We should at least ban the "preemptive" pardon if not all pardons. Pardon means forgiveness for a specific convicted crime, not a means to grant blanket immunity.
As long as that ban doesn't go into effect until after the next non-Republican administration. We need to be able to right the scales after MAGA's abuse of power.
There are two types here: (1) Pardons for crimes not yet committed. (2) Pardons for crimes committed, but not yet convicted. The first type will allow the pardoned to commit a crime in the future for free, which obviously should not be allowed. The second should be allowed if we have this pardon system at all.
The second type became a political necessity, for example to protect Liz Cheney from a vengeful administration.
The notion itself that someone needs to be protected by a 'vengeful administration', while judicial system should be not politically affiliated is telling how broken the whole separation of powers is. Everyone who is a ruling party puts candidates they know aligned with their views, resulting in 'just wait until my turn comes and I will do as much as damage as possible' cycle.
>There's no reason to say that unless you know they're actively committing federal crimes in the present day.
There are reasons. For example, you feel the justice system is going to be misused against them. Protection against future witch hunts basically.
I don't think this is what's happening here, and trump is on record talking very explicitly about weaponising the state against his enemies himself, but it's probably an excuse that will be used.
There is no universe where any pardon is abolished unless there is a massive political shakeup. The entrenched political class is terrified of endangering their power and privilege even if individual players are ready to do it.
I've often wondered what would happen if a president explicitly offers to pardon anybody who murders members of Congress. Would they settle on reigning in the pardon power with an amendment?
We're sort of already there. A lot of the Jan 6 rioters were openly trying to murder congressmen. The fact they weren't successful isn't super reassuring.
Nothing would happen, because SCOTUS decided to grant the president immunity for any crime committed in their official function, which would be the case here. It would literally be possible for the president to order congress killed, offer an automatic pardon to anyone carrying out this order, and establish a monarchy.
This single ruling will haunt the United States for the rest of its existence.
It will be interesting to watch what comes next, if there will be next. But people die of natural causes and otherwise anyway.
Will it be the same a-lot-of-empty-talk-from-democrats like after first trump's term, or actually some concrete action? Clearly if next president would be democrat he can do some nice revenge and rebalance, maybe petty but maybe necessary. I would expect republicans do the usual crappy move of sticking with theirs regardless of crimes committed, any actual morals are an afterthought.
Its so weird to watch from outside, illogical, deeply flawed, unfair, and pretty weak system when it comes to handling unscrupulous sociopaths.
All bad is good for some things in hindsight, world desperately needs more decoupling from US. Petrodollars, swift and so on. Compared to this, judging by pure actions, chinese may seem saint in comparison
My (leftist) opinion is that we don't give enough pardons. By the time people get out of prison, their lives are pretty much wrecked. We should have a lot more clemency and compassion. That's what the pardon is for.
If that means a ton of literal insurrectionists go free, that's fine with me. We elected someone precisely to do that. It's on the voters if we elected someone who was literally treasonous himself.
I hope the insurrectionists take the opportunity to get on with their lives. I gather that quite a few have already been banned for other crimes, and that's too bad.
I don't want prison to be vengeance. I want prison to make us all safer. I'd like the President to take a lot of leeway in finding people who are going to be productive citizens if they were given that gift.
I'm a leftist, and a Democrat by necessity (not by choice) and I would be fine if the power of pardon was removed for Presidents who share my ideology. I would rather have working separation of powers and reform the justice system than give one person carte blanche power to nullify it based on their whim.
Not everyone making a political argument is engaging in cynical tribalism. Believe it or not, some people do actually believe in things.
From the article you linked, child sacrifice allegations came from an anonymous FBI interview in 2019 and are not confirmed by any credible evidence. There are no cannibalism allegations; the word "cannibal" only appears in innocuous contexts.
So child sacrifice and cannibalism are only technically "in the Epstein files;" there's very little evidence that anyone did those things. For other readers, if you hadn't heard about this, that's probably why.
I am deeply sorry for your experience and I totally understand that it triggers something, but let's be ice cold logical for a moment.
If there is no evidence of a crime, you cannot prosecute someone in a constitutional democracy.
If you could you could just make up any claims and get rid of people you simply despise.
Which happens in various regimes...
So although it's certainly a possibility that such cases happened, as long as there is no evidence that they happened, they didn't for all legal matters.
I'm thinking of Carter fulfilling a campaign pledge to pardon draft dodgers. Whether you support that or not, he did what he said he was going to do and I'm sure only some of them had actually been charged in any way. I think that's a perfectly fine use for the pardon power.
Some will point to the Hunter Biden pardon. So two things can be true at once here: it was absolutely political prosecution AND Joe Biden was completely selfish with his action. At least do something for the people by, say, pardoning a whole bunch of low level drug offenders and decriminalize cannabis at the Federal level. But no, it was completely self-serving but his brain was pretty much gone by this point.
Here's the problem: Federal prosecutors have a ton of power. Conviction rates are 98-99%. But it goes beyond that. Federal prosecutors will intentionally bankrupt you to force you to take a plea. They might charge you with 15 felonies, 12 of which are basically bogus. You still have to defend those bogus felonies and that costs you money. And as soon as you run out of money, they'll offer you a plea where you're looking at 25 years on the 3 remaining felonies or you can just take 10.
The power imbalance is insane and the wealthy are essentially immune. If a US attorney decides to make an example of you, you're going to have a bad time, regardless of the facts.
Millions were spent dredging up some crimes for Hunter Biden and pretty much all they could come up with was doing crack and filling out a form incorrectly. Do you think anyone else would get that level of attention?
