A jury convicted Scott Jenkins, the disgraced ex-sheriff of Culpeper County in Virginia, of taking more than $75,000 in bribes in exchange for deputizing rich businessmen so they could get out of speeding tickets and carry guns without permits. Two undercover FBI agents who gave him envelopes of cash after he gave them badges testified at his trial.

Luckily for Jenkins, he has long been an outspoken supporter of President Donald Trump. On Memorial Day, the day before he was due to report for his 10-year prison sentence, Trump pardoned him.

“No MAGA left behind,” tweeted Ed Martin, Trump’s new pardon attorney at the Justice Department, about Jenkins.

The spree continued on May 28, as Trump pardoned 17 more people and commuted sentences for eight others. Many of these beneficiaries appeared to be supporters — or targets of political corruption probes. Michael Grimm, who served seven months in prison after pleading guilty to tax fraud, became the eighth former Republican congressman to be pardoned by Trump. Michael Harris (a.k.a. Harry-O), the Death Row Records co-founder who was convicted of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, endorsed Trump in October. He’s now free from what had been a potential life sentence. Imaad Zuberi, a major donor convicted of obstructing an investigation into Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee, got a commutation.

“Freedom for Captives! ” Martin tweeted on May 28.

This surge in pardons undermines the rule of law, nullifies the judgment of juries and sends a loud message that America has a two-tier system of justice — in which the politically connected are held to lower standards than everyone else. Even though many of those Trump pardoned had previously apologized for their criminal conduct, the president now says they were railroaded by the Justice Department.

Under the Constitution, the president’s ability to pardon federal crimes is absolute; no court can stop it. Trump used the power aggressively during his first term, but he has quadrupled down in his second, because he says he believes that the justice system was weaponized against him and that these beneficiaries have experienced something similar. Former president Joe Biden’s self-interested pardons of his own son and siblings gave Trump greater leeway by making it harder for Democrats to decry what, in all cases, have been plain abuses of the pardon prerogative.

Trump’s most egregious pardons remain the roughly 1,500 he issued on his first day back in office this year to nearly everyone involved in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. This included many who violently assaulted law enforcement officers.

The acts of clemency last week that received the most attention were for Julie and Todd Chrisley, who were convicted of conspiring to defraud community banks in the Atlanta area out of more than $30 million by submitting bogus loan documents to fund the luxury lifestyle they flaunted on their reality TV show. Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit upheld the Chrisleys’ convictions.

But Savannah Chrisley, the couple’s daughter, befriended the president’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump and got a prime-time speaking slot at last summer’s Republican National Convention, where she suggested that her parents were targeted in Fulton County, Georgia, because of their support for the GOP standard-bearer. Trump was facing local charges for election interferencein Fulton County, and her implication was that the cases were related. In fact, the person who brought the case against the Chrisleys was a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney. Notably, Trump did not pardon the family’s accountant, Peter Tarantino, who was convicted alongside the Chrisleys, which indicates that the president doesn’t actually think the underlying case was flawed.

To be sure, Trump is not the first president to abuse the clemency power. Bill Clinton, on his final day in office, infamously pardoned Marc Rich, whose former wife was a major Democratic fundraiser. But Trump’s way of going about it is uniquely blatant.

On May 27, Kenneth P. Vogel of the New York Times reported that Trump’s pardon in April of nursing home executive Paul Walczak came less than three weeks after Walczak’s mother attended a $1-million-a-head Trump fundraiser. His official pardon application even cited his mom’s pro-Trump activities. These had nothing to do with the tax crimes for which Walczak was convicted, which included defrauding his own employees. But the timing of Trump’s pardon spared Walczak from paying $4.4 million in restitution and going to prison for 18 months.

The judge had said when he handed down Walczak’s sentence that the rich do not get “a get-out-of-jail-free card.” Alas, apparently some do. The regrettable message here is that Trump is open for business and that, for Trump donors with loved ones in trouble, the potential return on investment is high.