Pardon this!

If it's good enough for a fictional staff member of a fictional President in a fictional White House....

I was not a fan of Ford's pardon of Nixon, or Bush's pardon of the cronies that could have exposed him, or of pre-emptive pardons in general.  But Jeebus, these people!

According to sources cited in a Weekly Standard report, Rogers’ ouster was a result of concerns within Trump’s transition team regarding the House Intelligence Committee’s 2014 investigation into the 2012 attacks in Benghazi. Rogers’ report found that the Obama administration responded appropriately to the attacks and their aftermath and did not mislead the public. A number of Congressional Republicans turned their ire on both Rogers and the investigation results as a result.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) took a particularly strong tack, calling the report “crap.”

Rogers pushed back, saying that critics only "wanted a report to come out to go after the State Department or the White House."

And this:

Lesley Stahl: Are you going to ask for a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton over her emails? And are you, as you had said to her face, going to try and put her in jail?

Donald Trump: Well, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, I’m going to think about it. Um, I feel that I want to focus on jobs, I want to focus on healthcare, I want to focus on the border and immigration and doing a really great immigration bill. We want to have a great immigration bill. And I want to focus on all of these other things that we’ve been talking about.

Lesley Stahl: You-- you know, you--

Donald Trump: And get the country straightened away.

Lesley Stahl: You called her “crooked Hillary,” said you wanted to get in jail, your people in your audiences kept saying, “Lock em’ up.”

Donald Trump: Yeah. She did--

Lesley Stahl: Do you—

Donald Trump: She did some bad things, I mean she did some bad things--

And it's not just the White House:

“It would be totally remiss of us to dismiss [the email investigation] because she’s not going to be president,” Chaffetz said of the defeated Democratic nominee.

“I still have a duty and obligation to get to the truth about one of the largest breaches of security at the State Department,” he said. “Tens of thousands of documents still have not been turned over to Congress.”

Ford wanted to "heal the nation" when he pardoned Nixon.  Bush just wanted to protect his legacy (mission accomplished!).  Obama gains nothing personally by pardoning Clinton pre-emptively, but it's what he can do to get the GOP to leave the poor woman alone.  Special prosecutor?  More investigations?

If Obama wants to protect his legacy this is the last thing, as he goes out the door, he can do.  Hey, it worked for Jed Bartlet.....