Trump’s Pardon Power Abuses 

The president of Israel, Reuven Rivlin, resisted political pressure to pardon Yitzhak Rabin’s assassin because “he never apologized for what he did.” Donald Trump has abused his prerogative, granting pardons right and left, even to people who never apologized. 

Among the sweeping authorities granted to the president by Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution is the “power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States…”  

The power is absolute and unreviewable. According to the Supreme Court, the pardon power is intended as a tool for justice and mercy and to further “the public welfare.” As one federal court has held: “The President, who exercises that power as the elected representative of all the People, must always exercise it in the public interest.”  

On the eve of his 2024 campaign, The Washington Post, following an investigation of all clemency acts during his tenure, concluded: “Never before had a president used his constitutional clemency powers to free or forgive so many people who could be useful to his future political efforts.” This included a record number of pardons for white-collar criminals who would provide political and financial support to the former president. 

It is astounding that Trump has granted clemency to 1,600 people since his January 20 inauguration. Most presidents have granted pardons just before they left the White House. Joe Biden’s 4,245 acts of clemency—including a roster of people serving lengthy sentences for drug offenses, as well as his son—were also rear-ended to his four-year term. By contrast, Trump has issued a spate of head-spinning pardons in the first year of his second term. 

Trump had already exercised the pardon and reprieve power in ways that raised eyebrows. During his first term, he pardoned Charles Kushner, his daughter’s father-in-law. During his second term, he appointed Kushner as ambassador to France. 

There used to be a procedure for these things. There was a pardon attorney in the Department of Justice who recommended pardons only after an investigation, including contact with the prosecutor, the sentencing judge, and prison officials. Most pardons were granted after completion of the sentence.  

“This president views the pardon power as a personal tool that he can use when it benefits him personally, politically, or financially, without assessing whether the use of the pardon power benefits the American public,” Elizabeth Oyer, a former senior Justice Department attorney under Trump told The Washington Post. The “traditional rules and procedures about pardons have been thrown out the window,” she said. 

Trump short-circuits the Justice Department and grants reprieves often on the recommendation of the White House pardon czar Alice Marie Johnson, who was herself granted clemency during Trump’s first term after serving 22 years of a life sentence for cocaine trafficking. Her sponsor was Kim Kardashian. 

Many of the Trump 2.0 pardons had a champion in Trump’s inner circle, such as former Representative Trey Gowdy, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., or Roger Stone, who in 2020 received his own presidential pardon. 

Consistency is unimportant to the president, as my colleague Bill Scher has noted on these pages. Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York said former Honduran President  Juan Orlando Hernández  took millions of dollars in bribes and used Honduras’s police and military to protect drug shipments and crush rivals. He was convicted, but powerful advocates helped Hernández walk free from a 45-year prison sentence thanks to Trump’s pardon. 

Ross Ulbricht, founder of the Silk Road online drug bazaar, who was serving a life sentence for distributing narcotics and conspiring to launder money, got out of jail free. His mother campaigned for the pardon at Bitcoin and Libertarian conferences. The Wall Street Journal reported that in 2023, the Libertarian Party’s chair told Trump over dinner that he needed to free Ulbricht if he wanted Libertarian support. 

Other drug pardons involve convicted traffickers serving lengthy sentences, including the Sotelo brothers of Fort Worth, Texas, and Anabel Valenzuela. 

Trump is obsessed with pardoning those who tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election. On his first day in office, he pardoned anyone “convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near” the Capitol on January 6, 2021, commuted 14 sentences, and ordered all pending cases related to the riot dropped. The Justice Department suspended two prosecutors who referred to those who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, as “a mob of rioters.” Trump had described January 6 as “a day of love.” The January 6 proclamation covered at least 1,500 people.  

In at least two instances, Trump has issued second pardons for January 6 defendants. One was Dan Wilson, who had pleaded guilty to firearms crimes that took place in 2022, when six guns and about 4,800 rounds of ammunition were seized during a search of his home related to a January 6 investigation. 