A very recent example of this is the Karen Read trial or, as I call it, the most expensive DUI prosecution in history. If you didn't follow the case, don't worry, there'll be any number of true crime documentaries. Millions were spent prosecuting Karen Read for killing JOhn O'Keefe with a completely ridiculous theory of the case and all sorts of evidence that went missing (including police officers disposing of their cell phones on a military base the day before an electronics preservation order was issued).
I don't know what we do about this power imbalance and selective prosecution.
> Federal prosecutors have a ton of power. Conviction rates are 98-99%.
This always gets thrown around, but the fact is they should be that high. Prosecutors shouldn't bring cases unless they have evidence of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and DOJ prosectors don't (normally) screw around.
When you see lower rates of conviction, as in the current ethically bankrupt administration, it's often malicious prosecution, aka "You'll beat the rap, but you won't beat the ride."
I would be fine if high conviction rates reflected prosecutor's only bringing good cases. It doesn't. It reflects the odds being stacked against you and it being so expensive and high risk to defend yourself.
This high cost and power imbalance is used to force people into plea deals for crimes they didn't commit.
Let me give you an example: 924C enhancements [1]. This is where certain drug or violent crimes being committed with a firearm can add years or even decades to a sentence automatically.
Let's just say you live in a concealed carry state and you have a weapon on you. You're walking home and the police pick you up. You match the description of one of two people who were smoking drugs in an alley as per a 911 call. The other person was already picked up by police. He was unarmed. His story was that you sold him the drugs. He also claims you brandished a pistol.
Was there a drug transaction? Or was this simply two people smoking together? The other person had a small quantity of drugs on him when apprehended.
A 911 call mentioned seeing a weapon drawn. It was dark. You can go through versions of this scenario where you were the other person or it was a case of mistaken identity. Eitehr is bad for you.
What if the other person sold you the drugs and made up this story to avoid a distribution charge? What if as a teenager you had a minor possession charge? What if prosecutors believe the other person and make a deal for a reduced sentence in exchange for testimony?
You have a gun and now 2 witnesses who say you "brandished" the gun. So whatever charge you end up with the "brandishing a firearm" part (under 924(c)) adds 7 years to your sentence to be served consecutively. And they've stopped you with a firearm.
So what was a "he said, she said" situation has now turned into a situation where you could be facing 10 years in jail and defending against that could well cost you $200,000+, which you don't have. Or you can take this plea for 2 years in jail. What do you do?
> I would be fine if high conviction rates reflected prosecutor's only bringing good cases. It doesn't.
There is a huge amount of hand-waving following this assertion without any evidence to back up the claim.
I'm not saying abuse of process doesn't happen, but this is just saying it can and then spelling out a big hypothetical without any proof that this practice is rampant.
> For any nonviolent offenses against the United States which they may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1
2014 through the date of this pardon (JAN 19, 2025).
> Now, Therefore, I, Gerald R. Ford, President of the United States, pursuant to the pardon power conferred upon me by Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, have granted and by these presents do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974.
Not quite as long, but much more significant. (No violence exception, the criminal was the President, and they were crimes against the entire country, not some random drug/tax charges.)
The real embarrassment is how little effort there's been to limit/reform the pardon system since then.
Pardons have valid uses, but it's wild that a single person can unilaterally pardon donators, family members, former presidents, etc, without needing so much as a simple majority confirmation vote in the House or Senate.
The questionable pardons that we've seen over the last few years (and the Nixon pardon) are just the tip of iceberg in terms of how badly they could be abused.
I'd imagine it won't be long until we see a president issue a preemptive pardon to themself at the end of their term, because there's nothing in the constitution that says they can't.
Isn't that the whole point of all these pardon things? To reduce incentives to usurp power to avoid responsibility by providing less destructive for the political system ways to avoid responsibility.
Or concretely, would the Israeli wars end sooner if Netanyahu was pardoned of all crimes? Would Kim Jong Un consider giving up his position if he could be pardoned, or at least credibly believe that he could live a life in luxurious exile? I don’t know the answer to either of those questions, but I do think letting some people get away with crimes with witness immunity can make it much more difficult for criminals to organize as the optimum move is to defect before anyone else does. Which is why I think elite blackmail focuses on unforgivable deeds.
Did he? It felt to me like he let us all get over re-litigating Watergate. The country had real problems. Nixon was gone and it was time to move on.
Not saying it wasn't a miscarriage of justice. Rather, that "justice" is, to me, just one part of making a good world.
Nixon-ism went on to form a truly despicable Republican party, but I think that would have happened whether Ford pardoned him or not. In fact I think pardoning him was the best chance to put that "win politics at all costs" mentality behind us. Turns out that didn't work out, but prosecuting Nixon wouldn't have made it any better.
"Time to move on" is used only when someone in power is guilty. Happened with Nixon. Mitch McConnell basically said the same thing about Trump after J6 insurrection. And I think Garland believed the same thing when he did not move fast enough to investigate Trump. People believe in law and order when rich and powerful face the same consequences as the common man for their crimes committed and not when they are let off the hook.
I do think Garland made a massive mistake. Nixon resigned; Trump did not. Nixon largely disappeared, as most former Presidents do during their successor's term. Trump was still communicating crimes and clearly intended more.
I'm drawing a kind of fine and possibly meaningless distinction here. I think Ford made the best decision he could at the time. Garland had the benefit of hindsight: he saw the way the corruption had become far deeper than the President himself. Garland should have known better.
Preemptive meaning they hadn't yet been convicted. Nixon was pardoned by Ford in this manner (for "all offenses against the United States" between Jan. 20, 1969—Aug. 9, 1974). Carter preemptively mass-pardoned draft dodgers, etc.
