the thing about all of the talk about how trump would order someone to carry out, say, flagrantly illegal acts and then pardon them after the fact is that you don’t have to pardon someone if you’ve explicitly ordered the AG to fire anyone who charges the offender with carrying out your orders
i mean, i’m a layidiot, not a lawyer, but it seems like, as an official act, the president (and let’s be clear, it’s just trump here or any republican president in the future), can explicitly tell the AG who and what to prosecute. you don’t need to pardon someone who hasn’t been charged.