t invoke the 25th Amendment because Trump supporters will see this as a betrayal. He can, however, use the 25th Amendment as a threat to pressure Trump to resign. This wouldn’t necessarily requiring his lining up a majority of the Cabinet in advance because he can still tell Trump the Cabinet is behind him.
What's a white lie when it may enable him to run for president? God, who Pence probably believes wants him to be His messenger on Earth, surely would forgive a little bending of the truth.