I'm thinking of exposing the sqlite db, and now possibly this JSON file as well.. I can take both during the build process and throw them up on CF. Great idea, thank you.
> 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.
> 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?
The kind of despot that sends assassins against people in exile is unlikely to choose it themselves.
Hmm. I feel like it isn’t over the history of the US and there was a period where US governance tended toward an ideal but the last 50 years have reverted to the norm. E.g Oliver North
So exactly when was that? Before 50 years ago, “Separate but Equal” was the law of the land as decided by the Supreme Court, laws against interracial marriage and laws against “sodomy” (homosexuality) were also upheld by the Supreme Court.
There is absolutely no point in US history that the US was “ideal”.
My still living parents grew up in the segregated south.
> It’s in the Constitution. There isn’t that much anyone can do.
We have modified the constitution before. It is not easy, sure. But, presidential pardons are being abused so thoroughly that it does warrant people making the effort to change things.
If we put 3x caught pot dealers in for life, a corrupt President can certainly rot alongside them.
The more powerful you are, the more significant the penalties for abuse of that power should be, because the damage you can do is correspondingly large.
Don’t think the three strikes law you are referring to (3x nonviolent = life in prison) exists anymore. As it was generally regarded as a cruel mistake. Likewise with hanging politicians for lying…
"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.
Fox News was founded by Roger Ailes with the explicit intent to prevent another Nixon situation. Not the "criminal President" part, mind you; the punished (Republican) President part.
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.
That's when I learned you can be pardoned for future crime since the expiration was end of day. There's nothing stopping a president from signing blanket future pardons with a 100 year expiry. I'm amazed there wasnt any discussion when it happened.
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.
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.”"
The only reason he’s not constantly thinking about retribution is because he spends most of the time with his brain idle, or thinking of his next grift.
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 -
clinton-1 and clinton-2 are distinct. I think it's more likely collected differently. The people gathering data will change. Someone with different data standards worked there for a while.
Indeed. It took me a bit to remember why. There was a clemency program for nonviolent drug offenders with otherwise clean records who had served at least 10 years in federal prison under out of date sentencing guidelines.
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.
Sounds completely plausible to me. Lots of people who sold marijuana in the 90s had some kind of principled objection to the laws making it illegal to do so.
@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.
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.
To an obstinate person maybe, but to the person being commuted with a conviction on their record vs a person that has a clear record it is more than a difference with no distinction
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 power is one of many explicitly anti-democratic measures in the U.S. constitution, which makes sense because the government that it defines is a federal republic and not a democracy.
This claim is ahistoric. The ancient Athenians, the inventors of democracy, would reject it because they used popular elections in only a limited number of cases. Their suspicion was that popular elections were tools of oligarchy. Instead they preferred sortition, selection at random, to give rule of the people. They punished abuse of public power severely.
In the context of American thought, Federalist No. 10 goes into exacting detail as to why the proposed government was a republic and not a democracy. If a republic were merely form of democracy, then the entire document would have been a waste of time. Instead, this was a point of serious debate. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed10.asp
Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.
The U.S. constitution is explicitly anti-democratic on several points. Judges are appointed rather than elected and serve for life, intentionally intended, although admittedly with limited success, to remove them from partisan pressures and the fickle passions of the day. States have unequal representation in the House. Large states and small states have equal representation in the Senate. The president is not elected by popular vote but by a select group of electors. Executive, legislative, and judicial are co-equal; one may not compel the other even with an appeal to some election. Even a unanimity of voters may not pass certain legislation.
The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.
This compulsion to torture both language and history to apply the blessed label democracy to forms of government that do not meet the definition is puzzling. Call things what they are. Democracy is not a worthy end in itself. Majoritarianism and utilitarianism can be highly problematic and downright evil.
And regardless of whether the US government is a democracy or not, the frequent claim that it is a republic and (therefore) not a democracy is a non sequitur. It's like saying my suitcase is black and therefore not tall; the first has no bearing on the second.
It's just a thought-stopping meme. Thought-stopping because it ends up derailing conversations about policy or governance with dictionary definition arguments. A meme because the eye-rolling implication is that if our country is a republic and not a democracy, then naturally it's Republican and not Democrat(ic).
Furthermore, the fact that there are some anti-democratic elements in the US Constitution doesn't preclude democracy on the whole. Much in the way we consider our economic system to be capitalist despite there being many anti-capitalist components.
Your suitcase is black and therefore not seafoam green. A democracy, a republic, and a federal republic are all different forms of government.
> A meme because the eye-rolling implication is that if our country is a republic and not a democracy, then naturally it's Republican and not Democrat(ic).
Who makes this argument?
“Bad terminology is the enemy of clear thinking,” per Charlie Munger. Yes, calling things what they are can be uncomfortable, and calling things what they are not is gaslighting. A republic is not a democracy. The mixed economy, dirigisme, and corporatism are not capitalism. Who benefits from the confusion that these introduce?
> “Bad terminology is the enemy of clear thinking,”
> and calling things what they are not is gaslighting.
"[Gaslighting] is often used incorrectly to refer to conflicts and disagreements.[5][19][20] According to Robin Stern, PhD, co-founder of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, "Gaslighting is often used in an accusatory way when somebody may just be insistent on something, or somebody may be trying to influence you. That's not what gaslighting is."[19]"
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).
GW Bush also probably matches with Obama for your description, though he did commute (but not pardon) Cheney's Chief of Staff, which caused a permanent rift between Bush and Cheney.
He also revoked a pardon when he discovered that one had his father donate large sums to the RNC.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
> 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 is exactly one party in the US that does this, and it's because they have dedicated themselves to blocking the other party from accomplishing much of anything when they get power.
Hilariously (to me, anyway) — I genuinely don’t know which party you’re talking about. It could truly be either, depending entirely on which party you support.
Waiting for the day when both the Democrats and Republicans are so very obviously shitty to even the most uninformed voter that we get some new thought in office instead of two sides of the same coin that are both beholden to capital and to foreign interests
As long as our voting system is "first past the post", it will be nigh impossible for a third party to make any significant headway. IMO Citizens United and first past the post are the two main issues holding the US back from any kind of significant overhaul or change.
Nearly everyone believes their side is the moral one. Only one side currently refuses to admit the other side might not actually be evil, just foolish.
No. While I don’t like Trump and never did, several of the prosecutions against him were political. By political, I mean they would not have happened if he had not become a politician, in fact, they didn’t until he became one and an unpopular one at that.
> they would not have happened if he had not become a politician
That is a little vague. Some of his crimes only happened because he became a politician, so of course the prosecution would be seen as political in that sense. What I would like to know is which crimes did he commit that were only prosecuted because he was a politician, which would otherwise have been ignored?
One seems to be New York v. Trump, which was a civil lawsuit instead of criminal. The main charge in the case was overstatement of real estate values to secure loans, yet the banks lending the money (mainly Deutsche Bank, if I remember correctly) were sophisticated lenders who were capable of assessing those estimates and the risk of lending. The banks not only did not lose money from the transactions but in fact happily made money, and they had no complaint about the deals they'd made with Trump. These were all private deals between sophisticated parties who knew what they were doing, and everyone made money. So, no bank suffered harm leading to the charge and no bank lodged any complaint against Trump—the prosecutor went looking for something with which to charge him, and this was the best she could find.
> main charge in the case was overstatement of real estate values to secure loans
> The banks not only did not lose money from the transactions but in fact happily made money, and they had no complaint about the deals
The first part is either a crime, or it is not, regardless of the second? Suppose I falsely say I am worth millions, and then actually win the lottery. It being true later doesn't change whether it was lie originally.