Look at what the Trump administration has done with the DOJ pursuing unwarranted indictments against anyone Trump doesn't like. All getting thrown out so far. And you lead with questioning why one of his constant targets would pardon his family?
The bigger question is why this isn't more outrage at the GOP attempts to find something on Biden or Clinton. They have been wasting tax dollars while Coomer "investigates" for something that he has never been able to prove.
I'd have pardoned everyone around me given that constant sustained and terrible attack.
All the while the Trump grift machine continues without so much as a blink.
So two wrongs have made a right in this case? I think that you should not be emotionally invested in internet people impugning the honor of one crime family over another.
No, it was right to consider the possibility that Trump would violate the norms here. Letting the President right unaddressed wrongs is the entire reason the pardon power exists.
His own current Chief of Staff has similar concerns, and grand juries seem to be taking the same position; that these are just revenge.
"Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, told an interviewer that she forged a “loose agreement” with Mr. Trump to stop focusing after three months on punishing antagonists, an effort that evidently did not succeed. While she insisted that Mr. Trump is not constantly thinking about retribution, she said that “when there’s an opportunity, he will go for it.”"
It's a play on Donald Trump, after watching a Liz Oyer video linking a very plausible pardon for sale scheme, I wanted to initially build a site that showcased pardons just by Trump, but I realized that would be partisan and not as useful.
In 2021, convicted fraudster Adriana Camberos was freed from prison when President Trump commuted her sentence. Rather than taking advantage of that second chance, Ms. Camberos returned to crime. She was convicted again in 2024 in an unrelated fraud. In 2026, Mr. Trump pardoned her again.
Love this idea - if I were to extend it, I'd add some kind of analysis breaking down the % composition of pardons (fraud vs drug offences vs financial crime) by President to see if there's some common trend. I was a little surprised to see the Obama number quite so high, until it became apparent that the vast majority were drug offenders being pardoned
The Obama number is also high because the designer combined Obama's first and second terms into one figure, unlike what he did with the other presidents who served two terms.
Stuff like this is very common. For example, at the start of Trump's second term, the whitehouse history page was changed to make democrat presidents look bad -
I love the "Major Events Timeline" running out of White House remodeling events that help make the case of how normal and cool the demolition was, and just switching to salacious Democrat stories. By 2023 it's a picture of Hunter Biden in a tub.
A bunch of mass commutations have occurred under Obama, Biden, and most recently under Trump, I'm working on a comparison tool, so we can visualize the change in number of pardons by president, further breakdown of composition is an interesting idea as well.
A more interesting analysis to me would not be the number pardoned, but rather the monetary value of correlated donations or direct financial interests. Pardons are one of the many services for sale, it seems.
I'm pretty sure the numbers are going up simply because 1) 90s sentencing laws got insanely strict and prisons are full of old guys serving inflated sentences, 2) drug laws eventually became more lax and people are in prison for things that aren't even criminal any more, and 3) prisons have simply run out of space and it's easier to release people than build more.
This kind of topic is bound to bring up a lot of outrage, but I'd invite people to remember it's the Marc Richs of the old buying pardons that you should be directing that toward. There are plenty of people locked up for a very long time who really don't deserve it. I recall a Chumash woman I worked with at the LA County Museum of Natural History 24 years ago. I gave her a ride home a few times and eventually realized I was taking her to a halfway house, and it came out that the FBI has busted her in the early 90s for criminal conspiracy and her only actual offense was refusing to testify against her husband, who'd been selling marijuana on their reservation under the logic that he didn't believe US law should apply because of the historical treaties about tribal land. She did 10 years in federal prison for that.
Be that as it may, the jurisdiction I am living in has an explicit right to refuse to testify against a spouse. It is wild to me that one can construct a crime out of that, let alone one that warrants a decade of incarceration.
@nonameiguess I agree on the pardon buying, the reason why I started looking into building this was because of a video by Liz Oyer, who pointed out all the restitution and fines that were being forgiven under Trump.
That's kind of how I came upon the name for the site, I wanted to see if there is any truth to the rumors that people are selling and buying pardons. In order to investigate that, we needed a set of data to start from, in a manner that was easily queryable as opposed to what's on the DOJ website.
I like the concept. I'd love to see more types of data available, especially maybe race, age, connection to the president or their families, donations that the pardoned/commuted people have given and to whom, and more.
I'd find that fascinating for seeing deeper patterns.
Presidents shouldn't have the right to outright pardon people. It should have to go through some sort of body beforehand and be voted on like everything else.
The Pardon is a structural check on the legislative and judiciary. It cannot be done away with safely without causing massive problems down the road. If anything, this should be a learning experience for the country not to put criminally inclined presidents in office.
The pardon has been abused by almost every president in recent history to pardon their family or associates (as far as I’m aware, Obama is the only one who didn’t, but please correct me if I’m wrong).
This is exactly the kind of thing the DOJ website should have provided natively. Good reminder that "public record" and "actually accessible" are very different things. Bookmarked.
That disclaimer is there for now to make it clear that we're not showing that data yet. I need to figure out how to show the mass commutations done by Biden as well.
Working on a comparison tool, so we can see # of pardons over admins, it seems the number of pardons has been going up each administration.
This kind of civic data should have been easily searchable for years. The fact that someone had to build it says a lot about how accessible government records actually are.
Thanks for the heads up on that.. there's a lot of massaging/cross checking that still needs to be done. Right now the numbers are based purely on what the sentence is described on the DOJ website.
cmd-f trevor milton .. if the text for the sentence column doesn't say anything about a fine or restitution the system is not going to be able to figure that out.
The numbers for the prison time reduced is also technically incorrect, Ross Ulbricht, Rod Blagojevich and many others had already served many years in prison, so technically we should not count that as time reduced.
