Like I said i can't speak for these people in particular. I also don't trust that the "right people" were pardoned but that's not my call to make. Generally speaking I don't think there should have needed be pardons because they shouldn't have been in prison. It was his policy in his 2016 term that put them there in the first place. If all you were able to convict someone of is a conspiracy - like literally a statement of a guy talked about doing X but the rest cannot be proven, why is someone in prison? That's just a blanket. Sure almost all of these were plea bargains but if you had concrete evidence someone committed a crime why is talking about it even on the list of things able to be bargained, reduce the sentence. Id have something different to say if they said - removing X equipment on personally owned pickup trucks is illegal **because** Y. They cannot they simply say well touching anything on our car is _probably_ illegal so don't do it. They won't say "well all that matters is that X quantity of Y must not be present at the tailpipe". it's generally known among the community that such emissions components exist and removing them will trigger alarms in the ECU preventing operation without software workarounds. But there is no clear reason why. They're calling us bootleggers without the prohibition part. Which btw these "regulations" don't apply to them. They will arrest you and put you in the back of an SUV without emissions equipment because they know it's too unreliable. Hell they will even show up to your shop with a license and ask you to remove the equipment yourself, but you so much as work on a modified vehicle owned by a civilian without reporting it - straight to jail. And don't even get me started on "penalties", "culpability multiplier", and "inflation surcharges" for non-criminal cases.