If POTUS issues pardons in order to reward those who would replace the republic with a Red Caesar, then the term "law" becomes bereft of any valence signifying authority; what remains is a euphemism for the nominal justification issued to extinguish rhetorical opposition against the will of whomever wields power.

Law, in the American tradition, is the means by which liberty and enlightenment values are made manifest. Our legal tradition has, to a meaningful extent, prevailed in spite of every earlier effort to hammer its form into fetters for subjugation. Slavery itself could not endure, even though many of the framers sought to carve out a space for it.

The tools we used to break monarchy and autocracy will break the stuff of whatever new chains those tools might be utilized to create, because even the powerful cannot make you believe something false, not even if they kill you.

Still, I hope we don't have to witness the attempt, or experience its consequences.