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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
Entertainment
Lloyd Green

‘Royal authority’: Jeffrey Toobin explores the US presidential pardon in his new book

a man in a suit speaks into a microphone
Jeffrey Toobin in Boston in 2018. Photograph: Paul Marotta/Getty Images

“When it comes to pardons, presidents are kings,” Jeffrey Toobin writes in his new book, The Pardon: The Politics of Presidential Mercy. “No other provision of the constitution replicates royal authority with such precision.”

The constitution expressly confers upon the president the “Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment”.

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