Reminder that the pardon is a vestigial leftover from monarchism. The idea that one single person can go "nuh uh" in a democratic country is just another massive failure of the US constitution, a legal document written to suppress the will of the people and allow for minority rule but too sacrosanct to change for "reasons" that all seem to only benefit a small minority of people.
Relegate pardon powers to only amount to commutations, at the bare minimum.
Oh fun fact, Alexander Hamilton thought monarchies were the best form of government.
Thanks for this. As engineers, I think it’s natural for us to look at things like executive orders and pardons, tools that seemingly have no real restrictions or caps, and immediately see them as open to exploitation by bad actors.
The pardon system in particular needs a serious overhaul. For every case where a pardon is used to correct an "unjust ruling", it swings just as easily in the opposite direction. Frankly I have more faith in a decision that goes through the proper judicial process than in one made unilaterally by a single person with zero oversight. There's a reason it's been historically called the "royal pardon".
We need a combination of:
- hard caps on the maximum number of pardons a president can issue per term
- congressional review before those pardons take effect
I haven’t looked into each case here, but I assume these are a bunch of non-violent drug offenders serving years and decade-long sentences. I see 30 years for “possession with intent to distribute”. That’s just crazy.
When the justice system is clearly broken, it’s ok to subvert it.
There's some value to "the President can correct some wrongs". There are genuine miscarriages of justice sometimes and it's kinda nice to have a release valve for them.
The recent presidential immunity decision just made the downsides way more likely.
It’s an alternative to coups and civil wars. The deal made in private conversations is something like “Give up power peacefully. Everybody gets pardoned and goes home to their families. Nobody needs to do anything crazy or violent out of desperation to avoid prison.”
Justice is a moving target mate. Should people who had a few pounds of reefer still be serving 30 year sentences? 90's adults would probably say yes. Today? Not so much. Part of being human is being open to the fact you were wrong. The Pardon is the release valve that lets the Chief Executive remove the targets the System has painted on people's backs in response to a clear shift in public conscience. The public in recent history, threw all prudence to the wind and put a con man in office. Surprise, surprise when a con man uses the office to do what con men do.
We should at least ban the "preemptive" pardon if not all pardons. Pardon means forgiveness for a specific convicted crime, not a means to grant blanket immunity.
As long as that ban doesn't go into effect until after the next non-Republican administration. We need to be able to right the scales after MAGA's abuse of power.
There are two types here: (1) Pardons for crimes not yet committed. (2) Pardons for crimes committed, but not yet convicted. The first type will allow the pardoned to commit a crime in the future for free, which obviously should not be allowed. The second should be allowed if we have this pardon system at all.
The second type became a political necessity, for example to protect Liz Cheney from a vengeful administration.
The notion itself that someone needs to be protected by a 'vengeful administration', while judicial system should be not politically affiliated is telling how broken the whole separation of powers is. Everyone who is a ruling party puts candidates they know aligned with their views, resulting in 'just wait until my turn comes and I will do as much as damage as possible' cycle.
We should go as far as to preemptively ban and sanction any POTUS who says "I'm going to pardon these people before I leave office".
There's no reason to say that unless you know they're actively committing federal crimes in the present day.
>There's no reason to say that unless you know they're actively committing federal crimes in the present day.
There are reasons. For example, you feel the justice system is going to be misused against them. Protection against future witch hunts basically.
I don't think this is what's happening here, and trump is on record talking very explicitly about weaponising the state against his enemies himself, but it's probably an excuse that will be used.
That's what Biden did for Hunter right?
Which side is likely to be petty and target family members in bad faith?
Hunter Biden was guilty of a slew of crimes both politically relevant and not.
His father granting him a pardon is perhaps the greatest example of corruption in us history.
Not true. Liz Cheney hasn’t committed any crimes (as far as we know).
There is no universe where any pardon is abolished unless there is a massive political shakeup. The entrenched political class is terrified of endangering their power and privilege even if individual players are ready to do it.
I've often wondered what would happen if a president explicitly offers to pardon anybody who murders members of Congress. Would they settle on reigning in the pardon power with an amendment?
We're sort of already there. A lot of the Jan 6 rioters were openly trying to murder congressmen. The fact they weren't successful isn't super reassuring.
Nothing would happen, because SCOTUS decided to grant the president immunity for any crime committed in their official function, which would be the case here. It would literally be possible for the president to order congress killed, offer an automatic pardon to anyone carrying out this order, and establish a monarchy.
This single ruling will haunt the United States for the rest of its existence.
>SCOTUS decided to grant the president immunity for any crime committed in their official function
That ruling is very broad and vague! I don't think killing Congress is part of POTUS's official job description.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-isnt-immune-from...
Isn’t the definition of official duties vague and left to the courts?
It will be interesting to watch what comes next, if there will be next. But people die of natural causes and otherwise anyway.
Will it be the same a-lot-of-empty-talk-from-democrats like after first trump's term, or actually some concrete action? Clearly if next president would be democrat he can do some nice revenge and rebalance, maybe petty but maybe necessary. I would expect republicans do the usual crappy move of sticking with theirs regardless of crimes committed, any actual morals are an afterthought.
Its so weird to watch from outside, illogical, deeply flawed, unfair, and pretty weak system when it comes to handling unscrupulous sociopaths.
All bad is good for some things in hindsight, world desperately needs more decoupling from US. Petrodollars, swift and so on. Compared to this, judging by pure actions, chinese may seem saint in comparison
Like most political arguments, if you listen carefully; those who advocate for or against pardons, only want them to go one way.
A pardon is only a protection against a 'vengeful administration' if that administration is not your party.
