On AM Joy, after an extensive discussion of the D.C.-based grand jury and its reasons for being there, former Bush ethics lawyer Richard Painter weighed in.on whether Trump's team can use pardons to avoid testifying.
"No, it wouldn't extricate them," Painter said.
"Because once they're pardoned, they can't plead the Fifth Amendment not to incriminate themselves because they're not going to get prosecuted, so they'd go right in front of that grand jury. That would not work. That would just end with his impeachment.
"I gotta say, I find Alan Dershowitz's comments about a grand jury very offensive," he added.
"Black people could be just as fair to Donald Trump as white people. This kind of race baiting is unacceptable. I'm embarrassed. I'm a graduate of the university that employs him, and for him to be shooting his mouth off that way, talking about the racial makeup of a grand jury -- it's offensive. It's offensive to our system of democracy, and the United States.
"And of course he doesn't like grand juries, because he spent most of his life defending very rich people who were also very guilty going all the way back to the (Claus) Von Bulow trial. He doesn't like grand juries but he doesn't need to bring race into it. The race baiting is unacceptable and we should not be encouraging that and President Trump has been doing a lot of it, people working for him, but I'm shocked to see a prominent law professor engage in race-baiting."
