Trump's attitude to pardons is about pardoning himself

The US president has been on a spree this week awarding clemency to supporters and donors, reports Richard Hall from New York - but what is the reason for his generosity?

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Donald Trump went on a pardoning spree this week, granting clemency to gang leaders, reality TV fraudsters and various white-collar criminals. Among the colourful characters freed by the president were a conspicuous number of his own supporters and donors, which prompted accusations of corruption and favouritism.

There was also a focus in the pardon list on financial crimes and fraud, both of which Trump has had experience defending himself against.

Norm Eisen, the White House ethics czar under Barack Obama and executive chair of the Democracy Defenders Fund, tells The Independent that Trump's choice of whom to pardon has a lot to do with the president recasting his own past legal troubles.

"As Trump himself is a 34-time convicted felon, he wants to make the point that the system is unjust in order to expiate his own guilt. He can do that by pardoning individuals, particularly those who have politically supported him, and by claiming that their prosecutions, too, were unmerited," he says. “The facts in these cases are to the contrary, and these are pardons that no normal president of either party would have made." Perhaps the most baffling of all was Trump's decision to commute six life sentences given to Larry Hoover, founder of a Chicago gang, for conspiracy, extortion and drug charges in the 1970s. Hoover was the founder of the notorious Gangster Disciples and was described by prosecutors as “one of the most notorious criminals in Illinois history". He was convicted again while in jail of running the gang from behind prison walls.

Hoover, now 74, has since renounced his criminal past, and in recent years his case has attracted the support of a number of high-profile figures in the hip-hop scene.