That's exactly why my first point was that it was a civil lawsuit brought by the Attorney General, not a criminal case: the underlying overstatement of real estate values was not charged as the crime of fraud, which would have required more proof including proof of intent and actual harm—of which the former would have been hard to prove, and the latter did not exist. The District Attorney (who handles criminal matters like fraud) decided there was no criminal case, but the Attorney General took it as a civil matter despite there being no criminal case and nobody unhappy about the deals. It was purely a political prosecution.
Crimes that are not known about are frequently not punished.
Rubbing it in everyone's face is not a great idea.
But, and this is the much more important point you are missing, is the difference between prosecuted for a crime you comitted regardless of how people learnes about it, and using completely unfounded accusations in order to use the prosecution itself as a punishment.
Trump has been prosecuted, several times, for actual crimes he committed. Hilary clinton as an example, had to deal with the obviously fake prosecution attempts of benghazi and email servers.
This is a gigantic and meaningful difference.
Have other people done some of these trump crimes and not gotten prosecuted? Sure, but that's not exactly a good thing.
Directing the doj to manufacture crimes in order to prosecute is much much worse.
A prosecution can be political even if a crime or tort was committed. Our government prosecutes only a small percent of committed crimes.
If Donald Trump had not run for President, or even had just been a normal President, or maybe even if he’d have done everything he did except for cause January 6, he absolutely would never have been prosecuted for this. The justice system was weaponized against him, even if he was actually guilty, which he surely was.
You may be right that they were political in that sense.
But also, they probably should have happened were he not a politician. He's been committing fraud and other white collar crimes for quite a while. Unfortunately, we go far too easy on white collar crime in this country. And he's a master of plausible deniability, where he effectively asks other people to commit crimes on his behalf, but in a plausibly deniable way with no written trail.
> I mean they would not have happened if he had not become a politician
His wife in the 1990s accused him of rape and intended to sue him as part of the divorce proceedings. She changed her words when she obtained a generous divorce settlement, moving from outright rape to "not in the criminal sense, I just felt violated".
That was over 20 years before Trump gained political relevance.
Which of the prosecutions were political hit jobs? Enumerate which of the federal and state crimes that Trump was convicted were actually politcal hit jobs.
Your definition of political ("not happening if he wasn't a politician") is not what that definition is.
(2) Do you mean not yet charged or not yet convicted ?
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 ?
> a political necessity, for example to protect Liz Cheney
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?
The DOJ is part of the executive - so it is fiction that it was ever apolitical. RFK was JFKs brother, do you think they weren't coordinating DOJ's investigations into political opponents? (e.g. Jimmy Hoffa)
Congress created the DOJ, It is their job to police it. They can defund or even eliminate it. That's the check on it.
You don't need to rein in their authority. Congress should have authority to delegate when needed.
What is needed is that voters need to hold congress accountable. People get royally pissed that "Government sucks and doesn't do what it needs to do" and then vote for people who openly say they will make the government suck.
The people who voted for Trump to do exactly what he is doing right now spent the past 50 years voting for Congress people who could legally and democratically do exactly what they wanted and just chose not to do it.
Clinton's admin cut the budget with a bipartisan congress back in the 90s. Suddenly supposedly that can't happen? Maybe that has something to do with the party that has expressly and openly declared bipartisanship to be verboten.
Instead, the voting public seems to be utterly ignorant of how our governments, big and small, work. This is insane, as I know each and every one of these people read the same chapter of a 6th grade Social Studies textbook and other people learned this through childrens songs. There's just no excuse.
Yeah, but it seems those other protections would/could possibly be a coin toss (eg a successful defense in a trial) and quite costly even if they never get to that stage, and you need a bit more certainty than that. Otherwise help can only come from those willing to become martyrs
(3) Morally highly questionable pardons of convicted criminals who committed high crimes. Preferably questioned by a well-functioning ethics commission for things like, well, conflicts of interest, corruption, and the like.
You are asking if it was necessary to protect Liz Cheney? Have you not seen the lengths to which Trump is going to punish Comey? Trump even fired Bondi because she was ineffective in targeting his opponents.
>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.
From what I can gather, Hunter Biden was guilty of tax evasion, possessing a firearm when he shouldn't, and lying about drug use.
He shouldn't have been pardoned, sure, but you cannot possibly believe that's more corrupt than what Trump, his family, and his cronies do on a regular Tuesday afternoon.
Are you for real - apart from almost everything Trump has done? Did you miss how he picked an AG and prevented release of the Trump-Epstein files even though he signed into law a bill requiring full release with only redaction of victims. Did you miss the daily breeches of the emoluments clause?
Did you miss the pardoning of the Jan 6 people who hunted people down, set up a gallows, and those who tried to murder police?
Did you miss Trump sending USA troops into democrat cities to try and intimidate USA citizens, using his militia to murder people in cold blood?
Did you miss all the tariffs used to move the markets so Trump and his cronies could drain money from ordinary folks investments in the markets - he even boasted how rich he'd made his friends. From tariff front-running.
Hunter Biden broke the law, but his crimes look like schoolkid's high-jinks compared to Trump.
How about Trump's alt-coin to take overseas bribes?
Or using the instigation of war to win bets?
There're thousands more such crimes of corruption the Trump regime have done.
> perhaps the greatest example of corruption in us history.
Donald Trump started a war with Iran to distract from the Epstein files, where he is mentioned thousands of times and credibly accused of raping a minor. But yeah, hunter biden. Most corrupt in US history. Sure.
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.
Trump was never found immune for that. We was just reelected before the prosecution could run it's course, and the DOJ never prosecutes a sitting president.
Presumably the suit could resume once Trump steps down, but it might be wise for his democratic successor to offer him a pardon for the sake of an orderly transition
> it might be wise for his democratic successor to offer him a pardon for the sake of an orderly transition
Oh absolutely not. Any democratic successor that did such a thing would face such an immense backlash from the democratic and centrist voting base that it would effectively throw their entire term away. No, most of the democrats see the pardoning of Nixon as a grave error and want to see justice for what has been done this term.
My wondering is more about how Congress would react, because something like this could conceivably bring together the 75% consensus required for a constitutional amendment.
And I think even this supreme Court would agree that murdering Congress doesn't count as an official act.
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
The Democrats literally tried like 6 different ways to get Trump in jail, and arrested and jailed many of his supporters and even some of his administration. I highly doubt that the majority of the voting public which elected Trump will sit idle for any sort of unjust retribution to the current administration.
This is genuinely hilarious. I guess you haven't been paying attention but "sitting idle during injustice" is all that Trump supporters do.
No, his base is already collapsing. He overextended with Iran, sent gas prices up, and as a direct result has finally started to bleed support from the know-nothings. I doubt Trump himself will ever face justice for his many crimes - he is likely to die of old age first - but the rest of the administration? Knives are out. They'll be back in prison just like happened in 2020 and 2021, and all those "dedicated supporters" will do nothing because the people who form this administration are petty, uninteresting people who were specifically chosen because they are not popular.
I don't agree with your prediction, the interesting thing is now, perhaps, we can actually wager on the outcomes, I wonder if there is anything on prediction markets about administration officials going to jail.
The idea that his support is collapsing is also pretty misstated. Yes, there's a lot of people that don't fully agree with Iran and other things, but that's a far cry from backing his ops.
