“No one has asked me not to tell this story. It’s just that I can’t trust them. They’ve always wanted something on the Clintons. They’ve always asked me to tell something for any deal they’ve offered me. It’s not something I can be a part of.”

* * *

So Susan McDougal was quoted by the New York Times as saying as she was hauled off to prison in 1996 for refusing to turn state’s evidence against President Clinton. They are words to think about as Paul Manafort is today hauled off to prison to await his trials and to consider whether to cooperate with a special prosecutor by testifying against President Trump.

It’s not our purpose here to suggest that there are exact parallels between the Manafort and McDougal cases. Mr. Manafort was clapped in the hoosegow today after being charged for contacting potential witnesses out to whom he’d been ordered not to reach. Dumb, if true, though he’s still to be presumed innocent.

Nor is it our purpose to suggest that Mrs. McDougal is an angel. Less than four months before she went to prison for civil contempt, she was convicted on four counts involving a government-backed loan from a figure in the Whitewater investigation. Those are serious matters — felonies — and a tragic marker on the Clinton reputation.

It is our purpose to suggest that the Democrats have no standing to ride the high horse against Mr. Manafort as he comes under pressure to turn state’s evidence against the president whose campaign he briefly served. And to remind of how the McDougal case ended, which couldn’t be more relevant to Mr. Manafort.

That is what we take from the story of Mrs. McDougal, who ended up serving 18 months for civil contempt of court. When she was jailed for refusing to talk, President Clinton told Jim Lehrer of PBS that the special prosecutor, Kenneth Starr, was “out to get” Mrs. Clinton as well as the president. Asked he: “Isn’t it obvious?”

After serving her contempt term, Mrs. McDougal was jailed for two years for the fraud and related charges; she was released early for medical reasons. She later produced a memoir, “The Woman Who Wouldn’t Talk.” The book, from which Mrs. McDougal reads in the above YouTube video, is a harrowing account.

Mrs. McDougal describes being dragged from prison to prison in a kind of harassment. She just toughed it out. As did President Clinton, who became but the second president to be impeached. He stood trial in the Senate, where, after a brilliant defense, he was roundly acquitted on all counts on a largely party vote.

Then, the famous ending. In the final minutes of his time in the White House, while workmen were packing up the wreckage of his presidency, Mr. Clinton signed a full pardon for Susan McDougal. The pardon wiped clean her record, as if the woman who never talked had never been convicted of anything.

This was met with a good deal of grumbling. The Times, which had been quite tough on Mr. Clinton throughout Whitewater, was particularly outraged at the pardon of the fugitive financier Marc Rich (the editor of the Sun favored that pardon of Rich on the merits). The Times was less agitated over the pardon of Mrs. McDougal.

It did reckon that Mrs. McDougal’s pardon and that of Mr. Clinton’s brother Roger (for cocaine) “were clear distortions of the pardoning process to help friends and family.” Our own reading of the Founders disputes that. Anyhow, some Congressmen huffed. In the end, nothing came of it, because the pardon power is, truly, absolute.

Something for President Trump to remember. We have no doubt that President Clinton thought the prosecution of Mrs. McDougal was unjust. That’s a completely valid motive for a pardon. President Trump may be nursing similar sentiments in respect of Mr. Manafort (Rudolf Giuliani certainly is). President Trump is entitled to use the pardon at his discretion. Same as President Clinton was.