Again, we find that ‘birds of a feather’, I.e. ‘criminals’, tend to stick together. Unfortunately, not in prison, where they deserve to be.

 President Donald Trump has pardoned the former Tennessee House speaker and a onetime aide of public corruption charges.

Former Republican state Rep. Glen Casada was sentenced in September to three years in prison, and his former chief of staff, Cade Cothren, was also convicted and received a 2 1/2-year prison sentence. The case centered on their actions after both had been driven from their leadership roles and were accused of running a scheme to win taxpayer-funded mail business from lawmakers.

Trump also pardoned former U.S. Rep. Michael Grimm, a New York Republican who resigned from Congress after a tax fraud conviction and made headlines for threatening to throw a reporter off a Capitol balcony over a question he didn’t like. The president also pardoned reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley, who had been convicted of cheating banks out of millions of dollars and evading taxes.

The moves continued a pattern of Trump, a Republican, using his second term to bestow unlikely pardons on political allies, prominent public figures and others convicted of defrauding the public.