Obviously, a person who insists that he is innocent will want his lack of guilt established in the criminal case, either by prevailing at trial or by having the prosecutor drop the case prior to trial. Consequently, since Trump maintains his innocence, the only favor Vivek does for him by raising the pardon issue is to give Trump an opportunity to say “no.” This is only of marginal value to Trump since he has already said he is not guilty. And it is of no value to Ramaswamy — it just illustrates that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

You know who could hugely benefit from the potential of a Trump pardon? President Biden, that’s who.

As of this moment and for the next year and a half, Biden is the only person in America who is constitutionally capable of pardoning Trump. Republican candidates can only talk about it — to no good end.

[Agreed. It’s a dumb issue when Trump himself isn’t asking for executive clemency and insisting that he’s innocent. GOP candidates should focus instead on policies for reforming and depoliticizing the DoJ so that these issues don’t come up in the future. — Ed]