I also think you are missing the shift in politics at all the lower levels to align with the current administration. Outside of the deepest wealthy Democrat areas, and even in some of those, the general position of local politicians and officials is moving towards the sort of nationalist populist attitude Trump has curated.
The same is also pervasive among state and federal government institutions with limited exception.
And of course that's all only IF Democrats win big in 2028 which is a far from guaranteed outcome.
> I highly doubt that the majority of the voting public which elected Trump will sit idle for any sort of unjust retribution to the current administration.
Is this a threat, or…?
“Let our guy do whatever he wants or we’ll try to murder Congress and fuck up the economy and start some more wars”?
“Don’t you dare jail us for insurrection or we’ll insurrect even harder”?
It's just an assessment of the general political outlook. Anyone that thinks the public would tolerate some sort of widespread anti-Trump retribution is living deep in some sort of bubble. Most likely a small, wealthy, liberal one. They literally tried that last time and it resulted in an even more resounding Trump victory than 2016. The majority of the politically active people align with Trump. The old standby of Democrats win when more people vote is no longer true. The majority of the non-voting public aligns much more strongly with current "conservative" values than anything the left is currently offering.
This is one of those things where I’d love to get on board with the popular view but I haven’t found evidence that anything beyond a sit in was intended and the arguments seem to be floating in air if you follow them down to their root. But I haven’t done that much research so I’d appreciate if you could share what makes you think this, thanks!
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.
when you have only two choices and you have to be quite insane to choose one of them, you are, for all intents and purposes, forced to choose the other side (same argument works for left and right if you hear someone say they are forced to be what they are politically)
I never claimed that anyone forced me to become a Democrat.
I support them at the national level because they're the least evil of the two and exactly two relevant options available, and the one which at least gives lip service to progressive values. But that is still like supporting Mussolini over Hitler. Locally I vote third party when I have a chance.
And I live in Texas so none of my votes matter anyway.
You claimed that you had no choice but to become a Democrat. If that wasn't caused by coercion, then it certainly was a choice.
If I claimed that I had no choice but to become a Republican, I would be justifiably laughed at (even by fellow Republicans). Political views and affiliations are certainly choices.
Anyone can claim that their opinion is the only sane one.
>You claimed that you had no choice but to become a Democrat. If that wasn't caused by coercion, then it certainly was a choice.
I explained my choice. Choosing the lesser evil is a choice. I don't think anyone in this thread besides you is getting hung up on this, and I don't know why you're being so aggressively pedantic. It's weird.
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.
You would probably consider me to your right, but I'm right there with you. Prison should be protective: we lock up people from whom the rest of us will not be safe unless they are segregated. Ideally it is also rehabilitatative, and once (if!) prisoners will be safe and productive members of society there is no point to keeping them locked up.
If there are other methods short of prison that can render law-breakers harmless - such as restrictions on certain activities and occupations - then those should be pursued first.
The ghost of this philosophy, however attenuated, can be seen in systems of pardon and parole.
I acknowledge that a desire for retribution - to punish the evil-doer; make them suffer for what they've done - is a strong impulse (I feel it myself!), deeply imbedded in our tribal psyches, but it should be fought, not indulged.
This seems to me to be the only moral basis for a system of justice and incarceration, though I have no idea how to nudge a society towards this model. Some northern European countries approach it.
(In fact, I may well be nearer to your position than my description implies. I use the term "leftist" because I hate the way the term is applied to anyone who isn't a Republican. My beliefs, in the Clinton/Obama range, are "leftist" only if one is dumb enough to believe what one hears on Fox News.)
Heh. I sometimes describe myself as "basically a communist" for the exact same reason. Actually, I lived in Europe long enough to be maybe a little left of you, but still Clinton / Obama center-right, in world historical sense. I expect we'd get along. :-)
You sound like you are advocating for commutation, not pardons. Commutation lowers the penalty given to a criminal by executive decree (which the president can also do) A pardon makes it so the conviction never happened.
No, it doesn’t erase the conviction, it “forgives” you from the perspective of the government. Commutation ends the punitive aspect of the conviction.
I have a somewhat distant relative who was pardoned after being over-prosecuted by a zealous DA. They were a victim of a felony who did something in response that could have been charged as anything from a citation/violation to a felony, the DA’s discretion was to choose the harshest possible resolution.
They still have a hard time getting work because the conviction must be reported.
Thanks, I had misunderstood. It eliminates the legal consequences of conviction (unlike commutation) which is similar in a lot of ways, but it doesn't erase the conviction from the records.
I think they are both generally ok, but also somewhat sketchy. I don't see them as much different from Clinton's pardons, Fords or Andrew Johnson's Christmas day pardons for confederate soldiers.
People in the conservative ecosystem are very much up in arms about the pardon of Hunter Biden.
Like most things in MAGAland, these matters are framed in a certain way, and all nuance is eliminated. The irony of being upset about Biden while being a cheerleader for Don Jr is lost.
I think you totally proved my point. Both conservatives and liberals will almost always look at pardons by a president from their own party much differently than those by a president from the other party.
I don’t think so. I was pretty much raised in a family that was staunch Democrats and in a few cases even party officials at the local level.
I was pretty young and not really caring, but I recall them being unhappy about Clinton’s last minute pardons as they were obviously compromised. I recall conversations about the Gerald Ford pardon of Nixon that happened around the context of Scooter Libby and there was an acceptance that that was more of the grist of politics than anything.
I don’t recall any president in my memory proposing pardons in advance to people blatantly breaking the law. When I was younger, republicans were almost solemnly committed to the “rule of law”. That changed in the last 20 years. This president is very tellingly an admirer of Andrew Jackson, who was in most measurement a disaster, as is this admin.
Personally, I live my life fairly “conservatively”, but have more progressive politics with some “exceptions” for the modern sense of the word. I respect those who disagree with my point of view, but am not tolerant of disdain for the law, basic fairness and society.
Case law agrees with your reading only in part, namely that the pardon power may be exercised at any time after its commission, that is, not preemptive as in being granted before the act being pardoned has taken place.
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.
It's wild that anyone doesn't know that. It's less surprising than the fact that disallowing someone with 34 felony convictions from being President would also require a Constitutional amendment. Both the pardon power and the qualifications for President are specified by the Constitution, so of course the Constitution must be amended to change them.
I made no assumptions. Or if my "It's wild" makes assumptions, then surely your "That's wild" does as well. But really, neither do--they are simply expressions of a disparity between fact and expectation or desire.
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.
We are discussing the pardon power, an explicitly anti-democratic measure that is unilateral and unreviewable. The constitution defines a federal republic, not a democracy.
I'm sorry that you experienced that. I understand the importance of listening to abuse victims. However, if child sacrifice did happen, it seems unlikely to ever be proven. I do not think that the case against Epstein or his associates is strengthened by assuming every accusation is true. For people who are not thinking about the subject carefully, learning that some accusations are inflated may cast others into doubt. What is provable is heinous enough.
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.
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."
No, the original poster is 100% correct and if anything understating the issue.
US Attorneys are enormously powerful and because federal law is so vague in many ways, attracting their attention is a kiss of death. Most of federal defense work is highly technical and more about managing pleas and the mandatory sentencing guidelines. They agree to punishment and shape the plea deal to some crime that hits the number.
This weird technical approach to “justice” results in bad outcomes in other ways. The famously self-promoting Preet Bharara ended up letting a bunch of people free who quite obviously were taking bribes and fixing bids go free by abusing the “Honest Services” laws, which were subsequently thrown out on appeal.
