Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley said she would pardon former President Donald Trump if she were to become president and he had been convicted of a federal crime.
The former South Carolina governor said she would pardon him for the country’s best interest after being asked by an audience member at a town hall meeting in South Carolina.
“If you’re talking about pardoning Trump, it’s not a matter of innocence or guilt at that point, because that means he would have already been found guilty,” she said at the town hall hosted by Fox News.
“I believe, in the best interest of bringing the country together, I would pardon Donald Trump,” she said. “Because I think it’s more important for the country to move on. We’ve got to leave the negativity and the baggage behind. I don’t want this country divided any further.”
Ms. Haley said it is not in the country’s interest “to have an 80-year-old president sitting in jail and having everybody upset about it. I think this would be the time that we would need to move forward and get this out of the way.”
Mr. Trump himself faces 91 charges across four criminal investigations, two of them centered around his efforts to contest the 2020 election. However, one of the sets of charges, a racketeering case in Georgia, is being brought under state laws over which a President Haley would have no pardon power.
His legal woes don’t end there — on Friday he was barred from doing business in New York for three years and ordered to pay over $350 million as a result of damages in the New York civil fraud trial brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Despite his charges he remains to be the Republican presidential frontrunner, leading Ms. Haley by over 30 points in polls for Saturday’s primary in South Carolina — her home state.
• Mallory Wilson can be reached at mwilson@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.