Inspired by the videos of Liz Oyer, I wanted to be able to verify her claims and just look up all the pardons more easily.
Tech Stack: Playwright - to sccrape the DOJ website SQLite - local database Astro 6 - Build out a static website from the sqlite db
All code is open source and available on Github.
The second type became a political necessity, for example to protect Liz Cheney from a vengeful administration.
Because I can get you would want to shield some people from persecutions (just or unjust) from your successor, but I see no reason why you would be able to pardon someone charged but waiting for trial. This makes a mockery of justice, the public can't discover the facts but more importantly: why pardon someone that is still considered innocent ?
IANACL but surely there are other ways to protect people from politically motivated prosecutions? E.g. jail anybody attempting to direct the DOJ for personal or political reasons?
Was it, though? It struck me as more empty political theater around an event largely defined by political theater.
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.
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.
However, the broader context reads
The power of pardon conferred by the Constitution upon the President is unlimited except in cases of impeachment. It extends to every offence known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment. The power is not subject to legislative control.
Ex parte Garland, 371 U.S. 333, 380 (1866) https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep...
Changing it would require not a mere legislative act but a constitutional amendment.
To the executive alone is intrusted the power of pardon; and it is granted without limit.
United States v. Klein, 80 U.S. 128, 147 (1871) https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep...
So to answer your question, seems like Yes, pardons for all!
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.
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."
In 2022 he pardoned ~6500 people with federal convictions for simple possession of marijuana. That didn't actually release anyone from jail because it turned out everyone in jail with a simple possession conviction was also in there for other crimes but for those for whom it was their only drug offense (both currently in prison or not) it wiped it off their record which would restore eligibility for various things that drug offenders are barred from.
Near the end of his term he commuted the sentences of around 2500 non-violent drug offenders.
Compare that to the other list. https://www.justice.gov/pardon/clemency-recipients
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.
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.
> 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://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.)
Will have to crunch through the offenses in the db and see if anything else like this shows up.
It’s in dire need of reform or replacement.
If the country didn't learn after the first term, what makes you think they will after the second term?
All signs indicate that the electorate is getting dumber.
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...
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 recent presidential immunity decision just made the downsides way more likely.
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...
Commutation is ending any punishment for a conviction, but the conviction stands. A pardon wipes out the conviction.
https://www.justice.gov/pardon/commutations-granted-presiden...
She only shows up here
https://www.justice.gov/pardon/clemency-grants-president-don...
I wanted to do some stuff with this data so need a raw format.
(process was so easy since its included on a single page load, so I assume you don't mind! thanks for making this )
Why not include the January 6th pardons?
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.
The sentence reads: “Distribution of satellite cable television decryption devices”
probably run it against something small like haiku and not cost me an arm and a leg.
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'd find that fascinating for seeing deeper patterns.
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
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.
> 118 of 2,791 GRANTS
Only 118 list marijuana in the pardon text