The current administration is different - their weaponization of the system means that they literally can’t appoint qualified attorneys, who fear disbarment for what they will be directed to do. AUSAs have quit en masse and they are forced to hire toadies from 3rd tier law schools like Liberty University and make weird interim appointments. It’s a great time to be a criminal.
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.
It's hard to find quantative data but one clear example is DNA-based exoneration by the Innocence Project [1]
> Among the many insights drawn from these
wrongful convictions is the realization that a guilty plea is
not an uncommon outcome for innocent people who have
been charged with a crime: 11 percent of the DNA exonerees recorded by the Innocence Project pleaded guilty
There's a thing called the Trial Penalty [2]. ~98% of charges result in a guilty plea. If all 100% went to trial the system would collapse. As such, prosecutors coerce plea deals [3]. But the Trial Penalty works pretty much like the example described: if you go to trial, you will be overcharged and face, say, 10-30+ years in jail. Or you can take a plea for 2 years.
This Trial Penalty is made worse with mandatory minimums and add-on charges like I mentioned (ie 924(c)).
This effect has been modeled with maths and game theory to show hoow extreme outcomes cause people to plead guilty more often [4].
This is a well-known problem in criminal justice. You're showing either a complete lack of imagination or simply don't think this will ever be used against you.
> There's a thing called the Trial Penalty [2]. ~98% of charges result in a guilty plea.
The gist of this argument is that there are huge numbers of innocent people railroaded into prison, but in the bigger picture crime is wildly under-punished.
More than half of murderers go free.
More than 98% of rapists never spend a day in prison.
At the end of the day this is all a question of where you stand on Blackstone’s Ratio. In the US, even with the rate of wrongful conviction we may have, we stand solidly opposed to zealous pursuit of justice for the victims of crimes, on the argument that an innocent person might be punished.
> ... but in the bigger picture crime is wildly under-punished.
Um, citation needed.
> More than half of murderers go free.
The burden is on the state to prove their case not on the accused to prove their innocence. If this completely unsubstantiated statistic is true (again, citation needed) why is the state so bad at making their cases?
> More than 98% of rapists never spend a day in prison.
Yes, rape is under-reported, under-charged and rarely results in a conviction. This is true. Society engages in a whole lot of victim blaming with sex crimes.
> we stand solidly opposed to zealous pursuit of justice for the victims of crimes
What? The US has 4% of the world's population but 25% of the world's prisoners. If over-policing and wildly capricious sentences (eg 10+ years for cannabis possession) worked, this would be the safest country on earth.
> 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
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.
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.
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.
good catch, I think the classifier saw the "distribution" in the sentence and assumed it was drug related. I could probably run each sentence against an ai model to classify things..
probably run it against something small like haiku and not cost me an arm and a leg.
I've yet to see any justification (not even a bogus one) for why the pardon power needs to exist in the modern world. It seems to have been invented originally as a counterbalance against corrupt or crazy judges. We have other ways to deal with that problem now.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.”
Democrats in the US ignore the destruction of democracy by their own presidents, Clinton only came into the office to grift, no interest in the gravitas at all, and Obama, OMG 1904 pardons. Trump is an extension of what Clinton and Obama did, more extreme, more grift, more corruption, more executive powers, no guardrails, but not new.
Extracted all the raw pardons here: https://gist.githubusercontent.com/varenc/cb2e2dacf1c92d36bc...
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 )
I'm exposing the database that I use to build the site now as well.
https://pardonned.com/pardonned.db
I'm thinking of exposing the sqlite db, and now possibly this JSON file as well.. I can take both during the build process and throw them up on CF. Great idea, thank you.
consider http://datasette.io/ as well
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.
> 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?
The kind of despot that sends assassins against people in exile is unlikely to choose it themselves.
Hense the credible belief. The Russians did manage to step down from violence so it is possible.
May want to check Russian agression for years. They did not stepped down much.
Not Russia in general but their leadership succession
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.
> without needing so much as a simple majority confirmation vote in the House or Senate
This is intentional. Pardons are part of the checks and balances against the legislative branch.
Congress has tools at their disposal, like impeachment, to punish a sitting president if they want to.
Not sure if they can void an improper pardon, but it would nice if the threat of impeachment was more meaningful of a deterrent.
In my country pardons very rarely happen because politicians would be massacred in the press for it.
It is political suicide- one of the perks of having 20 different parties.
It’s in the Constitution. There isn’t that much anyone can do.
Haven't people 'done' something about the original wording about 27 times now?
The pardon power is.
Presidential immunity for, say, selling a pardon is very new.
Hmm. I feel like it isn’t over the history of the US and there was a period where US governance tended toward an ideal but the last 50 years have reverted to the norm. E.g Oliver North
So exactly when was that? Before 50 years ago, “Separate but Equal” was the law of the land as decided by the Supreme Court, laws against interracial marriage and laws against “sodomy” (homosexuality) were also upheld by the Supreme Court.
There is absolutely no point in US history that the US was “ideal”.
My still living parents grew up in the segregated south.
So perhaps the US was always an unjust shithole but I prefer to think the direction it was going was positive. It certainly isn’t positive now.
> It’s in the Constitution. There isn’t that much anyone can do.
We have modified the constitution before. It is not easy, sure. But, presidential pardons are being abused so thoroughly that it does warrant people making the effort to change things.
40% of the US like things just the way they are - didn’t you get the memo? America is “Great Again” now.
Interestingly, Ford received a Kennedy Award for pardoning Nixon.
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/22/us/ford-wins-kennedy-awar...
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We should have litigated it then. Nixon should have died in prison. It would have been a good precedent to set
Life in prison for Watergate?
1. It's good to hold people in certain positions of power to higher standards, especially when...
2. They commit an additional concurrent offense of abusing those powers and public trust for crime.
Yes.
If we put 3x caught pot dealers in for life, a corrupt President can certainly rot alongside them.
The more powerful you are, the more significant the penalties for abuse of that power should be, because the damage you can do is correspondingly large.
Don’t think the three strikes law you are referring to (3x nonviolent = life in prison) exists anymore. As it was generally regarded as a cruel mistake. Likewise with hanging politicians for lying…
"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.
> Nixon resigned; Trump did not.
Well, yeah. They learned from Nixon!
Fox News was founded by Roger Ailes with the explicit intent to prevent another Nixon situation. Not the "criminal President" part, mind you; the punished (Republican) President part.
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.
That's when I learned you can be pardoned for future crime since the expiration was end of day. There's nothing stopping a president from signing blanket future pardons with a 100 year expiry. I'm amazed there wasnt any discussion when it happened.
Correct, as he should have
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.
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> 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.”"
The only reason he’s not constantly thinking about retribution is because he spends most of the time with his brain idle, or thinking of his next grift.
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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...
That link is entirely about the East Wing ballroom expansion. I don't see any criticism of anyone there.
Swipe through the "Major Events Timeline". It would be funny if it wasn't so sad how petty it is.
Good lord, this is so pathetic
>not sure why you think it's intentional
It's entirely on brand.
clinton-1 and clinton-2 are distinct. I think it's more likely collected differently. The people gathering data will change. Someone with different data standards worked there for a while.
Even so, it’s still higher than the other presidents listed
Indeed. It took me a bit to remember why. There was a clemency program for nonviolent drug offenders with otherwise clean records who had served at least 10 years in federal prison under out of date sentencing guidelines.
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.
Sounds completely plausible to me. Lots of people who sold marijuana in the 90s had some kind of principled objection to the laws making it illegal to do so.
