"Go ahead, Congress; go ahead, prosecutors and courts," says Bush. "I can let my cronies, the perjurers and the traitors, out the back door of the jail as fast as you can bring 'em in the front. Whatcha gonna do about it? Huh? Huh?"
Oddly enough, the authors of the U.S. Constitution contemplated exactly this situation. And they prescribed a response, which David Swanson describes here.
George Mason (1725-1792), the father of the Bill of Rights (1791-2002), argued at the Constitutional Convention in favor of providing the House of Representatives the power of impeachment by pointing out that the President might use his pardoning power to "pardon crimes which were advised by himself" or, before indictment or conviction, "to stop inquiry and prevent detection."
James Madison (1751-1836), the father of the U.S. Constitution (1788-2007), added that "if the President be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person, and there be grounds to believe he will shelter him, the House of Representatives can impeach him; they can remove him if found guilty."
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