Ted CruzVerified account

However, in the 1970s, the Department of Justice did issue a legal opinion that the president cannot pardon himself, relying on the principle that nobody can be the judge in his own case.

That legal principle has a long and venerable history, but it is not reflected in the constitutional text.

Whether the Department of Justice opinion is right is an open legal question, with scholars on both sides of the political spectrum disagreeing in good faith.

Some dishonest journalists have attacked me for "taking 18 seconds" to answer -- without acknowledging that I was walking through the Capitol, late to a meeting, and simply ignoring a question that a reporter had called out at me (as senators do every single day in the Capitol).

When reporters chased me down the hall, and another asked the question again, I chose to answer.

Yet others (see https://bit.ly/2M0mf6e ) have focused on my criticisms of President Obama's abuse of executive power, suggesting that it is somehow hypocritical not to oppose Trump's assertion of executive power.

They cite a law review article I wrote saying that Obama's executive amnesty was illegal, and that the pardon power did not justify it.

What those attacks miss is that it is clear that (1) pardons must be retrospective (looking to crimes in the past), not prospective (pardoning future crimes), and (2) they must be addressed to specific persons, not generic categories of offenses.