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.
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.
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.
yes and why shouldn't they be? As long as you serve Isreal you can doing anything you want with children.
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.
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.
> crime family
> 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.”"
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.
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.
I'd presumed this was a wordplay on Donald Trump.
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
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
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 :)
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...
>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.
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.
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.
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:
> 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.
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.
Presidential pardons should be banned, period. All presidential pardons are political in nature, and therefore not based on justice.
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.
cool
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.”