While the pardon power retains an aura of sacred mercy, reaching back to its legal antecedents among Anglo-Saxon monarchs who ostensibly ruled as divine regents, there are records of abuse as far back as the Norman period. Even so, Trump’s decisions so far have been notable, especially for the nature of the crimes committed by those he has pardoned. The president has granted mercy to prominent conservatives more or less off the cuff, circumventing the standard application process through the Justice Department, in some cases undermining the rule of law with these moves.

Take D’Souza, a former contributor to The Atlantic. As Mark Stricherz chronicled here in 2014, D’Souza traversed a path from being a learned if pugilistic conservative thinker to being, to be blunt, a crank, frequenting Alex Jones’s radio show. An outspoken social conservative, he was deposed as president of a Christian college over an alleged extramarital affair. He wrote a book claiming that the anticolonialism of Barack Obama Sr. explained his son’s presidency, and while the book was filleted as sloppy and error-ridden, it won him a new audience on the conspiratorial right, eventually producing a popular, though similarly error-ridden, film called 2016: Obama’s America.

It was also during the Obama years that D’Souza was prosecuted for his campaign-finance crimes, and sentenced to five years of probation. Though he did not dispute the underlying evidence in his case, D’Souza has claimed all along that the prosecution was politically motivated, and asked a federal judge to dismiss the case against him. She rejected it, saying, “The defendant’s claim of selective prosecution, legally speaking, is ‘all hat, no cattle.’” Trump, nonetheless, claimed Thursday that D’Souza was “treated very unfairly by our government,” echoing the president’s own claims of persecution at the hands of federal judges.

Before D’Souza was Libby, who had been chief of staff to Cheney and was convicted of obstruction of justice, perjury, and making false statements in connection with the leak of the name of a covert CIA employee during the Bush years. Libby has always had defenders, who say he was a fall man and did not deserve to be convicted. President George W. Bush commuted Libby’s sentence, but did not pardon him, reportedly creating a lasting schism with Cheney, who wanted Libby pardoned. In pardoning him in April, Trump used similar language to his tweet about D’Souza. “I don’t know Mr. Libby, but for years I have heard that he has been treated unfairly,” he said.

Even more than D’Souza or Libby, Trump’s pardoning of Arpaio was a shocking use of the power. The former sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona—famous for his racist rhetoric, disparate racial enforcement of laws, and immigrant camps—had been convicted of contempt of court in summer 2017. Trump’s pardon was troubling for several reasons, including the fact that he effectively excused Arpaio for thumbing his nose at federal judges—the same bugaboo as the D’Souza case. My colleague James Fallows noted another problem: “While he is not the first official whose offense involved abuse of public powers—from Nixon on down, others fit that category—his is the first case I’m aware of where someone is pardoned for using state power toward racist ends.”