The new norm is blanket pardons for everybody at the end of a presidency. And a lot more even-more-openly selling pardons in those final weeks, than already went on.
Real fear of malicious prosecution of out-of-power political enemies (we’re seeing a bunch of this attempted now, though grand juries mostly haven’t been cooperating) and real fear of being held accountable for tons of actual criming you did, guarantee that everyone gets pardons now. The more-corrupt admins will also use this as a tool of control (I think this is why public “fealty” is so constantly on display with this second admin, to a degree it was not the first time)
Ignore pardons and prosecute anyway. If "autopen" pardons are invalid, then so are pardons made by a senile president who just blindly signs whatever's placed in front of him.
My hope is that it’s not a GOP whitehouse and we see Nuremberg style trials for this whole administration