Republicans — like President Trump, for instance — love to puff up their chests, grasp their lapels and declaim in foghorn voices about their devotion to law and order.

And so, on Tuesday, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, piously declared that the Justice Department should consider whether James Comey had broken the law before and after Trump fired him as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“I think if there’s ever a moment where we feel someone’s broken the law, particularly if they’re the head of the F.B.I., I think that’s something that certainly should be looked at,” she said. She was referring to Comey’s exoneration of Hillary Clinton in the email caper, and his admission that he had leaked his own private memo describing conversations with Trump.

It couldn’t get clearer than that, right? Not so fast.

On a Friday night in August, when Hurricane Harvey was barreling into Texas, Trump pardoned Joe Arpaio, the former Maricopa County, Ariz.a, sheriff who had blatantly violated a court order to stop detaining people because he thought they looked Mexican.