By the time he pardoned America’s shortest-serving national security adviser, Michael Flynn, for lying to federal authorities about his contacts with Vladimir Putin’s regime, President Trump had already compiled an impressive list of dodgy dispensations. From a bigoted former Arizona sheriff to a corrupt ex-governor of Illinois to a onetime 49ers owner convicted in a bribery scandal, most of these figures are connected not by any miscarriage or excess of justice — the proper rationale for such an exercise of executive authority — but by having supported the president, his…
President’s motive for pardoning Flynn was self-serving
Flynn belongs to a special category of abuse of presidential power: the kind meant to protect the president himself.
