Not true, as I explained earlier.
Here to back me up is Randall Eliason:
You frequently hear that if someone accepts a pardon, it means they admit they are guilty. This stems from language in a 1915 Supreme Court case, Burdick v. United States, where the Court said that accepting a pardon involves a “confession of guilt.” Recently on MSNBC, Ari Melber thought he had a “gotcha” moment with Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio when he told Arpaio that accepting president Trump’s pardon for contempt of court meant he was admitting he was guilty.
But the reality is more complicated. The language in Burdick was dicta – not necessary to the holding – and is too sweeping. Pardons are granted for different reasons. For example, suppose DNA testing concludes a defendant was wrongly convicted and the president pardons him. Clearly by accepting that pardon the exonerated defendant is not admitting that he was in fact guilty. Writing last year in the Washington Post, Eugene Volokh reviewed Burdick and other old Supreme Court authorities and concluded: “I doubt that any judge today would genuinely view acceptance of pardons as always being an admission of guilt.”
I’ve written all the above previously at TPM, but I figure hearing from someone else might help you. Does it?