Cillizza: Finish this sentence: “The chances of a president being able to pardon himself are roughly ______%.” Now, explain.

Kalt: Ha! I have been studying self-pardons and writing about them for over 20 years now (including in Chapter 2 of my book), and I have thoroughly convinced myself that any court faced with the issue should rule against self-pardons’ validity. But “should” and “would” are two different things, and it is so hard to predict just what the Supreme Court would do that I can’t say with any precision. I’ll just say that I think it’s less than 50%, but not close to 0%.

On the president’s side is the fact that the Constitution does not expressly prohibit self-pardons.

The argument is a bit more complicated on the prosecution’s side — that’s how it would get to court; the president would have to pardon himself and the prosecutor would have to prosecute him anyway, presumably after the president had left office.