The question that's been asked time and time again is will President Trump try to pardon people who could incriminate him before Special Counsel Robert Mueller even has a chance to charge anyone with a crime. Mueller has an all star team of prosecutors with expertise and everything from money
laundering to foreign bribery to organize crime. One career government lawyer, Michael Dreban, has been acting as Mueller's top legal counsel, and driven has been researching past pardons and determining what, if any limits exist. According to a person familiar with the matter, joining me as Gregg Farrell, Bloomberg News investigative reporter who has written about Dreben, so, Greg starts with telling us a little bit about him. He's a career
government lawyer in unusual these days. Absolutely in a team of people Mueller's team who are fairly well known for previous prosecutions, he's very much unknown. He might be the most talented or experienced, uh federal criminal law lawyer that you've never heard of, because he's been basically cooped up in the office of the Solicitor General and in that work most of his work as a pellet he helps present arguments for appeals courts when you know federal prosecutors
have rulings against them across the country. And most famously he is like somewhat known in the circle of people who arguing before the Supreme Court. He has argued on behalf of the government more than one hundred times over his thirty year career. So that's a significant you know, that's a significant fact. But that, as one person to drive described it to me, that's only the tip of
the iceberg. His real expertise is that he's sort of the nerve center of almost every significant criminal prosecution across the country, especially those that go wrong or those that end up in a in a negative result that a local prosecutor wants to appeal, they have to go to him. And he doesn't just automatically say yeah, let's appeal every
negative decision. He picks and chooses the ones which will basically conform or end up with the best possible result for the overall state of criminal law, rather than just fighting willie neely against every last one. So he's a strategist, among other things, quite a thinker. So there have been preemptive pardons before the most famous example is Gerald Ford's partner of Richard Nixon. What do we know about pardons of this kind that we're looking at, or supposing a
president's pardon, preemptive pardon of campaign workers or family members. Well, the the the area of preemptive pardons is actually relatively obscure. As the President himself has said, you know, the president's powers to pardon are almost without limit. They're not completely without limit, but they're they're there. You know, his discretion is,
you know, in most cases is absolute. However, there are certain areas where, especially when if there were ever a movement in Congress to impeach the president, where he would not be able to, you know, issue certain pardons in those circumstances. But it's it's terror incognita, uh, to the extent where you know what you know. Among the many things Driven is doing for Mueller's team is to look into and make sure that Muller's team is prepared for
either the latest or best thinking on that subject. So he's doing legal research about it. Yes, he's basically he's a guy who almost always in his career has come in after the fact, after a prosecution, after a ruling in a district court, right, and he has to basically deal with what's left over if the prosecutor made a bad call on how to charge a case. Um, it's
too late. Um. However, now he's in on the ground floor, so he can help Mueller's team and the prosecutors on his team with basically developed hone and make sure their theories prosecutor prosecutorial theories are air tight because you know they're going to be tested, you know, when if Mueller ever does anything or charges someone, there's going to be blowback in terms of you know, it's his politically motivated
or is this a weak ruling? And the last thing Mulish team would need would be to find and sustain some kind of an adverse decision at a federal court. It would make him look bad. So dreaming is almost a guarantee that they will not, you know, get off the reservation or do anything that can be legally shot down. So, and because Mueller has a lot of aggressive prosecutors on his on his team from what I've I've been reading and seeing some of them in action. So is this
is dreaming then his top person. It's to some extent he's a bit of the Consigliari. Right, he's the guy Mulla will turn to for advice. And you know he must have must Muller must have known him, uh, not only from his previous career ashead of the criminal division at the just Department, but also as head of the FBI for twelve years. So there's certainly a level of confidence, you know, in this guy in Michael Dribin's you know, encyclopedic knowledge of federal criminal law. So believe it or not,
you know, it's it's right. Not everything is cut and dried, you know. To win a case, um, and for that win to to basically stick in court through an appeal by a defendant, it's important to pick the right charge, how you charge your case. You know, we always see it once the trial starts and it's kind of too late,
and you know they're either guilty or innocent. But so much of the art of prosecution is into is in the selection of the theory and the presentation of that and what will likely hold up under what I expect to be as I say, a lot of pushback just a few seconds here, so you have a yes or now, have you ever seen a legal team assembled on the prosecutors side like this or on the defense side. No,
but not not many people have. This is highly unusual. Um. The thing that's most reminiscent of is the End Round Task Force from fifteen years ago. It's been it's been fascinating. Hope you'll come back and see us again. That's Greg Farrell at Bloomberg News, investigative reporter