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.
If they were listed by Restitution or Fines Abandoned, there is a clear winner, ha ha.
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...
Commutation and Pardon are not the same thing though. If she was commuted the first time, she couldn't have been "pardoned again" as you state.
Commutation is ending any punishment for a conviction, but the conviction stands. A pardon wipes out the conviction.
That's a difference without a distinction. In both cases Trump let her out of jail.
To an obstinate person maybe, but to the person being commuted with a conviction on their record vs a person that has a clear record it is more than a difference with no distinction
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...
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 power is one of many explicitly anti-democratic measures in the U.S. constitution, which makes sense because the government that it defines is a federal republic and not a democracy.
The USA is a representative democracy, also known as a republic.
This claim is ahistoric. The ancient Athenians, the inventors of democracy, would reject it because they used popular elections in only a limited number of cases. Their suspicion was that popular elections were tools of oligarchy. Instead they preferred sortition, selection at random, to give rule of the people. They punished abuse of public power severely.
In the context of American thought, Federalist No. 10 goes into exacting detail as to why the proposed government was a republic and not a democracy. If a republic were merely form of democracy, then the entire document would have been a waste of time. Instead, this was a point of serious debate. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed10.asp
Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.
The U.S. constitution is explicitly anti-democratic on several points. Judges are appointed rather than elected and serve for life, intentionally intended, although admittedly with limited success, to remove them from partisan pressures and the fickle passions of the day. States have unequal representation in the House. Large states and small states have equal representation in the Senate. The president is not elected by popular vote but by a select group of electors. Executive, legislative, and judicial are co-equal; one may not compel the other even with an appeal to some election. Even a unanimity of voters may not pass certain legislation.
The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.
Brown v. Board, https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep...
This compulsion to torture both language and history to apply the blessed label democracy to forms of government that do not meet the definition is puzzling. Call things what they are. Democracy is not a worthy end in itself. Majoritarianism and utilitarianism can be highly problematic and downright evil.
This was a well-considered and informative response, thank you.
A democracy means political authority ultimately comes from the people.
And all the downsides of that. Eg: People on welfare are going to vote for more welfare at the cost of the working class.
It's political autority that comes from the lowest common denominator.
irrelevant to the definition, thanks anyway
And regardless of whether the US government is a democracy or not, the frequent claim that it is a republic and (therefore) not a democracy is a non sequitur. It's like saying my suitcase is black and therefore not tall; the first has no bearing on the second.
It's just a thought-stopping meme. Thought-stopping because it ends up derailing conversations about policy or governance with dictionary definition arguments. A meme because the eye-rolling implication is that if our country is a republic and not a democracy, then naturally it's Republican and not Democrat(ic).
Furthermore, the fact that there are some anti-democratic elements in the US Constitution doesn't preclude democracy on the whole. Much in the way we consider our economic system to be capitalist despite there being many anti-capitalist components.
Your suitcase is black and therefore not seafoam green. A democracy, a republic, and a federal republic are all different forms of government.
> A meme because the eye-rolling implication is that if our country is a republic and not a democracy, then naturally it's Republican and not Democrat(ic).
Who makes this argument?
“Bad terminology is the enemy of clear thinking,” per Charlie Munger. Yes, calling things what they are can be uncomfortable, and calling things what they are not is gaslighting. A republic is not a democracy. The mixed economy, dirigisme, and corporatism are not capitalism. Who benefits from the confusion that these introduce?
> “Bad terminology is the enemy of clear thinking,”
> and calling things what they are not is gaslighting.
"[Gaslighting] is often used incorrectly to refer to conflicts and disagreements.[5][19][20] According to Robin Stern, PhD, co-founder of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, "Gaslighting is often used in an accusatory way when somebody may just be insistent on something, or somebody may be trying to influence you. That's not what gaslighting is."[19]"
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting
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.
GW Bush also probably matches with Obama for your description, though he did commute (but not pardon) Cheney's Chief of Staff, which caused a permanent rift between Bush and Cheney.
He also revoked a pardon when he discovered that one had his father donate large sums to the RNC.
Did Biden pardon anyone that was not being floated by the incoming president for retribution?
> this should be a learning experience for the country not to put criminally inclined presidents in office
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.
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.
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.
They would probably need to make a convincing argument to the judge that there was a state crime they would be at risk of being charged with.
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
It's not that he just said it yesterday, he's apparently already said it a few times, and yesterday there was just a news article about it.
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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.
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.
Ah, OK. Sorry I didn't get it right away!
Pardon me, but this is a list of pardons given to pardoned people.
I'd presumed this was a wordplay on Donald Trump.
correct.
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.
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 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.
> 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 is exactly one party in the US that does this, and it's because they have dedicated themselves to blocking the other party from accomplishing much of anything when they get power.
Hilariously (to me, anyway) — I genuinely don’t know which party you’re talking about. It could truly be either, depending entirely on which party you support.
Waiting for the day when both the Democrats and Republicans are so very obviously shitty to even the most uninformed voter that we get some new thought in office instead of two sides of the same coin that are both beholden to capital and to foreign interests
As long as our voting system is "first past the post", it will be nigh impossible for a third party to make any significant headway. IMO Citizens United and first past the post are the two main issues holding the US back from any kind of significant overhaul or change.
There's been some progress on killing Citizens United:
https://transparentelection.org/
https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2025/08/07/transparent-elect...
First past the post doesn't meaningfull affect primaries and that's where major change could happen.
Hell, that's what trump did. He was a third outside party and won the republican primary.
Bernie sanders came fairly close to doing the same thing.
> He was a third outside party and won the republican primary.
That's not "third party" quite like you think it is
That's sort of like saying you're not sure if the earth is round or not-- says much more about you and your understanding than anything else.
The patronizing tone and use of totalizing moral claims gives me a much stronger hint of which side of this you're on.
Yeah, the moral one. The one that wants a good life for all people. Or did you think there was some kind of third side?
Nearly everyone believes their side is the moral one. Only one side currently refuses to admit the other side might not actually be evil, just foolish.
No. While I don’t like Trump and never did, several of the prosecutions against him were political. By political, I mean they would not have happened if he had not become a politician, in fact, they didn’t until he became one and an unpopular one at that.
And he’s doing much worse now so that’s two.
> they would not have happened if he had not become a politician
That is a little vague. Some of his crimes only happened because he became a politician, so of course the prosecution would be seen as political in that sense. What I would like to know is which crimes did he commit that were only prosecuted because he was a politician, which would otherwise have been ignored?
One seems to be New York v. Trump, which was a civil lawsuit instead of criminal. The main charge in the case was overstatement of real estate values to secure loans, yet the banks lending the money (mainly Deutsche Bank, if I remember correctly) were sophisticated lenders who were capable of assessing those estimates and the risk of lending. The banks not only did not lose money from the transactions but in fact happily made money, and they had no complaint about the deals they'd made with Trump. These were all private deals between sophisticated parties who knew what they were doing, and everyone made money. So, no bank suffered harm leading to the charge and no bank lodged any complaint against Trump—the prosecutor went looking for something with which to charge him, and this was the best she could find.
> main charge in the case was overstatement of real estate values to secure loans > The banks not only did not lose money from the transactions but in fact happily made money, and they had no complaint about the deals
The first part is either a crime, or it is not, regardless of the second? Suppose I falsely say I am worth millions, and then actually win the lottery. It being true later doesn't change whether it was lie originally.