Pardons are only a miscarriage of justice if those pardoned don't share your ideology.
My (leftist) opinion is that we don't give enough pardons. By the time people get out of prison, their lives are pretty much wrecked. We should have a lot more clemency and compassion. That's what the pardon is for.
If that means a ton of literal insurrectionists go free, that's fine with me. We elected someone precisely to do that. It's on the voters if we elected someone who was literally treasonous himself.
I hope the insurrectionists take the opportunity to get on with their lives. I gather that quite a few have already been banned for other crimes, and that's too bad.
I don't want prison to be vengeance. I want prison to make us all safer. I'd like the President to take a lot of leeway in finding people who are going to be productive citizens if they were given that gift.
That’s what ypu tell yourself to feel better. But it’s not true.
Do you know ANYONE who thinks the same way about Biden's pardons as they do about Trump's?
I certainly don't.
I'm a leftist, and a Democrat by necessity (not by choice) and I would be fine if the power of pardon was removed for Presidents who share my ideology. I would rather have working separation of powers and reform the justice system than give one person carte blanche power to nullify it based on their whim.
Not everyone making a political argument is engaging in cynical tribalism. Believe it or not, some people do actually believe in things.
Pardons only stop the federal government from prosecuting someone, the states would still go after those individuals
And in theory a future administration could do something like threaten to withhold funding to states that don’t prosecute.
I agree. I dont care if “my guy” or “your guy” does it, it should not be allowed.
The preemptive pardon is ridiculous. Pardon for what? What if it comes out someone is a child cannibal? Are they pardoned for that?
There’s no /s so I’m assuming you didn’t know that child cannibalism was in the Epstein files https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/fact-check-breaking-down...
So to answer your question, seems like Yes, pardons for all!
From the article you linked, child sacrifice allegations came from an anonymous FBI interview in 2019 and are not confirmed by any credible evidence. There are no cannibalism allegations; the word "cannibal" only appears in innocuous contexts.
So child sacrifice and cannibalism are only technically "in the Epstein files;" there's very little evidence that anyone did those things. For other readers, if you hadn't heard about this, that's probably why.
Little evidence that I was abused as a child too, must not have happened.
I am deeply sorry for your experience and I totally understand that it triggers something, but let's be ice cold logical for a moment.
If there is no evidence of a crime, you cannot prosecute someone in a constitutional democracy.
If you could you could just make up any claims and get rid of people you simply despise.
Which happens in various regimes...
So although it's certainly a possibility that such cases happened, as long as there is no evidence that they happened, they didn't for all legal matters.
So I have mixed feeling on this.
I'm thinking of Carter fulfilling a campaign pledge to pardon draft dodgers. Whether you support that or not, he did what he said he was going to do and I'm sure only some of them had actually been charged in any way. I think that's a perfectly fine use for the pardon power.
Some will point to the Hunter Biden pardon. So two things can be true at once here: it was absolutely political prosecution AND Joe Biden was completely selfish with his action. At least do something for the people by, say, pardoning a whole bunch of low level drug offenders and decriminalize cannabis at the Federal level. But no, it was completely self-serving but his brain was pretty much gone by this point.
Here's the problem: Federal prosecutors have a ton of power. Conviction rates are 98-99%. But it goes beyond that. Federal prosecutors will intentionally bankrupt you to force you to take a plea. They might charge you with 15 felonies, 12 of which are basically bogus. You still have to defend those bogus felonies and that costs you money. And as soon as you run out of money, they'll offer you a plea where you're looking at 25 years on the 3 remaining felonies or you can just take 10.
The power imbalance is insane and the wealthy are essentially immune. If a US attorney decides to make an example of you, you're going to have a bad time, regardless of the facts.
Millions were spent dredging up some crimes for Hunter Biden and pretty much all they could come up with was doing crack and filling out a form incorrectly. Do you think anyone else would get that level of attention?
A very recent example of this is the Karen Read trial or, as I call it, the most expensive DUI prosecution in history. If you didn't follow the case, don't worry, there'll be any number of true crime documentaries. Millions were spent prosecuting Karen Read for killing JOhn O'Keefe with a completely ridiculous theory of the case and all sorts of evidence that went missing (including police officers disposing of their cell phones on a military base the day before an electronics preservation order was issued).
I don't know what we do about this power imbalance and selective prosecution.
> Federal prosecutors have a ton of power. Conviction rates are 98-99%.
This always gets thrown around, but the fact is they should be that high. Prosecutors shouldn't bring cases unless they have evidence of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and DOJ prosectors don't (normally) screw around.
When you see lower rates of conviction, as in the current ethically bankrupt administration, it's often malicious prosecution, aka "You'll beat the rap, but you won't beat the ride."
I would be fine if high conviction rates reflected prosecutor's only bringing good cases. It doesn't. It reflects the odds being stacked against you and it being so expensive and high risk to defend yourself.
This high cost and power imbalance is used to force people into plea deals for crimes they didn't commit.
Let me give you an example: 924C enhancements [1]. This is where certain drug or violent crimes being committed with a firearm can add years or even decades to a sentence automatically.
Let's just say you live in a concealed carry state and you have a weapon on you. You're walking home and the police pick you up. You match the description of one of two people who were smoking drugs in an alley as per a 911 call. The other person was already picked up by police. He was unarmed. His story was that you sold him the drugs. He also claims you brandished a pistol.
Was there a drug transaction? Or was this simply two people smoking together? The other person had a small quantity of drugs on him when apprehended.
A 911 call mentioned seeing a weapon drawn. It was dark. You can go through versions of this scenario where you were the other person or it was a case of mistaken identity. Eitehr is bad for you.
