Throughout the Ukraine scandal, President Donald Trump’s defenders argued that his freeze on military aid sprang from a “legitimate interest” in anti-corruption efforts in that country. It was a disingenuous claim on its face all along, not only because Trump’s stated goal was to undermine a political rival’s candidacy but also because no president in American history has ever been less interested in fighting corruption.

The president underscored that point on Tuesday with his latest batch of pardons and commutations. Most of the beneficiaries of Trump’s mercy are well-heeled, well-known, or well-connected. They include former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who tried to sell a Senate seat in 2008; former NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik, who didn’t report a $250,000 bribe he had received to the IRS; Michael Milken, the “junk bond king” of the 1980s; and former San Francisco 49ers owner Eddie DeBartolo Jr., who gave up the team in the 1990s after pleading guilty as part of a gambling bribery scandal in Louisiana.

Trump’s acts of clemency serve multiple purposes. They punctuate his growing sense of political invulnerability after the Senate’s acquittal vote in his impeachment trial two weeks ago. They send an implicit signal of support to Trump’s allies who are still in legal and criminal jeopardy, especially after the Justice Department’s upper ranks intervened last week to request a lower sentence for former adviser Roger Stone. More than anything else, the pardons aim to discredit the idea of federal anti-corruption prosecution itself—a campaign by Trump that serves his short-term political ends and, possibly, his long-term legal goals as well.

This isn’t the first time that Trump has used executive clemency to advance his personal goals. In some instances, the White House handed out pardons and commutations to reward staunch political supporters like conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza and former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio. Other acts of presidential mercy served as implicit critiques of federal prosecutors, such as his pardon of former George W. Bush aide Scooter Libby during the Russia investigation in May 2018. Some even served as policy statements: Trump roiled the Pentagon last December by intervening in the military-justice system to free or shield three U.S. service members who were accused or convicted of war crimes.

Trump’s latest acts of clemency largely follow the same pattern. Perhaps the most prominent name on the list this time is that of Blagojevich, the disgraced ex-governor of Illinois. Before Trump intervened, Blagojevich was serving a 14-year prison sentence after an Illinois jury convicted him in 2011 for a scheme to auction off then President-elect Barack Obama’s Senate seat after the 2008 election. Even in a state known for high-level political corruption, it was a stunningly brazen abuse of power.