The real reason the news just leaked that Donald Trump is trying to pardon himself

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Even as Donald Trump prepares to travel to Camp David this weekend, multiple major news outlets are now reporting that Trump is preparing to pardon himself on his way out of office. We all knew this was coming, and the odds are strong that such a self-pardon would be thrown out by the courts anyway. The real story here is that this is leaking right now.

This leak did not come from Donald Trump or his remaining loyalists. This is the kind of thing that Trump would want to do with the element of surprise, so that no one can eject him from office before he can sign the self-pardon. The fact that this is leaking is bad news for him, because it places even more public pressure on Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment before Trump can pardon himself.

That means this information was almost certainly leaked by those in Trump’s orbit who now want him gone. They leaked this specifically because they want Pence to remove him before the end of his term. We’ll see where this goes, but these are certainly remarkable times.

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