LEILA FADEL, HOST:
And for more on this, we'll turn now to an expert on presidential pardons.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Bernadette Meyler's a professor at Stanford Law School and is author of the book, "Theaters Of Pardoning." She's on the line from the West Coast, where it is ridiculously early. Good morning.
BERNADETTE MEYLER: Wonderful to be able to talk to you. Thank you so much.
INSKEEP: (Laughter) And thank you for doing it so early. So the pardon also names something like 77 people. Some of them are quite famous, like Rudy Giuliani, but then it has this additional language to cover just about all United States citizens, except the president himself. What do you make of that?
MEYLER: It's extremely broad language. It's more like an amnesty than a traditional pardon. Something similar happened with Trump's pardons of January 6 individuals and all of the people involved in January 6. Looking back, historically, it's analogous to something like President Carter's efforts to pardon Vietnam War draft dodgers. And that also had very broad language, specifying all persons rather than all citizens, as in this pardon.
INSKEEP: Oh. So you said something like the Vietnam War draft dodgers. That's really interesting. In this case, we're talking about a so-called fake electors scheme - people trying to send alternate slates of electors to Congress to try to get them accepted, despite the lack of any evidence that they were standing for a legitimate result. What do you make of that and everything else that's thrown in here?
MEYLER: So there are a couple of things about the fact that this is election-related. One is that we just had an election that Trump was calling into question right after it happened. We're coming up on the midterms. So I think that the timing of this isn't haphazard, that it's really about calling into question the validity of different elections, including potentially the upcoming congressional election. And then also the other part of it is that most of these prosecutions happening for the individuals involved are actually on the state level. And the federal pardon power is extremely broad, but it actually doesn't extend to state crimes.
INSKEEP: Well, now, that's a really interesting point that you make there. I think none of the people on the list were facing federal charges. Is there some consequence in state court, however, even if it doesn't get somebody out of a state crime, does it make it possible in some way for people to evade accountability?
MEYLER: There may be a political consequence. I think some of the prosecutors involved in these cases were facing filing deadlines coming up pretty soon in terms of whether or not they were actually going to pursue these cases. So rhetorically, it may be helpful for the people who were being charged to be able to say, look, I've been pardoned federally, so why are you pursuing state charges against me?
INSKEEP: I'm thinking more about what you said about the timing. Ed Martin says, let the healing begin, that this is the end of something. But you're suggesting to me these pardons are, in fact, another moment in an ongoing political battle.
MEYLER: Absolutely. And I think one of the noteworthy aspects of this is that usually with an amnesty, there's a pardon or an amnesty extended for someone who's an enemy of the president. But here, it's really the president's supporters who are being pardoned. So it's just setting up the possibility of further ongoing political battles.
INSKEEP: Bernadette Meyler is a professor at Stanford Law School who had some espresso and joined us in the middle of the night. Thank you so much.
MEYLER: Thank you.
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