💩

 Good Professor Vladeck:

I could write up why there’s no constitutional problem with the President using an auto-pen to sign official documents—or I could just post the 30-page 2005 opinion by George W. Bush’s Office of Legal Counsel that explains why in lots of detail.

I choose the latter:

https://www.justice.gov/file/494411/dl?inline

As ever, sound and reasonable. But I agree with ew:

Or you could not it's a made up scandal based on Heritage Foundation's misrepresentation of the Federal Register.

Although I’d go a step further and say not even the Roberts Court is going to recognize a presidential “un-pardon” power. It is the constitutional prerogative of the Executive to issue pardons, and the duty of the courts to apply them. But the courts also have the power of judicial review of pardons, even if it’s only used to explain how the courts cannot question the wisdom of such pardons. (I’d also say it’s not really a scandal, and just because it’s presidential bloviating doesn’t make it worth our attention.)

If Trump has an issue with a predecessor’s use of the pardon power, he can take that to court. If the courts decide he has standing (I’m not sure they would). Even then, I expect the courts would decline to investigate, or define, the authoritative use of the pardon power. That’s where Professor Vladeck is going with his argument about the use of the autopen. And again, he’s not wrong.

But this question will never get to court because, if Trump tries and the courts say there’s a jurisdictional issue (standing, IOW), they’ll use that to decline ruling on (and interfering with) a Constitutional Executive power.* Especially since there is no Presidential “unpardon” power.

And so far it’s only asserted in a social media post. Which doesn’t count for shit. 💩 (I wonder if Trump signed that with an autopen?)

*Yes, the more likely course is the DOJ would try to raise this issue in an attempted prosecution of members of the J6 committee (who are probably covered by the Speech and Debate clause anyway). But that wouldn’t be Trump declaring the pardons void (as he did in his post), and it wouldn’t get the courts to review the validity of the pardons. At best, the courts would examine the validity of the claim. And find it ridiculous.