The second pardon went to Patrick J. Nolan, the former Republican leader of the California state assembly. This one is less obviously self-serving, but it is. Nolan has been a prominent conservative voice for criminal justice reform since finishing his sentence and has served in prison ministry. But he, like Black, is close to the Trump family. Appearing at a White House ceremony celebrating the passage of criminal justice reform legislation, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner called Nolan “my friend,” and Nolan called Kushner “just a superstar. I’m impressed with him so much.” Last year, Nolan criticized special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation. He said it was symptomatic of how law enforcement personnel “decide who they’re going to prosecute and then hunt for a crime."

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That these pardons went to two Trump allies who said things he likes, and whose pardons could send signals to other Trump allies, doesn’t seem like a coincidence. Trump has now pardoned 10 people in his two-plus years in office. Of the nine living ones, eight are either conservatives or further Trump’s political narrative in some way.

To recap:

The other two pardons went to the late boxer Jack Johnson and, earlier this month, Michael Behenna, a former Army first lieutenant convicted of murder while serving in Iraq. Trump has also commuted the sentence of two others, including Alice Marie Johnson, whose clemency was pushed for by Kim Kardashian, who is married to Trump ally Kanye West.

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The point isn’t that presidents don’t pardon their allies; they have. Bill Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich, who had given large sums to both the Democratic Party and the Clintons, was a massive controversy.

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But they often do it sparingly, late in their terms (the Rich pardon came on Clinton’s last day in office), and they mix it in with many other pardons that don’t so clearly and obviously benefit themselves. The scale and audacity with Trump is on another level completely. Trump seems to have very little regard for the perception this creates. Perhaps that’s because he likes the signal it sends to his allies that they too could one day benefit from his broad executive power — even if in ways far shy of a something as big as a pardon. Trump’s dangling of pardons for some of his top aides convicted of crimes drives that home.