What if the other person sold you the drugs and made up this story to avoid a distribution charge? What if as a teenager you had a minor possession charge? What if prosecutors believe the other person and make a deal for a reduced sentence in exchange for testimony?
You have a gun and now 2 witnesses who say you "brandished" the gun. So whatever charge you end up with the "brandishing a firearm" part (under 924(c)) adds 7 years to your sentence to be served consecutively. And they've stopped you with a firearm.
So what was a "he said, she said" situation has now turned into a situation where you could be facing 10 years in jail and defending against that could well cost you $200,000+, which you don't have. Or you can take this plea for 2 years in jail. What do you do?
[1]: https://www.nyccriminalattorneys.com/18-u-s-c-%C2%A7-924c-th...
> I would be fine if high conviction rates reflected prosecutor's only bringing good cases. It doesn't.
There is a huge amount of hand-waving following this assertion without any evidence to back up the claim.
I'm not saying abuse of process doesn't happen, but this is just saying it can and then spelling out a big hypothetical without any proof that this practice is rampant.
Are there any longer or more generic than this:
> For any nonviolent offenses against the United States which they may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1 2014 through the date of this pardon (JAN 19, 2025).
https://pardonned.com/pardon/details/biden-family/
That’s 11+ years with no detail or description.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardon_of_Richard_Nixon
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/proclamation-4311-...
> Now, Therefore, I, Gerald R. Ford, President of the United States, pursuant to the pardon power conferred upon me by Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, have granted and by these presents do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974.
Not quite as long, but much more significant. (No violence exception, the criminal was the President, and they were crimes against the entire country, not some random drug/tax charges.)
Ford did real damage that day.
The real embarrassment is how little effort there's been to limit/reform the pardon system since then.
Pardons have valid uses, but it's wild that a single person can unilaterally pardon donators, family members, former presidents, etc, without needing so much as a simple majority confirmation vote in the House or Senate.
The questionable pardons that we've seen over the last few years (and the Nixon pardon) are just the tip of iceberg in terms of how badly they could be abused.
I'd imagine it won't be long until we see a president issue a preemptive pardon to themself at the end of their term, because there's nothing in the constitution that says they can't.
Isn't that the whole point of all these pardon things? To reduce incentives to usurp power to avoid responsibility by providing less destructive for the political system ways to avoid responsibility.
Or concretely, would the Israeli wars end sooner if Netanyahu was pardoned of all crimes? Would Kim Jong Un consider giving up his position if he could be pardoned, or at least credibly believe that he could live a life in luxurious exile? I don’t know the answer to either of those questions, but I do think letting some people get away with crimes with witness immunity can make it much more difficult for criminals to organize as the optimum move is to defect before anyone else does. Which is why I think elite blackmail focuses on unforgivable deeds.
They're a release valve for "the system fucked up and permitted an injustice".
Avoiding responsibility isn't the goal, and shouldn't be possible.
Did he? It felt to me like he let us all get over re-litigating Watergate. The country had real problems. Nixon was gone and it was time to move on.
Not saying it wasn't a miscarriage of justice. Rather, that "justice" is, to me, just one part of making a good world.
Nixon-ism went on to form a truly despicable Republican party, but I think that would have happened whether Ford pardoned him or not. In fact I think pardoning him was the best chance to put that "win politics at all costs" mentality behind us. Turns out that didn't work out, but prosecuting Nixon wouldn't have made it any better.
We should have litigated it then. Nixon should have died in prison. It would have been a good precedent to set
"Time to move on" is used only when someone in power is guilty. Happened with Nixon. Mitch McConnell basically said the same thing about Trump after J6 insurrection. And I think Garland believed the same thing when he did not move fast enough to investigate Trump. People believe in law and order when rich and powerful face the same consequences as the common man for their crimes committed and not when they are let off the hook.
The US has many such instances unfortunately.
I do think Garland made a massive mistake. Nixon resigned; Trump did not. Nixon largely disappeared, as most former Presidents do during their successor's term. Trump was still communicating crimes and clearly intended more.
I'm drawing a kind of fine and possibly meaningless distinction here. I think Ford made the best decision he could at the time. Garland had the benefit of hindsight: he saw the way the corruption had become far deeper than the President himself. Garland should have known better.
So this was the first time (i think) anyone got a preemptive pardon, the actual warrant on the DOJ website says what it says.. https://www.justice.gov/pardon/media/1385756/dl?inline
Will have to crunch through the offenses in the db and see if anything else like this shows up.
Preemptive meaning they hadn't yet been convicted. Nixon was pardoned by Ford in this manner (for "all offenses against the United States" between Jan. 20, 1969—Aug. 9, 1974). Carter preemptively mass-pardoned draft dodgers, etc.
I did not know that. Thanks for the lesson.
Look at what the Trump administration has done with the DOJ pursuing unwarranted indictments against anyone Trump doesn't like. All getting thrown out so far. And you lead with questioning why one of his constant targets would pardon his family? The bigger question is why this isn't more outrage at the GOP attempts to find something on Biden or Clinton. They have been wasting tax dollars while Coomer "investigates" for something that he has never been able to prove. I'd have pardoned everyone around me given that constant sustained and terrible attack. All the while the Trump grift machine continues without so much as a blink.
So two wrongs have made a right in this case? I think that you should not be emotionally invested in internet people impugning the honor of one crime family over another.
> So two wrongs have made a right in this case?
No, it was right to consider the possibility that Trump would violate the norms here. Letting the President right unaddressed wrongs is the entire reason the pardon power exists.
His own current Chief of Staff has similar concerns, and grand juries seem to be taking the same position; that these are just revenge.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/16/us/politics/trump-susie-w...
"Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, told an interviewer that she forged a “loose agreement” with Mr. Trump to stop focusing after three months on punishing antagonists, an effort that evidently did not succeed. While she insisted that Mr. Trump is not constantly thinking about retribution, she said that “when there’s an opportunity, he will go for it.”"
> crime family
Thank you. Apologies in advance for nitpicking, but I think the correct spelling is "pardoned" (a quick search on Google confirms it).
Most likely that domain was already taken.
Pardon me, but this is a list of pardons given to pardoned people.
It's a play on Donald Trump, after watching a Liz Oyer video linking a very plausible pardon for sale scheme, I wanted to initially build a site that showcased pardons just by Trump, but I realized that would be partisan and not as useful.
I'd presumed this was a wordplay on Donald Trump.
correct.
Are you able to track repeat pardons of the same offender? If not you have a bug.
https://pardonned.com/pardon/details/adriana-isabel-camberos...
Adriana Camberos was in fact pardoned twice.
In 2021, convicted fraudster Adriana Camberos was freed from prison when President Trump commuted her sentence. Rather than taking advantage of that second chance, Ms. Camberos returned to crime. She was convicted again in 2024 in an unrelated fraud. In 2026, Mr. Trump pardoned her again.
Full story here: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/16/us/politics/trump-fraudst...
Interesting story, but I do not see her name in the list of pardons and commutations on the source website twice.
https://www.justice.gov/pardon/commutations-granted-presiden...
She only shows up here
https://www.justice.gov/pardon/clemency-grants-president-don...
The first time was under the name Adriana Shayota: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdca/pr/federal-jury-convicts-s...
Love this idea - if I were to extend it, I'd add some kind of analysis breaking down the % composition of pardons (fraud vs drug offences vs financial crime) by President to see if there's some common trend. I was a little surprised to see the Obama number quite so high, until it became apparent that the vast majority were drug offenders being pardoned
The Obama number is also high because the designer combined Obama's first and second terms into one figure, unlike what he did with the other presidents who served two terms.
Hmm, I see the issue.. The DOJ website lists all of Obama's as once, so I need to modify the parser.. https://www.justice.gov/pardon/pardons-granted-president-bar...
Compare that to the other list. https://www.justice.gov/pardon/clemency-recipients
That's probably intentional on the DOJ's part at this point.
not sure why you think it's intentional. But, created a github issue, and will work on that today/tonight.. yay GLM 5.1 :)
https://github.com/vidluther/pardonned/issues/23
I meant it's probably intentional that the data being represented differently on the DOJ's website, not your tracker website.
Stuff like this is very common. For example, at the start of Trump's second term, the whitehouse history page was changed to make democrat presidents look bad -
https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/the-white-h...
I love the "Major Events Timeline" running out of White House remodeling events that help make the case of how normal and cool the demolition was, and just switching to salacious Democrat stories. By 2023 it's a picture of Hunter Biden in a tub.
Good lord, this is so pathetic
>not sure why you think it's intentional
It's entirely on brand.
Even so, it’s still higher than the other presidents listed
A bunch of mass commutations have occurred under Obama, Biden, and most recently under Trump, I'm working on a comparison tool, so we can visualize the change in number of pardons by president, further breakdown of composition is an interesting idea as well.
A more interesting analysis to me would not be the number pardoned, but rather the monetary value of correlated donations or direct financial interests. Pardons are one of the many services for sale, it seems.
Agreed. I often compare the way the current administration is wielding the pardon system to the old Catholic practice of papal indulgences.
that is in the works. Working on making sure the data of the pardons is correct first.
I'm pretty sure the numbers are going up simply because 1) 90s sentencing laws got insanely strict and prisons are full of old guys serving inflated sentences, 2) drug laws eventually became more lax and people are in prison for things that aren't even criminal any more, and 3) prisons have simply run out of space and it's easier to release people than build more.
This kind of topic is bound to bring up a lot of outrage, but I'd invite people to remember it's the Marc Richs of the old buying pardons that you should be directing that toward. There are plenty of people locked up for a very long time who really don't deserve it. I recall a Chumash woman I worked with at the LA County Museum of Natural History 24 years ago. I gave her a ride home a few times and eventually realized I was taking her to a halfway house, and it came out that the FBI has busted her in the early 90s for criminal conspiracy and her only actual offense was refusing to testify against her husband, who'd been selling marijuana on their reservation under the logic that he didn't believe US law should apply because of the historical treaties about tribal land. She did 10 years in federal prison for that.
Friend, I hope you do not actually believe that man was selling dope because of his nuanced political theories.
Be that as it may, the jurisdiction I am living in has an explicit right to refuse to testify against a spouse. It is wild to me that one can construct a crime out of that, let alone one that warrants a decade of incarceration.
Why is that so hard to believe?
@nonameiguess I agree on the pardon buying, the reason why I started looking into building this was because of a video by Liz Oyer, who pointed out all the restitution and fines that were being forgiven under Trump.
That's kind of how I came upon the name for the site, I wanted to see if there is any truth to the rumors that people are selling and buying pardons. In order to investigate that, we needed a set of data to start from, in a manner that was easily queryable as opposed to what's on the DOJ website.
The next step would be to dig into how much money is spent lobbying for pardons.
https://campaignlegal.org/update/inside-pardon-playbook-anal...
I'm pretty new to this particular issue so I don't have a ton to offer. It's really interesting, though. Nice site, by the way.
I like the concept. I'd love to see more types of data available, especially maybe race, age, connection to the president or their families, donations that the pardoned/commuted people have given and to whom, and more.
I'd find that fascinating for seeing deeper patterns.
Presidents shouldn't have the right to outright pardon people. It should have to go through some sort of body beforehand and be voted on like everything else.