That's exactly why my first point was that it was a civil lawsuit brought by the Attorney General, not a criminal case: the underlying overstatement of real estate values was not charged as the crime of fraud, which would have required more proof including proof of intent and actual harm—of which the former would have been hard to prove, and the latter did not exist. The District Attorney (who handles criminal matters like fraud) decided there was no criminal case, but the Attorney General took it as a civil matter despite there being no criminal case and nobody unhappy about the deals. It was purely a political prosecution.
Crimes that are not known about are frequently not punished.
Rubbing it in everyone's face is not a great idea.
But, and this is the much more important point you are missing, is the difference between prosecuted for a crime you comitted regardless of how people learnes about it, and using completely unfounded accusations in order to use the prosecution itself as a punishment.
Trump has been prosecuted, several times, for actual crimes he committed. Hilary clinton as an example, had to deal with the obviously fake prosecution attempts of benghazi and email servers.
This is a gigantic and meaningful difference.
Have other people done some of these trump crimes and not gotten prosecuted? Sure, but that's not exactly a good thing.
Directing the doj to manufacture crimes in order to prosecute is much much worse.
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A prosecution can be political even if a crime or tort was committed. Our government prosecutes only a small percent of committed crimes.
If Donald Trump had not run for President, or even had just been a normal President, or maybe even if he’d have done everything he did except for cause January 6, he absolutely would never have been prosecuted for this. The justice system was weaponized against him, even if he was actually guilty, which he surely was.
The main crime seems to have been leaving the Democrat party as it raced leftwards.
Your comment seems to be a roundabout way of illustrating the concept of relativity.
You may be right that they were political in that sense.
But also, they probably should have happened were he not a politician. He's been committing fraud and other white collar crimes for quite a while. Unfortunately, we go far too easy on white collar crime in this country. And he's a master of plausible deniability, where he effectively asks other people to commit crimes on his behalf, but in a plausibly deniable way with no written trail.
Well, yeah. When you turn public office into an ATM for your friends and family, one would expect that.
> I mean they would not have happened if he had not become a politician
His wife in the 1990s accused him of rape and intended to sue him as part of the divorce proceedings. She changed her words when she obtained a generous divorce settlement, moving from outright rape to "not in the criminal sense, I just felt violated".
That was over 20 years before Trump gained political relevance.
Which of the prosecutions were political hit jobs? Enumerate which of the federal and state crimes that Trump was convicted were actually politcal hit jobs.
Your definition of political ("not happening if he wasn't a politician") is not what that definition is.
Yeah, the (untrue accusation) is the important part of the political prosecution phrase.
(2) Do you mean not yet charged or not yet convicted ?
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 ?
Because the trial may take 5 years and consume lots of resources.
If they’ll be pardoned anyway, why?
> a political necessity, for example to protect Liz Cheney
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?
The DOJ is part of the executive - so it is fiction that it was ever apolitical. RFK was JFKs brother, do you think they weren't coordinating DOJ's investigations into political opponents? (e.g. Jimmy Hoffa)
Congress created the DOJ, It is their job to police it. They can defund or even eliminate it. That's the check on it.
It all comes back to needing to check the expanding power of the Executive.
Yup. This is why reining in Congress’s authority to delegate is so important.
You don't need to rein in their authority. Congress should have authority to delegate when needed.
What is needed is that voters need to hold congress accountable. People get royally pissed that "Government sucks and doesn't do what it needs to do" and then vote for people who openly say they will make the government suck.
The people who voted for Trump to do exactly what he is doing right now spent the past 50 years voting for Congress people who could legally and democratically do exactly what they wanted and just chose not to do it.
Clinton's admin cut the budget with a bipartisan congress back in the 90s. Suddenly supposedly that can't happen? Maybe that has something to do with the party that has expressly and openly declared bipartisanship to be verboten.
Instead, the voting public seems to be utterly ignorant of how our governments, big and small, work. This is insane, as I know each and every one of these people read the same chapter of a 6th grade Social Studies textbook and other people learned this through childrens songs. There's just no excuse.
> jail anybody attempting to direct the DOJ for personal or political reasons?
When that person is the president and the Supreme Court has said they are immune from prosecution, you need something else to be a check.
Yeah, but it seems those other protections would/could possibly be a coin toss (eg a successful defense in a trial) and quite costly even if they never get to that stage, and you need a bit more certainty than that. Otherwise help can only come from those willing to become martyrs
(3) Morally highly questionable pardons of convicted criminals who committed high crimes. Preferably questioned by a well-functioning ethics commission for things like, well, conflicts of interest, corruption, and the like.
> The second type became a political necessity, for example to protect Liz Cheney from a vengeful administration.
Was it, though? It struck me as more empty political theater around an event largely defined by political theater.
You are asking if it was necessary to protect Liz Cheney? Have you not seen the lengths to which Trump is going to punish Comey? Trump even fired Bondi because she was ineffective in targeting his opponents.
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?
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From what I can gather, Hunter Biden was guilty of tax evasion, possessing a firearm when he shouldn't, and lying about drug use.
He shouldn't have been pardoned, sure, but you cannot possibly believe that's more corrupt than what Trump, his family, and his cronies do on a regular Tuesday afternoon.
No for sure. The prediction markets stuff really pisses me off.
Are you for real - apart from almost everything Trump has done? Did you miss how he picked an AG and prevented release of the Trump-Epstein files even though he signed into law a bill requiring full release with only redaction of victims. Did you miss the daily breeches of the emoluments clause?
Did you miss the pardoning of the Jan 6 people who hunted people down, set up a gallows, and those who tried to murder police?
Did you miss Trump sending USA troops into democrat cities to try and intimidate USA citizens, using his militia to murder people in cold blood?
Did you miss all the tariffs used to move the markets so Trump and his cronies could drain money from ordinary folks investments in the markets - he even boasted how rich he'd made his friends. From tariff front-running.
Hunter Biden broke the law, but his crimes look like schoolkid's high-jinks compared to Trump.
How about Trump's alt-coin to take overseas bribes?
Or using the instigation of war to win bets?
There're thousands more such crimes of corruption the Trump regime have done.
You can't be serious.
> You can't be serious.
They're not serious. They're a partisan actor who knows exactly how absurd it is to say something like that. They're just here to spread chaos.
> perhaps the greatest example of corruption in us history.
Donald Trump started a war with Iran to distract from the Epstein files, where he is mentioned thousands of times and credibly accused of raping a minor. But yeah, hunter biden. Most corrupt in US history. Sure.
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Which side is likely to be petty and target family members in bad faith?
The side of money
Crazy that this is literally one of the lines Trump ran on - weaponizing the DOJ.
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Not true. Liz Cheney hasn’t committed any crimes (as far as we know).
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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...
Neither is fomenting a coup. And yet...
Trump was never found immune for that. We was just reelected before the prosecution could run it's course, and the DOJ never prosecutes a sitting president.
Presumably the suit could resume once Trump steps down, but it might be wise for his democratic successor to offer him a pardon for the sake of an orderly transition
> it might be wise for his democratic successor to offer him a pardon for the sake of an orderly transition
Oh absolutely not. Any democratic successor that did such a thing would face such an immense backlash from the democratic and centrist voting base that it would effectively throw their entire term away. No, most of the democrats see the pardoning of Nixon as a grave error and want to see justice for what has been done this term.
> offer him a pardon for the sake of an orderly transition
Biden’s term just started fine without any transition
That's the thing though. Where do you draw the line from the hitman and the one who ordered it legally in their official capacity.
