‘Law and Order’ for Thee

By Noah Rothman

Tuesday, October 21, 2025

 

The president has elevated the phrase “restoring law and order” to part of his political movement’s brand. He campaigned on such a pledge. He has predicated his immigration deportation regime on it. He appealed to it to justify the deployment of National Guard troops to American cities. And to judge from the polling, voters overwhelmingly believe Trump’s Republican Party is better suited to safeguard them against crime than the Democratic Party.

 

But while the president has made great strides in his effort to restore “order,” the “law” part of that equation is getting short shrift. Trump’s gross misapplication of the pardon power not only undermines his own narrative but also provides Democrats with ammunition to further degrade the public’s trust in Trump’s supposed deference to legal propriety.

 

There is just no justification for former Representative George Santos’s pardon. In the face of overwhelming evidence of his guilt, Santos struck a plea agreement with prosecutors in which he confessed to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. The showboating onetime legislator is unrepentant. Indeed, it seems the only circumstance that mitigates Santos’s misdeeds is his steadfast rhetorical support for the president.

 

We can say the same for many of the president’s more sordid pardons. Ross Ulbricht, the founder of an illicit online drug market and money laundering apparatus, earned his pardon by virtue of the affection with which he’s held by certain loud elements on the MAGA right. How did reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley earn their clean slate after they were convicted of bank fraud and tax evasion? Reportedly, personal appeals to Trump from the couple’s daughter, who spoke at the GOP’s 2024 nominating convention.

 

It all contributes to the impression that the president’s commitment to the law is contingent on the degree to which those who run afoul of it are Trump fans — an impression his blanket pardon of January 6 rioters already established to the satisfaction of the president’s critics. His pardon or commutation of not just that day’s hapless bystanders but the violent and seditious, including those who attacked law enforcement, is a stain on his record. And that early act of Trump’s second term continues to haunt him.

 

One beneficiary of Trump’s generosity has already been convicted again of criminal violence — this time, for working with a “militia to attack the FBI” and conducting “combat drills to realize his plan.” Another was arrested this week for allegedly issuing actionable threats against House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. A third was shot and killed after he drew a gun on police during a routine traffic stop. And that litany doesn’t even touch on the January 6 defendants who were brought into the administration, like Justice Department “Weaponization Working Group” member Jared Wise. As the DOJ’s pardon attorney, Ed Martin, said of the president’s preferred scofflaws, “I’ve seen people hit a cop and that doesn’t make it the end of the world.”

 

You can already hear the gears turning as the president’s defenders attempt to draw the public’s attention away from the president’s shabby misuse of the pardon power. Joe Biden’s pardons were just as despicable. Stipulated. Is the standard for presidential comportment now as low as the one Joe Biden set? Such an attempt at misdirection is less a defense of President Trump’s conduct and more an indictment of it. If the best Trump’s backers can do is contend that he’s only as bad as Joe Biden, that’s no defense at all.