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A Presidential Pardon By Tweet!

Posted on 25th August 2017

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As reported here, by the BBC,, there is some debate as to whether President Trump might pardon former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio in a tweet. To be fair, the president has given no indication that he intends to use Twitter to pardon Joe Arpaio, but has made it clear that a pardon (in some form) is likely.

As most people must be aware by now, Donald Trump uses Twitter a lot, bypassing his advisors and speech writers to share his views on all manner of topics in tweets.

The idea of issuing a presidential pardon in a tweet, however, is shocking and incredibly stupid. Many famous people and corporations have had their twitter accounts hacked for a wide range of reasons; twitter is simply not secure enough for such serious content as a pardon.

If the Donald establishes a precedent that pardons by Twitter are acceptable, and have legal recognition, I foresee a string of hacks, so that people can pardon themselves (or others whom they support) via the president's Twitter account. That will be a dark day.