There is a danger that President Trump in January may look back on the rage most Americans felt at the clear criminality of Hillary and her toadies as water under the bridge and see the tactical advantage in putting all that raw sewage behind us.  The lesson the left will draw from that is this: the left can persecute Scooter Libby, rig the prosecution of Ted Stevens, bedevil Tom Delay and Rick Perry, convict David Petraeus, and count on conservatives genially forgiving all the left's misdoings when they gain power.

If Trump does this out of a desire to begin his presidency with the false glow of leftist acceptance, he will rue that day when the left sees a chance to stick the stiletto into his ribs.  There are several related problems with Hillary's use of a private email service, her pathological lying about it, her conspiracy to thwart justice and oversight with the minions who would do anything to protect her, and the patent corruption of the criminal justice system.

First, the men and women who risk their lives to acquire classified information and for whose protection tough laws have been enacted must see that these laws are enforced and that there are consequences for violating them.  Once the brave men and women who put themselves on the line around the world in dangerous places believe that they are simply disposal units when domestic political interests are involved, then we will stop learning much of what we must learn to be safe.

Second, if the Department of Justice and the leadership of the FBI have proven willing to twist justice for political ends, then these folks are much worse than just "bad cops."  If they walk away from this with their reputations intact and no sanctions for the very serious collection of crimes that would go with conspiring to exonerate the guilty, then our criminal justice system at the highest level can no longer be trusted.

Third, if Trump cannot be tough with these folks, then his own credibility will inevitably begin to corrode among those very Americans who trusted him to "drain the swamp."  While that may not affect his presidency today or tomorrow, it will definitely begin to erode that trust over time, and when he needs it most, many conservatives will have to wonder if they can trust him.

Does this mean that Trump should reopen the criminal investigation by Jim "Inspector Clouseau" Comey and convene grand juries to interrogate the suspects?  Well, if Obama issues a general pardon, then no crimes will be prosecutable for offenses committed before the pardon, and Obama may well do just that.

But what our nation requires is not so much criminal convictions as slobbering confessions of wrongdoing before the nation by miscreants who infested Hillary's organization and the Justice Department.  In gaining this vital purgative, President Trump and the Republican Congress have several key weapons.

Trump ought to offer a general pardon to everyone involved in these scandals, given the following.  (1) Each person, under oath and penalty of perjury, must offer complete written confessions of all bad conduct the individual committed or knew about.  (2) The individual pardoned testifies before a joint congressional investigative committed and, because of the pardon, cannot take the Fifth Amendment – here, as with the sworn statement, any false or misleading testimony would be cause for instantly seeking indictments for perjury and obstruction of justice.  (3) Every one of these unsavory characters who is also an attorney (which is to say, almost all of them) must submit, at a minimum, to a public reprimand and in egregious cases with suspension of his license to practice law.  (4) Those holdouts who angrily protest their innocence even as everyone around them provides details of bad deeds, including many we will just have learned about, must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. 

What might happen with this approach?  Well, those suspects involved may decide to get together and work up a common front to stonewall.  If that happens, then the very meetings and discussions are a new and serious felony, conspiracy to obstruct justice, and that is true even if nothing planned was itself technically illegal.  The panoply of the FBI – wiretaps, informers, etc. – could be quite properly used to prove this criminal conspiracy.  What would happen is the small fry, first, at least, would crack, and then those fissures would creep up through the whole rotten structure. 

So what if, knowing this, these folks confess their grave wrongdoings before the nation?  The left would probably never try this sort of shenanigans again, and the left would pay a dear political price for its corruption of the federal criminal justice system, which is what we really want.