Ethan Miller/Getty Images
- Sean Hannity, on both his radio and TV show, called for President Donald Trump to pardon himself and his family before leaving office.
- Early Monday, on his radio show, Hannity hosted Michael Flynn’s lawyer and former Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell, who said a pardon wouldn’t be necessary as Trump would serve another four years.
- Hannity was in part responding to an op-ed in The New York Times by Andrew Weissmann, a former DOJ deputy attorney who worked with former special counsel Robert Mueller.
- The op-ed calls for Trump and the Trump campaign to be prosecuted after Trump leaves office.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Fox News opinion host Sean Hannity called for President Donald Trump to pardon himself on two separate occasions on Monday.
Hannity hosted former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s lawyer and former Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell on his radio show. In the segment, the two praised Trump’s decision to issue a full pardon for Flynn.
Hannity brought up the possibility of Trump pardoning himself and his family, saying, “the president out the door needs to pardon his whole family and himself because they want this witch hunt to go on in perpetuity.”
“They’re so full of rage and insanity against the president… I assume that the power of the pardon is absolute and that he should be able to pardon anybody that he wants to,” Hannity added.
Powell replied, “It is absolute, it’s in the Constitution but I don’t know about the ability to pardon himself.”
On his Fox News show later in the evening, Hannity harped on the same point with guest former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Referring to former special counsel Robert Mueller's deputy Andrew Weissmann's New York Times op-ed calling for prosecuting Trump once he is out of office, Hannity told Gingrich, "if that's what they wanna do, if Biden became president, I'd tell Trump, pardon yourself and pardon your family."
Fox News did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
As Business Insider's Sonam Sheth and Tom Porter have pointed out the president's Constitutional powers to grant pardons and clemency are broad, but they are untested in this arena. A pardon would also only impact federal cases, not those brought at the state level, of which Trump could face at least nine potential suits.