Most Recent Pardons Don’t Bode Well For Federal Clemency – Update for December 2, 2025

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We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

PARDONS FROM THE SUBLIME TO THE WEIRD

President Trump conducted the annual turkey pardon on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, sparing “Waddle” and “Gobble” from the processing house.

At the same time, he extended the pardon to the Peach and Blossom, the two turkeys President Biden pardoned last year. Trump contended that Biden’s pardon of the birds was invalid because it was signed with an autopen instead of by Biden himself.

“The turkeys known as Peach and Blossom last year have been located, and they were on their way to be processed, in other words to be killed, but I stopped that journey and I am officially pardoning them,” Trump said.

Last Friday, Trump wrote on Truth Social: “Any document signed by Sleepy Joe Biden with the Autopen, which was approximately 92% of them, is hereby terminated, and of no further force or effect. The Autopen is not allowed to be used if approval is not specifically given by the President of the United States.” 

Trump also said that he has now overturned all the executive orders under the Biden administration and “anything else that was not directly signed by Crooked Joe Biden.”

Unless it’s an autopen doing the signing

It is not clear what “anything else that was not directly signed by Crooked Joe Biden” might include, such as clemencies. However, any notion that pardons might be excluded was undercut by Trump’s comments during the turkey pardon. Trump has previously suggested that Biden’s clemencies were illegal, but he has not yet tried to void any of them. His recent actions suggest that such an attempt is not out of the question.

Trump continues to issue clemencies one at a time, even where doing so contradicts his policies. In a Saturday social media post, Trump said that drug cartels present one of the most pressing dangers to the USA, saying in a social media post that airspace above and surrounding Venezuela should be considered “CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY.”

But this pronouncement followed Trump’s Friday social media announcement of a pardon for Juan Orlando Hernández, former president of Honduras, who was convicted of drug trafficking charges and has 35 years to go on his 45-year federal sentence.

The New York Times said, “The two posts displayed a remarkable dissonance in the president’s strategy, as he moved to escalate a military campaign against drug trafficking while ordering the release of a man prosecutors said had taken “cocaine-fueled bribes” from cartels and “protected their drugs with the full power and strength of the state — military, police and justice system.”

Trump said he had issued the pardon to Hernández because “they gave him 45 years because he was the president of the country — you could do this to any president on any country.”  Trump said that friends had alerted him to the wrongs done to Hernández: “Many people that I greatly respect” had told him Hernández had been “treated very harshly and unfairly.”

“Why would we pardon this guy and then go after Maduro for running drugs into the United States,” wrote Sen. Bill Cassidy (R., La.) on X. “Lock up every drug runner! I don’t understand why he is being pardoned.”

Meanwhile, just in case you think Trump’s pardon czar Alice Marie Johnson has gone dormant, she said in a Thanksgiving social media post that Trump had commuted the 7-year sentence of a private equity executive who had served less than two weeks for his role in what prosecutors described as a $1.6 billion scheme that defrauded thousands of victims.

David Gentile reported to prison on November 14th and suffered horribly in a minimum-security camp for nearly two weeks before being released on Thanksgiving Eve, according to the BOP. Alice Johnson said that she was “deeply grateful to see David Gentile heading home to his young children” and called it an “act of mercy.”

A White House official used the old refrain of “Biden something something,” suggesting that the Biden administration’s Ponzi scheme claim against Gentile’s company – good enough to convince a unanimous jury – was nevertheless “profoundly undercut by the fact that GPB had explicitly told investors what would happen… At trial, the government was unable to tie any supposedly fraudulent representations to Mr. Gentile.” The White House official spoke on condition of anonymity due to not being authorized to speak on the topic.

Ironically, we have always advised people seeking clemency that arguing the unjustness of their conviction was strongly disfavored.  Apparently, that’s the case no longer.

ABC News, Trump’s turkey pardoning turns political, but Waddle and Gobble are spared (November 25, 2025)

NBC, Trump ‘cancelling’ Biden executive orders signed by autopen (November 28, 2025)

New York Times, In Announcing Pardon of Drug Trafficker While Threatening Venezuela, Trump Displays Contradictions (November 29, 2025)

Wall Street Journal, He Was Convicted of Running a Narco State. Now Trump Plans to Pardon Him. (December 1, 2025)

Reuters, Trump frees former GPB Capital CEO after Biden admin’s Ponzi scheme sentence (November 30, 2025)

X.com, Alice Marie Johnson – All Grace (November 27, 2025)

~ Thomas L. Root

BOP To Close Terminal Island – Update for December 1, 2025

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We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

TERMINAL ISLAND CLOSING AS BOP RAMPS UP INFRASTRUCTURE REPAIR

The Federal Bureau of Prisons is closing FCI Terminal Island – located near Long Beach, California, near Los Angeles – over concerns about crumbling infrastructure, according to an internal memo obtained last week by the Associated Press.

Director William K. Marshall III told BOP staff on Tuesday that the agency is suspending operations at Terminal Island, a low-security prison south of Los Angeles that currently houses 952 inmates. The decision to close the facility “is not easy, but is absolutely necessary,” Marshall wrote, calling it a matter of “safety, common sense, and doing what is right for the people who work and live inside that institution.”