As broad as the president’s pardon powers are, Trump is determined to push them beyond the Constitution’s express limitations. This month, the president said he had pardoned jailed Tina Peters, a former county clerk in Colorado who was convicted in state court of felony charges related to unauthorized access to election machines. 

Peters was accused of sneaking Conan Hayes, a purported computer expert, into her office in 2021, using someone else’s security badge so that he could copy Dominion Voting Systems’ hard drives. She was convicted of charges including attempting to influence a public servant and conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation and is serving a nine- year sentence of imprisonment.  

The issue with Peters’ pardon is that the Constitution grants the president the power “to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States.” The Supreme Court has interpreted that language as applying to federal crimes, not those prosecuted by state authorities. How this new claim of presidential power will unfold in the courts remains uncertain. 

More than half of the acts of clemency for named individuals relate to prosecutions initiated and pursued by the Biden Justice Department —in addition to the January 6 cases. 

Then there are the white-collar criminals.  

Nikola founder Trevor Milton, a Trump supporter, was convicted of fraud in federal court for allegedly lying to investors about his zero-emission trucks. He styled himself as a political victim of the Biden administration—and Trump agreed. 

Binance founder Changpeng Zhao can cause the world’s largest crypto-trading platform to return to the U.S. Zhao and his company pleaded guilty in 2023 to violating anti-money-laundering rules. Trump has claimed not to know who he is, which is either a sign of cognitive decline or prevarication in the extreme. 

Trump pardoned Joe Lewis, the former owner of Tottenham Hotspur football club, who pleaded guilty to insider trading in the U.S. last year. Lewis, like so many of the other recipients of Trump’s grace, was a political supporter. 

Trump last month freed David Gentile, the convicted fraudster who ran a firm known as GPB Capital, just days into a seven-year sentence. GPB held itself out as a private equity fund for Main Street and raised roughly $2 billion. Prosecutors said its executives were using the money to fund lavish lifestyles. Gentile authored a scheme that defrauded thousands of investors, many of whom were retired citizens living on fixed incomes. 

Reality TV couple Julie and Todd Chrisley blended celebrity and conservative appeal. They had been sentenced for conspiracy to defraud banks out of more than $30 million in fraudulent loans by submitting false documents. 

In 2024, their daughter, Savannah, spoke at the Republican National Convention, framing their prosecution as politically motivated. 

Not every pardon involved a Biden-era case. Just this year, Trump pardoned people prosecuted by the Justice Department during his first term—or whose prosecution started during the Biden administration but continued in Trump’s second term. 

The president’s own appointees charged sports executive Timothy Leiweke during the current Trump administration. 

Leiweke was accused of conspiring with a rival to rig the bidding process for a new basketball arena in Texas, a claim he denied. 

Trump has pardoned elected officials on both sides of the aisle. 

Leading the list of four  Democrats is U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar and his wife, who were charged last year with taking nearly $600,000 in foreign bribes. 

Trump said Cuellar, representing a competitive district in Texas near Mexico, had been punished for speaking out against Biden’s border policies. Following the pardon, Trump expressed seller’s remorse. He went after Cuellar days later on social media, saying he showed a “lack of loyalty” by filing for reelection as a Democrat, amid speculation that he might switch parties. 

Democrats in Congress welcomed Cuellar with open arms. The House Appropriations Committee promptly voted to return him to his leadership position on a powerful spending panel. 

Trump loves celebrities. Former Major League Baseball star Darryl Strawberry pleaded guilty to tax evasion in 1995, with a history of substance abuse. He got a pardon. How can anyone argue with that? 

But there is a sleaze and a foul aroma to these promiscuously issued Trump pardons, and it’s only the first year of his second term. Could Trump actually sell pardons? Given the Supreme Court’s ruling giving the president almost unlimited immunity for offenses he may have committed in office, we wonder.  

One cannot help but be reminded of the old Yiddish expression, “Petty thieves are hanged, big ones are pardoned.”