Petula Dvorak: Washington pardoned traitors, Clinton pardoned crooks

The British called a king’s ability to pardon the “prerogative of mercy,” and the Founding Fathers granted that superpower to the president in the U.S. Constitution.

But as President Donald Trump grants pardons to rappers, reality show stars, and Jan. 6 rioters, here’s a look at some other notable presidential pardons throughout history.

George Washington and the Whiskey Rebellion

The United States was barely in its teens when taxes and booze almost unraveled the nation and resulted in the first presidential pardon. It began with Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton’s controversial 1791 tax on whiskey as a way to wipe out America’s Revolutionary War debt.

The tax scale that gave a break to the large distilleries of the East but not the small farmers processing grain surpluses along th