This weekend my column on the Trump pardon controversy ran in the Washington Post. (Notably, while the first title referenced a President pardoning himself, the later title referenced pardoning aides which was the thrust of the column).  As I have stated in the press, I consider this one of the most difficult questions in the Constitution.  I wrote that there is nothing in the Constitution that says that a president cannot self-pardon and that this was a very close and unresolved question. The same day, a column ran that said conclusively that the self-pardon are clearly and textually barred by the Constitution. That column was written by Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe, Minnesota Professor Richard Painter, and Brookings Institution fellow Norman Eisen.   I must respectfully disagree despite my respect for the prior work of all three of these men. While I believe that it would have been better for the Framers to expressly bar self-pardons, they did not do so. What is left is a difficult interpretive question that is not answered by the arguments made in the column. Indeed, some of the arguments are challengeable on either a historical or legal basis.  This is an issue that could easily go either way in the courts.  In the meantime, President Trump this morning fueled greater speculation with a tweet referring to his “complete power to pardon.”