Trump’s final pardons warped presidential powers for his own benefit

On his way out of office, Trump distorts the Constitution to serve his ego and personal interests.

President Trump’s last-minute pardons betray what the Constitution’s pardon power is all about. While he has not decided to try to pardon himself (at least, not as far as we know), the pardons he issued during his term taken together serve as a microcosm for his presidency. They take a noble part of our Constitution and warp it in the service of Trump’s ego and future personal interests.

The Founders put the pardon clause in the Constitution to moderate the awesome powers of the criminal law. As Alexander Hamilton put it in the Federalist, without the pardon power “justice would wear a countenance too sanguinary and cruel.” The lot of Trump’s pardons, however, are not about anything so grand. Some look deserving, even if traditional processes (including Justice Department review) were thrown out the window. But the bulk of them falls far short of what the pardon power is all about. On Tuesday night, he pardoned Stephen K. Bannon, who was charged (yes, you can’t make this up) with defrauding Trump supporters to raise money to build the border wall. Trump also pardoned Elliot Broidy, a major Republican fundraiser, for working as a foreign agent and saying he could make a massive investigation into Malaysian corruption go away. And the notion that he was some sort of criminal justice crusader is laughable — Trump had a paltry number of acts of clemency compared to most of his predecessors and before this last batch of pardons, Trump had granted less than 0.5 percent of requests, the lowest number of any president on record.