We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.
TRUMP GRANTS CLEMENCY TO 30 MOSTLY NON-WIRED PRISONERS
Regardless of how one feels about President Trump, no one disputes that he retains the ability to be “unpredictable and unorthodox” (as The New York Times put it): After nearly a year of distributing pardons and commutations only to people who are politically or financially wired to his Administration, last Thursday, Trump issued 30 clemency grants largely to just plain folks.
The clemency grants went to an eclectic group. The news accounts focused on a pardon granted to Emory Jones, a longtime associate of rap mogul Jay-Z (released in 2010). However, the pardons included mostly lower-profile people serving long sentences and lacking obvious connections to the president or his allies.
Unusually, as of Sunday, the White House had released neither a press release trumpeting the clemencies nor list of recipients. Instead, the clemencies were announced by White House Pardon Czar Alice Marie Johnson on her X-formerly-known-as-Twitter account. She said
I am deeply grateful to President @RealDonaldTrump for granting clemency and pardons to 30 deserving individuals whose cases we carefully reviewed and brought forward—and to the White House Counsel team, led by Will Scharf, for the hard work behind these decisions.
In fairness to the Administration, the focus on a Jay-Z associate may have stemmed from Ms. Johnson identifying him in her post. The media also noted that John Dougherty, a Philadelphia union boss who had served a third of his 6-year sentence, had his sentence commuted. However, a White House official told the Times that “Dougherty’s sentence was commuted to allow him to care for his terminally ill wife. Her father had been caring for her, but he passed away while Mr. Dougherty was in prison, the official said.”
While too many federal prisoners face similar circumstances, it’s hard to argue against commutation under Dougherty’s circumstances.
Two of the clemencies were granted to prisoners serving time for marijuana trafficking convictions, according to Marijuana Moment.
Thursday’s clemencies suggest that the White House may be abandoning Trump’s very unpopular custom of clemencies for the rich and powerful. Ms. Johnson seems largely to have been sidelined since her appointment as Trump’s “pardon czar,” and the Dept of Justice’s Office of Pardon Attorney (under the execrable leadership of the recently departed Edward Martin) has had almost no role in Presidential clemencies.
As the Times noted, Trump’s “use of clemency has spawned a cottage industry of lawyers and lobbyists offering to use their connections to bring cases to his attention in exchange for hefty fees.” Thursday’s very low-key and anodyne clemency action may be Trump’s way of defusing the “pay-to-play” criticism leveled against his Administration over its grants to 1,700 people (1,500 of whom were January 6th rioters) in the last 20 months, some of whom spent a million bucks or more to secure their grants.
A return to normal clemency procedures – as opaque and clunky as it has traditionally been – would be an improvement.
In other pardon-related news, former DOJ Pardon Attorney Elizabeth Oyer – easily the most pro-clemency lawyer to occupy that post in the last 30 years – sued the government last Thursday to get her job back, alleging she was unlawfully dismissed for refusing to restore gun rights to actor and Trump friend Mel Gibson.
In the suit, filed Thursday in federal court in Washington, former Pardon Attorney Elizabeth Oyer says her firing last year violated her constitutional rights and federal civil service protections.
Oyer refused her boss’s demand that she recommend restoring Gibson’s gun rights despite his domestic violence-related conviction. Hours later, DOJ security officers arrived at her office with a termination letter signed by then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and escorted her from the building, according to her Complaint.
“This case is about much more than what happened to me,” Oyer said in a statement released by her attorneys. “I was fired because I refused to put politics ahead of my duty to the American people.”
NY Times, Trump’s Latest Clemency Grants Benefit Drug Offenders, Union Boss (September 4, 2026)
Alice Marie Johnson @alicemariefree, Post on X (September 4, 2026)
Marijuana Moment, Trump Releases More Federal Marijuana Prisoners As DEA Considers Rescheduling Cannabis (September 4, 2026)
Politico, Former pardon attorney sues DOJ for firing over Mel Gibson gun rights case (September 2, 2026)
Complaint, Oyer v. Blanche, Case No 1:26-cv-3092 (Doc. 1) (D.D.C., September 3, 2026)
~ Thomas L. Root