Those of us who voted for Trump were inspired at least partly by this implicit promise that he would as President of the United States uphold the rule of law. Whether by misadventure or by intention, the Trump Department Of Justice has been either asleep or actually covering for the deep state in this instance and in so many others.
When the rule of law is manifestly corrupted in the service of the powerful, the consequences are not just legal but political to the point of pushing the country to revolution. With no legitimacy to the rule of law, the indictment of George III by Thomas Jefferson becomes a contemporary reality and the solution too many must be the same.
I would also note that the pardon by Pres. Ford of Richard Nixon did not turn Nixon into a martyr nor enhance Ford's ability to be elected.
In 2016 I wrote this reply which considers the issues you raise:
Unfortunately for Hillary her criminality is not about her, it is about the rule of law. I say unfortunately because we have been down this road before with Hillary when Ken Starr concluded, much for political reasons, that he would not bring indictments against Hillary Clinton in the Whitewater/Lewinsky investigation, an investigation which explored numerous acts of potential criminality by Hillary involving FBI records, law office records, lying, and obstruction of justice to name just some of the potential crimes which come the memory after nearly 20 years. Indeed, Ken Starr himself is publicly admitted that he concluded that she had committed crimes.
Not a bit chastised by her escape from justice, Hillary embarked on a career of profiteering from her office on a massive scale. When she was in Arkansas as the wife of the attorney general's soon-to-be governor she had sold those offices for $100,000 in the cattle futures bribery matter. 40 years later as Secretary of State, she was selling out her nation's security for hundreds of millions of dollars. She set up an illegal server in a premeditated scheme to conceal her venality. She did this quite heedless of the obvious risks to the national security and in obvious violation of the espionage act. She had the evil intent to clandestinely sell her office and use the Clinton Foundation as a slush fund to finance her political ambitions as well as her own luxurious lifestyle, yet another criminal intent motivating her to install the illegal server.
These crimes constitute some of the most serious corruption in American history because they have been done at the highest level. The betrayal of security potentially rivals that of the Rosenbergs in risk to the nation. There can be no question of Hillary's guilty mens rea. She is a highly educated attorney who was well briefed in the law and regulations concerning the maintenance of confidential information and the ethics required of a cabinet officer. Her violation of law was knowing, deliberate and part of the greater scheme. She knowingly participated in a felonious conspiracy with her husband to trade on their prominence and their offices.
Her prominence as former first lady, Senator, Secretary of State, and nominated presidential candidate only makes her actions more blameworthy and the need to submit her to justice the more necessary for the national good.
Others of lower political station or of no political station of any kind have been prosecuted and seriously punished for each of these crimes which in degree are trivial when compared to the transgressions of Hillary Clinton.
To pardon Hillary or to decline to prosecute Hillary Clinton under these damning circumstances would be to inflict a blow to the body politic and leave the rule of law in shatters hastening the substitution of cynicism for justice and bring our Democratic Republic even closer to disintegration.
