Charles Krauthammer said that Donald Trump’s recent comments amount to a pardon for the former secretary of state:
I think it’s the right thing. Procedurally, not quite, but this the equivalent of him issuing a pardon. And there are a lot of people who are saying, “Well, what about justice here?” Well, the point of the pardon power, which is always rather odd in any constitution, is to allow political expediency or, if you like, “reasons of state” to trump justice. Obviously, if you can issue a pardon, you’re going around justice but you’re saying, “Some things for the country are more important.” Like the Nixon pardon: He might have been guilty, he never was tried, but it was done so that the country wouldn’t have to suffer that long national nightmare anymore, and it was the right thing to do, which I think many people today who objected at the time recognize. I think it’s right to do it. You put that behind us.
Yes, there are probably offenses which are prosecutable, maybe she would be convicted, but that’s not what we want to do. We do not want to see national political opponents putting each other in jail. So even though procedurally he’s not supposed to say this because he’s not the one who would decide whether there would be a special prosecutor, it’s the equivalent of saying, “When I’m sworn in, I would issue a pardon.” And that’s, I think, the right thing to do.
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