There are not a lot of facts before us.

We only know that a federal judge unsealed documents regarding a DOJ investigation of a “Bribery for Pardon Scheme” (via MSNBC) based upon events happening over the summer and it is backed by evidence, sworn in court, and a judge is ruling on some aspect of this case and unsealing it. We suspect it might be close to an indictment. Of course, they can’t indict Trump until after he leaves office. They can indict and arrest the people seeking the pardon and the lawyers arranging any “bribe.”

Bribery means money exchanged for an official act and a pardon is about the single most official act possible, given that there is only one person who can give that pardon and it waves off the single most pernicious thing that can attach to someone – a crime. Moreover, given that this would be the most explosive crime of the century, if it involves Trump personally, one would think that there has to be more evidence than one could imagine, tapes, documents, phone calls, emails, etc. a mountain of evidence, indeed they just said several “terabytes” of information would be needed to implicate anyone in the White House.

The hosts on MSNBC are gobsmacked, no one has heard of anything like this, and it has to – by definition – touch “close” to Trump, because whoever was named in the indictment believed he or she could get the pardon. One thus wonders whether Trump knew and is thus exposed.

Interesting that this filing comes out the day after Sean Hannity took to arguing last night that Trump should pardon himself and his entire family. Hannity’s reasoning was the exact same reasoning we told you over the summer: “They’ve been investigating you for years, fake dossier, fake dossier, Russia, Russia, Russia …” So Hannity is softening the ground here.

NO one has even answered the question as to whether a president can pardon himself. Chuck Rosenberg took up the question on the invaluable Nicolle Wallace show and Chuck Rosenberg didn’t know. If Chuck doesn’t know, no one knows.

Watch this space.

****

Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on Twitter @JasonMiciak