The Pardon is a structural check on the legislative and judiciary. It cannot be done away with safely without causing massive problems down the road. If anything, this should be a learning experience for the country not to put criminally inclined presidents in office.
The pardon has been abused by almost every president in recent history to pardon their family or associates (as far as I’m aware, Obama is the only one who didn’t, but please correct me if I’m wrong).
It’s in dire need of reform or replacement.
This is the kind of data I would like to see on ourworldindata.org. They have good tools for visualising data and comparing between countries.
Just yesterday, Trump said he's going to “pardon everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval.” [1] Free reign for crimes for the next 2.5 years.
Maybe removing this pardoning power could be a bipartisan goal... I guess we shouldn't hold our breath.
[1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-promises-pardon-ev...
On the bright side, if they get pardoned they can't plead the fifth and can be forced to testify against anyone not pardoned.
Unfortunately, probably not. As they could simply invoke the fifth under the claim that they might incriminate themselves under some state law.
As long as they can still pardon the turkey.
Pardon him for what? What is the charge here? Being a meal? Being a succulent Chinese meal?
For anyone who might be confused about the pardoning a turkey reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Thanksgiving_Turkey_P...
Or the succulent Chinese meal reference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4bPMxeCnos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Manifest
This is exactly the kind of thing the DOJ website should have provided natively. Good reminder that "public record" and "actually accessible" are very different things. Bookmarked.
May I ask you if your project does what nobody else does in USA?
Really terrific. Such fun to see overviews and then dig into the details to see how assumptions about each situation were inaccurate at first glance.
> Pardons granted by Donald J. Trump (Second Term) Not Including the January 6th Pardons
Why not include the January 6th pardons?
That disclaimer is there for now to make it clear that we're not showing that data yet. I need to figure out how to show the mass commutations done by Biden as well.
Working on a comparison tool, so we can see # of pardons over admins, it seems the number of pardons has been going up each administration.
This kind of civic data should have been easily searchable for years. The fact that someone had to build it says a lot about how accessible government records actually are.
Land of the free ( white collard criminals )
Your numbers seem a bit off on the second Trump term. Trevor Milton was on the hook for over half a billion dollars of restitution alone.
Thanks for the heads up on that.. there's a lot of massaging/cross checking that still needs to be done. Right now the numbers are based purely on what the sentence is described on the DOJ website.
https://www.justice.gov/pardon/clemency-grants-president-don...
cmd-f trevor milton .. if the text for the sentence column doesn't say anything about a fine or restitution the system is not going to be able to figure that out.
The numbers for the prison time reduced is also technically incorrect, Ross Ulbricht, Rod Blagojevich and many others had already served many years in prison, so technically we should not count that as time reduced.
I would have thought a lot of the drug offense pardons by Obama would have been for marijuana but looking at the first few pages, they’re not.
> 118 of 2,791 GRANTS
Only 118 list marijuana in the pardon text
Nice. But why show Restitution Abandoned etc. if you have no way to calculate it?
i am calculating it if it's available in the sentence details. If the sentence details don't have a fine or restitution then we can't calculate it.
Would love if you can track this more deeply and sort/filter/search through restitutions and fines. The ones you know about, that is.
Reminder that the pardon is a vestigial leftover from monarchism. The idea that one single person can go "nuh uh" in a democratic country is just another massive failure of the US constitution, a legal document written to suppress the will of the people and allow for minority rule but too sacrosanct to change for "reasons" that all seem to only benefit a small minority of people.
Relegate pardon powers to only amount to commutations, at the bare minimum.
Oh fun fact, Alexander Hamilton thought monarchies were the best form of government.
Thanks for this. As engineers, I think it’s natural for us to look at things like executive orders and pardons, tools that seemingly have no real restrictions or caps, and immediately see them as open to exploitation by bad actors.
The pardon system in particular needs a serious overhaul. For every case where a pardon is used to correct an "unjust ruling", it swings just as easily in the opposite direction. Frankly I have more faith in a decision that goes through the proper judicial process than in one made unilaterally by a single person with zero oversight. There's a reason it's been historically called the "royal pardon".
We need a combination of:
- hard caps on the maximum number of pardons a president can issue per term
- congressional review before those pardons take effect
Have you created a linked data SPARQL endpoint?
Pardon power can serve no reasonable goal in a functioning democracy except to subvert justice.
https://pardonned.com/search/?president=obama-2&categories=d...
I haven’t looked into each case here, but I assume these are a bunch of non-violent drug offenders serving years and decade-long sentences. I see 30 years for “possession with intent to distribute”. That’s just crazy.
When the justice system is clearly broken, it’s ok to subvert it.
The parent’s wording does actually imply that subverting justice is a reasonable goal.
There's some value to "the President can correct some wrongs". There are genuine miscarriages of justice sometimes and it's kinda nice to have a release valve for them.
The recent presidential immunity decision just made the downsides way more likely.
It’s an alternative to coups and civil wars. The deal made in private conversations is something like “Give up power peacefully. Everybody gets pardoned and goes home to their families. Nobody needs to do anything crazy or violent out of desperation to avoid prison.”
Justice is a moving target mate. Should people who had a few pounds of reefer still be serving 30 year sentences? 90's adults would probably say yes. Today? Not so much. Part of being human is being open to the fact you were wrong. The Pardon is the release valve that lets the Chief Executive remove the targets the System has painted on people's backs in response to a clear shift in public conscience. The public in recent history, threw all prudence to the wind and put a con man in office. Surprise, surprise when a con man uses the office to do what con men do.
cool
Presidential pardons should be banned, period. All presidential pardons are political in nature, and therefore not based on justice.