The beneficiaries of Trump’s mercy fall into three categories: minor players in the Russiagate saga, Republican representatives caught with their fingers in the till and convicted murderers. Only the first of these categories justifies the raising of the imperial thumb. The other two disgrace the idea of pardons…

The fall guys for ‘Russian collusion’ look more like victims than perpetrators. Mueller failed to gin up the conspiracy he was supposed to prove. The recipients of Trump’s generosity may not be angels, but their sentences were more about saving the face of Mueller and his Democratic and NeverTrump supporters as they were about saving the country from foreign influence. If they were, the same patriots would now be setting the FBI and the Justice Department on Hunter Biden.

The second group of miscreants, however, deserve no favors. We know Congress is full of crooks, but did Rep. Duncan D. Hunter of California really need to use campaign funds for video games, dentistry, flights, hotels, a donation to his son’s school and non-specified items at a surf shop, not forgetting $600 on flying the family’s pet rabbit so the kids wouldn’t miss it?