First, Trump has been unusually stingy with the pardon power up until now, even by modern standards. And second, almost all of his acts of clemency (which include commutations as well as pardons) have gone to people he knows, like former national security adviser Michael Flynn, or to those with whom he may curry political favor, like the two Oregon cattle ranchers who were at the center of a dispute over federal land involving states’ rights activist Ammon Bundy.
That track record, legal experts told me, is pretty much the exact opposite of how the presidential pardon power was intended to function, which was as a check on abuses by the legislative or judicial branches. “Many of Trump’s pardons … could fairly be characterized as more about his personal interests than serving justice,” Jeffrey Crouch, a professor at American University and an expert on executive clemency, said in an email. “Pardons are normally granted to people who have turned their lives around, shown remorse and want a pardon,” Crouch told me, adding that this just isn’t the story line that has emerged from four years of Trump. “[His] clemency approach is that clemency is less available to average people than it is to those with the right group of connections.”
... aren't attorneys-general supposed to be the very definition of the Rule of Law? 