When you've a SCOTUS that can rule: you can't forgive student debt loans but rule an as*hole has a presidential immunity, then we have a problem.
Isn’t the definition of official duties vague and left to the courts?
My wondering is more about how Congress would react, because something like this could conceivably bring together the 75% consensus required for a constitutional amendment.
And I think even this supreme Court would agree that murdering Congress doesn't count as an official act.
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
The Democrats literally tried like 6 different ways to get Trump in jail, and arrested and jailed many of his supporters and even some of his administration. I highly doubt that the majority of the voting public which elected Trump will sit idle for any sort of unjust retribution to the current administration.
> sit idle for any sort of unjust retribution
This is genuinely hilarious. I guess you haven't been paying attention but "sitting idle during injustice" is all that Trump supporters do.
No, his base is already collapsing. He overextended with Iran, sent gas prices up, and as a direct result has finally started to bleed support from the know-nothings. I doubt Trump himself will ever face justice for his many crimes - he is likely to die of old age first - but the rest of the administration? Knives are out. They'll be back in prison just like happened in 2020 and 2021, and all those "dedicated supporters" will do nothing because the people who form this administration are petty, uninteresting people who were specifically chosen because they are not popular.
I don't agree with your prediction, the interesting thing is now, perhaps, we can actually wager on the outcomes, I wonder if there is anything on prediction markets about administration officials going to jail.
The idea that his support is collapsing is also pretty misstated. Yes, there's a lot of people that don't fully agree with Iran and other things, but that's a far cry from backing his ops.
I also think you are missing the shift in politics at all the lower levels to align with the current administration. Outside of the deepest wealthy Democrat areas, and even in some of those, the general position of local politicians and officials is moving towards the sort of nationalist populist attitude Trump has curated.
The same is also pervasive among state and federal government institutions with limited exception.
And of course that's all only IF Democrats win big in 2028 which is a far from guaranteed outcome.
> I highly doubt that the majority of the voting public which elected Trump will sit idle for any sort of unjust retribution to the current administration.
Is this a threat, or…?
“Let our guy do whatever he wants or we’ll try to murder Congress and fuck up the economy and start some more wars”?
“Don’t you dare jail us for insurrection or we’ll insurrect even harder”?
What a stupid, silly post.
It's just an assessment of the general political outlook. Anyone that thinks the public would tolerate some sort of widespread anti-Trump retribution is living deep in some sort of bubble. Most likely a small, wealthy, liberal one. They literally tried that last time and it resulted in an even more resounding Trump victory than 2016. The majority of the politically active people align with Trump. The old standby of Democrats win when more people vote is no longer true. The majority of the non-voting public aligns much more strongly with current "conservative" values than anything the left is currently offering.
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.
Don’t worry, Trump 47 already thought of this, specifically threatening a state until the governor pardoned someone.
https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/trump-threatened...
Yep exactly, goes both ways.
> were openly trying to murder congressmen
Is there evidence of this?
This is one of those things where I’d love to get on board with the popular view but I haven’t found evidence that anything beyond a sit in was intended and the arguments seem to be floating in air if you follow them down to their root. But I haven’t done that much research so I’d appreciate if you could share what makes you think this, thanks!
https://apnews.com/article/us-capitol-attack-14c73ee280c256a...
Congress can propose amendments but it takes 3/4 of the states to ratify them.
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.
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.
Who exactly 'forced' you to become a Democrat? If that were real, I'm pretty sure it would have made the news.
when you have only two choices and you have to be quite insane to choose one of them, you are, for all intents and purposes, forced to choose the other side (same argument works for left and right if you hear someone say they are forced to be what they are politically)
I never claimed that anyone forced me to become a Democrat.
I support them at the national level because they're the least evil of the two and exactly two relevant options available, and the one which at least gives lip service to progressive values. But that is still like supporting Mussolini over Hitler. Locally I vote third party when I have a chance.
And I live in Texas so none of my votes matter anyway.
You claimed that you had no choice but to become a Democrat. If that wasn't caused by coercion, then it certainly was a choice.
If I claimed that I had no choice but to become a Republican, I would be justifiably laughed at (even by fellow Republicans). Political views and affiliations are certainly choices.
Anyone can claim that their opinion is the only sane one.
>You claimed that you had no choice but to become a Democrat. If that wasn't caused by coercion, then it certainly was a choice.
I explained my choice. Choosing the lesser evil is a choice. I don't think anyone in this thread besides you is getting hung up on this, and I don't know why you're being so aggressively pedantic. It's weird.
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.
You would probably consider me to your right, but I'm right there with you. Prison should be protective: we lock up people from whom the rest of us will not be safe unless they are segregated. Ideally it is also rehabilitatative, and once (if!) prisoners will be safe and productive members of society there is no point to keeping them locked up.
If there are other methods short of prison that can render law-breakers harmless - such as restrictions on certain activities and occupations - then those should be pursued first.
The ghost of this philosophy, however attenuated, can be seen in systems of pardon and parole.
I acknowledge that a desire for retribution - to punish the evil-doer; make them suffer for what they've done - is a strong impulse (I feel it myself!), deeply imbedded in our tribal psyches, but it should be fought, not indulged.
This seems to me to be the only moral basis for a system of justice and incarceration, though I have no idea how to nudge a society towards this model. Some northern European countries approach it.
(In fact, I may well be nearer to your position than my description implies. I use the term "leftist" because I hate the way the term is applied to anyone who isn't a Republican. My beliefs, in the Clinton/Obama range, are "leftist" only if one is dumb enough to believe what one hears on Fox News.)
Heh. I sometimes describe myself as "basically a communist" for the exact same reason. Actually, I lived in Europe long enough to be maybe a little left of you, but still Clinton / Obama center-right, in world historical sense. I expect we'd get along. :-)
You sound like you are advocating for commutation, not pardons. Commutation lowers the penalty given to a criminal by executive decree (which the president can also do) A pardon makes it so the conviction never happened.
No, it doesn’t erase the conviction, it “forgives” you from the perspective of the government. Commutation ends the punitive aspect of the conviction.
I have a somewhat distant relative who was pardoned after being over-prosecuted by a zealous DA. They were a victim of a felony who did something in response that could have been charged as anything from a citation/violation to a felony, the DA’s discretion was to choose the harshest possible resolution.
They still have a hard time getting work because the conviction must be reported.
Thanks, I had misunderstood. It eliminates the legal consequences of conviction (unlike commutation) which is similar in a lot of ways, but it doesn't erase the conviction from the records.
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 think they are both generally ok, but also somewhat sketchy. I don't see them as much different from Clinton's pardons, Fords or Andrew Johnson's Christmas day pardons for confederate soldiers.
What big differences do you see?
If we are wishing changes in law, I wish an impeachment would automatically trigger a new election.
That's all we need. Every election followed by a dozen impeachment trials initiated by the losing party.
People in the conservative ecosystem are very much up in arms about the pardon of Hunter Biden.
Like most things in MAGAland, these matters are framed in a certain way, and all nuance is eliminated. The irony of being upset about Biden while being a cheerleader for Don Jr is lost.
I think you totally proved my point. Both conservatives and liberals will almost always look at pardons by a president from their own party much differently than those by a president from the other party.
I don’t think so. I was pretty much raised in a family that was staunch Democrats and in a few cases even party officials at the local level.
I was pretty young and not really caring, but I recall them being unhappy about Clinton’s last minute pardons as they were obviously compromised. I recall conversations about the Gerald Ford pardon of Nixon that happened around the context of Scooter Libby and there was an acceptance that that was more of the grist of politics than anything.
