Particularly in the case of Blagojevich, allies of the disgraced politician appear to be playing to Trump’s anger over the ongoing F.B.I. case. “This is so dangerous because it allows the F.B.I. and power-hungry, overzealous prosecutors like Patrick Fitzgerald, who prosecuted both my husband and Scooter Libby, to go after anyone that they don’t like, just because they’re unpopular or controversial,” Patti Blagojevich, the former First Lady of Illinois, said on Fox News’s Tucker Carlson Tonight in April. Robert Blagojevich, the brother of the former Illinois governor who also faced charges in the corruption case that were ultimately dropped, echoed the sentiment in an interview with Politico. “People like Michael Cohen, they’re victims just like with me,” he said. “They want them to flip on the president. And it’s Mueller who’s doing it now, and it was Fitzgerald who did it to screw with me. These are bad people. There are no consequences to it. So Donald Trump—more power to him.”

Roger Stone, a longtime ally and informal adviser to Trump who has come under scrutiny in the Mueller investigation, acknowledged that the president may have sought to send a message to Mueller and the F.B.I. “It has to be a signal to Mike Flynn and Paul Manafort and even Robert S. Mueller III: indict people for crimes that don’t pertain to Russian collusion and this is what could happen,” Stone told The Washington Post. “The special counsel has awesome powers, as you know, but the president has even more awesome powers.”

If the president did seek to send a signal to figures from Trumpworld with the pardons he doles out, that is not in itself a crime. “Because the pardon power is in the Constitution and because it is so broad and considered so absolute, I think that you would have to find something quite explicit. . . . It is much harder to prove even then obstruction,” Sol Wisenberg, who served as a deputy prosecutor in the Starr investigation and believes that Trump’s firing of Comey alone isn’t cause for obstruction as it falls under his authority, told me. “They all bypassed, apparently, the traditional pardon process, just like Bill Clinton did with Marc Rich, which was also an outrageous, absolutely outrageous pardon, indefensible pardon. But again, he is allowed to do that. He is the president. . . . Is it potentially signaling? Yes. Is there anything that we could potentially do about it? No.”

To many, it is unsurprising that Trump has taken advantage of his presidential pardon to potentially bolster his personal and political agenda. “When you think of it, the pardon power must be something that Trump finds thrilling. With the possible exception of himself, he can pardon anyone he wants, for any reason he wants, without interference from Congress or the courts,” one D.C. white-collar attorney told me. “My guess is that he will use the power often.” And with frequent use of his pardon power, Trump might be attempting to “de-sensitize people to pardons generally,” Rangappa told me, adding that Trump’s thinking could be to “let the liberals go crazy about all these pardons, ’cause then when I pardon my family it is just going to look like they are being hysterical.”

To Grant, Trump’s strategy is nothing new: “The president is acting like a mob boss,” he said. “When you conduct a corruption investigation, you are either going to do it proactively with sources and wires, or you are going to do it by flipping people, by catching them in their bad behavior. . . . What Trump is doing here is he is attempting to interfere with that. Just like a mobster does, just like a gang member [does]. They say, ‘You go to jail for me on this drug-trafficking charge, I will take care of your family, your commissary down in prison,’ and you don’t flip. So I think that is what is going on here. He is attempting to discredit all avenues of investigation.”

And Grant, a longtime colleague and friend of the special counsel, dismissed the idea that Trump’s efforts would trip up Mueller—who famously prosecuted the Gambino crime family. “When you get to Mueller, who is one of the most honorable, decent—he is not going to defend himself, that is just not his style—he seeks facts and whether those facts exonerate the president, it may very well be,” he told me, noting that Mueller only sleeps three hours a night. “He is going to be methodical, he is going to work hard.”

As for Trump’s legacy if he does add individuals like Blagojevich to his pile of already questionable pardons, Mariotti has a message: good riddance. “Rod Blagojevich is not a very flattering comparison for Donald Trump. Rod Blagojevich is a corrupt man. . . . That was a prosecution that was righteous,” he told me. “I will say, it really says something when the Republican Party is now defending Rod Blagojevich and attacking the F.B.I.”