I don’t recall any president in my memory proposing pardons in advance to people blatantly breaking the law. When I was younger, republicans were almost solemnly committed to the “rule of law”. That changed in the last 20 years. This president is very tellingly an admirer of Andrew Jackson, who was in most measurement a disaster, as is this admin.
Personally, I live my life fairly “conservatively”, but have more progressive politics with some “exceptions” for the modern sense of the word. I respect those who disagree with my point of view, but am not tolerant of disdain for the law, basic fairness and society.
I definitely remember some Democrats being upset about the Marc Rich pardon.
Case law agrees with your reading only in part, namely that the pardon power may be exercised at any time after its commission, that is, not preemptive as in being granted before the act being pardoned has taken place.
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...
We "should" do many things that aren't feasible, like this or anything else that requires a Constitutional amendment.
Modifying pardon powers requires a constitutional amendment? That’s wild.
It's wild that anyone doesn't know that. It's less surprising than the fact that disallowing someone with 34 felony convictions from being President would also require a Constitutional amendment. Both the pardon power and the qualifications for President are specified by the Constitution, so of course the Constitution must be amended to change them.
> It's wild that anyone doesn't know that.
Lots of assumptions here, friend
I made no assumptions. Or if my "It's wild" makes assumptions, then surely your "That's wild" does as well. But really, neither do--they are simply expressions of a disparity between fact and expectation or desire.
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.
We are discussing the pardon power, an explicitly anti-democratic measure that is unilateral and unreviewable. The constitution defines a federal republic, not a democracy.
Not everything originally in the Constitution is a good idea, or at least isn't anymore. That's why it specifies an amendment process.
I wish detractors would follow the Article V process rather than amendment by usurpation, as George Washington condemned it.
I'm sorry that you experienced that. I understand the importance of listening to abuse victims. However, if child sacrifice did happen, it seems unlikely to ever be proven. I do not think that the case against Epstein or his associates is strengthened by assuming every accusation is true. For people who are not thinking about the subject carefully, learning that some accusations are inflated may cast others into doubt. What is provable is heinous enough.
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I agree. I dont care if “my guy” or “your guy” does it, it should not be allowed.
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.
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."
No, the original poster is 100% correct and if anything understating the issue.
US Attorneys are enormously powerful and because federal law is so vague in many ways, attracting their attention is a kiss of death. Most of federal defense work is highly technical and more about managing pleas and the mandatory sentencing guidelines. They agree to punishment and shape the plea deal to some crime that hits the number.
This weird technical approach to “justice” results in bad outcomes in other ways. The famously self-promoting Preet Bharara ended up letting a bunch of people free who quite obviously were taking bribes and fixing bids go free by abusing the “Honest Services” laws, which were subsequently thrown out on appeal.
The current administration is different - their weaponization of the system means that they literally can’t appoint qualified attorneys, who fear disbarment for what they will be directed to do. AUSAs have quit en masse and they are forced to hire toadies from 3rd tier law schools like Liberty University and make weird interim appointments. It’s a great time to be a criminal.
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.
It's hard to find quantative data but one clear example is DNA-based exoneration by the Innocence Project [1]
> Among the many insights drawn from these wrongful convictions is the realization that a guilty plea is not an uncommon outcome for innocent people who have been charged with a crime: 11 percent of the DNA exonerees recorded by the Innocence Project pleaded guilty
There's a thing called the Trial Penalty [2]. ~98% of charges result in a guilty plea. If all 100% went to trial the system would collapse. As such, prosecutors coerce plea deals [3]. But the Trial Penalty works pretty much like the example described: if you go to trial, you will be overcharged and face, say, 10-30+ years in jail. Or you can take a plea for 2 years.
This Trial Penalty is made worse with mandatory minimums and add-on charges like I mentioned (ie 924(c)).
This effect has been modeled with maths and game theory to show hoow extreme outcomes cause people to plead guilty more often [4].
This is a well-known problem in criminal justice. You're showing either a complete lack of imagination or simply don't think this will ever be used against you.
[1]: https://www.innocenceproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/...
[2]: https://www.tisonlawgroup.com/is-your-sixth-amendment-right-...
[3]: https://innocenceproject.org/coerced-pleas/
[4]: http://www.bernardosilveira.net/resources/Plea_bargain_Novem...
> There's a thing called the Trial Penalty [2]. ~98% of charges result in a guilty plea.
The gist of this argument is that there are huge numbers of innocent people railroaded into prison, but in the bigger picture crime is wildly under-punished.
More than half of murderers go free.
More than 98% of rapists never spend a day in prison.
At the end of the day this is all a question of where you stand on Blackstone’s Ratio. In the US, even with the rate of wrongful conviction we may have, we stand solidly opposed to zealous pursuit of justice for the victims of crimes, on the argument that an innocent person might be punished.
> ... but in the bigger picture crime is wildly under-punished.
Um, citation needed.
> More than half of murderers go free.
The burden is on the state to prove their case not on the accused to prove their innocence. If this completely unsubstantiated statistic is true (again, citation needed) why is the state so bad at making their cases?
> More than 98% of rapists never spend a day in prison.
Yes, rape is under-reported, under-charged and rarely results in a conviction. This is true. Society engages in a whole lot of victim blaming with sex crimes.
> we stand solidly opposed to zealous pursuit of justice for the victims of crimes
What? The US has 4% of the world's population but 25% of the world's prisoners. If over-policing and wildly capricious sentences (eg 10+ years for cannabis possession) worked, this would be the safest country on earth.
Why isn't it?
> 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
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.
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.
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> 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 is the kind of data I would like to see on ourworldindata.org. They have good tools for visualising data and comparing between countries.
https://pardonned.com/pardon/details/cindy-marie-griffith-fk... How come this ended up in the drug offence category?
The sentence reads: “Distribution of satellite cable television decryption devices”
good catch, I think the classifier saw the "distribution" in the sentence and assumed it was drug related. I could probably run each sentence against an ai model to classify things..
probably run it against something small like haiku and not cost me an arm and a leg.
I've yet to see any justification (not even a bogus one) for why the pardon power needs to exist in the modern world. It seems to have been invented originally as a counterbalance against corrupt or crazy judges. We have other ways to deal with that problem now.
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.
Ross Ulbricht:
https://pardonned.com/pardon/details/ross-william-ulbricht/
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.
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.
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
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.
The benefits of an absolute monarch. Glad we don't have that in a democracy.
May I ask you if your project does what nobody else does in USA?
are you asking me? if so.. I don't think I understand your question.
Can someone overlay this with recorded political donations?
Who owns the domain with the correct spelling? :)
Have you created a linked data SPARQL endpoint?
I don't know what SPARQL is.. so no :)
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
Land of the free ( white collard criminals )
Presidential pardons should be banned, period. All presidential pardons are political in nature, and therefore not based on justice.
This is equally true of the criminal justice process that sentences people to crimes at all.
Gonna make for a depressing read.
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.
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.
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.”
The numbers suggest that 94% of all Fines Abandoned were just from Trump's first term.
would be nice to search by district
cool project :D
Needs a filter to see how much they paid to Trump.
cool
Democrats in the US ignore the destruction of democracy by their own presidents, Clinton only came into the office to grift, no interest in the gravitas at all, and Obama, OMG 1904 pardons. Trump is an extension of what Clinton and Obama did, more extreme, more grift, more corruption, more executive powers, no guardrails, but not new.
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