Marshall said if the prison remains open, falling concrete in tunnels that deliver infrastructure could hurt workers or create a prison-wide emergency. “There is a very real risk that falling concrete could strike the steam lines,” he wrote. “If that happens, heat to the institution could be lost instantly, creating an emergency that could require the evacuation of nearly 1,000 inmates in a matter of hours. We are not going to wait for a crisis. We are not going to gamble with lives. And we are not going to expect people to work or live in conditions that we would never accept for ourselves.”

The 87-year-old Terminal Island facility is the latest prison to be targeted for closure as the BOP struggles with mounting staff vacancies, a $4 billion repair backlog, and an expanded mission to support President Trump’s immigration crackdown and to invest billions in a rebuilt Alcatraz prison.

In a statement to Government Executive, a BOP spokeswoman said efforts to protect staff and inmates at the facility will begin immediately. “A strategic and targeted approach will be used to relocate inmates currently housed at FCI Terminal Island to other locations across the agency,” she said. “Several placement options are being evaluated, with a priority on keeping individuals as close as possible to their anticipated release locations.”

BOP said decisions regarding what to do about the facility, including whether and how to repair it, will wait until a “further assessment” of the situation there. News of the planned evacuation came just days after the agency touted $2 billion in funding to address deferred maintenance priorities across the federal prison system from this year’s budget reconciliation law.

According to the Los Angeles Times, an assessment last year revealed that Terminal Island needs $110 million in repairs over the next 20 years, raising questions about whether the BOP will ever be in a position to move inmates back to the facility.

In late 2024, the BOP announced that seven other facilities would be shuttered. The decision to close one, FPC Duluth, was reversed, but the others have been decommissioned.

The report that Terminal Island will close came only a few days after BOP Deputy Director Joshua Smith released a video message to BOP staff reporting that $2 billion had become available for repair of BOP infrastructure. He said the BOP hasn’t

wasted a minute. We began with the simplest most commonsense step imaginable. We looked at how money was actually being spent, and what we found was jaw-dropping. Entire complexes that included two USP’s getting only $1.8 million, while a standalone USP somehow got $2 [million]. No rhyme, no reason, just the same old good old boy system deciding whose friends got taken care of.

Smith said that facilities, functions planning, construction, maintenance, and environmental energy – roughly 2000 positions within the institutions – will report to his office. “This isn’t bureaucracy for bureaucracy’s sake,” Smith said. “That’s how we get things done, centralized oversight, national prioritization, real accountability, and the kind of data-driven decision making that finally lets us attack the backlog instead of just talking about it.”

The infrastructure program will depend on training inmates in skilled trades and having them work on infrastructure repair in positions that pay on a scale with UNICOR.

Associated Press, Federal Bureau of Prisons says falling concrete is forcing it to close a prison near Los Angeles (November 25, 2025)

Government Executive, Bureau of Prisons to ‘suspend operations’ at California penitentiary (November 25, 2025)

KABC-TV, San Pedro prison to suspend operations amid concerns over falling concrete (November 25, 2025)

Los Angeles Times, Crumbling ceilings in underground tunnels force closure of Terminal Island prison (November 26, 2025)

BOP, A New Era For Facilities (November 22, 2025)

~ Thomas L. Root

Prison Fellowship Backs Safer Supervision Bill – Update for November 28, 2025

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We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

PRISON FELLOWSHIP THROWS SUPPORT TO SAFER SUPERVISION ACT

(And, no, I am not even going to comment in passing about the President’s annual turkey-pardoning spectacle last Tuesday, which President Trump managed to make even more cringeworthy than normal by using the occasion to take yet another swipe at former President Biden).

Prison Fellowship, the nation’s largest faith-based nonprofit serving currently and formerly incarcerated people, announced last week that its staffers –including 18 former prisoners – will blitz congressional offices to encourage lawmakers to support the Safer Supervision Act (S. 3077 and H.R. 5883).

The legislation aims to modernize federal supervised release by requiring courts to make individualized determinations at sentencing whether supervision is appropriate and allowing FTCs – earned time credits during incarceration – to be applied toward conditional release.

Supervised release has become almost universal in federal sentencing. In 2024, it was imposed in nearly 99% of cases involving black defendants, 98% for white defendants, and 83% for Hispanic defendants. The average term of supervised release in 2024 was 47 months, following an average prison term of just over five years.

Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) introduced the Senate version and Representative Laurel Lee (R-FL) – no relation to Mike – introduced the House bill. Both bills have Democratic Party co-sponsors.

S. 3077, Safer Supervision Act

H.R. 5883, Safer Supervision Act

Daily Reflector, Prison Fellowship Urges Congress To Pass Safer Supervision Act With Day of Action on Capitol Hill (November 18, 2025)

~ Thomas L. Root

Grand Jury Master Class – Update for November 26, 2025

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We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

A ‘HOW TO’ MANUAL FOR GETTING GRAND JURY MATERIALS (IT AIN’T EASY)

Watching Eastern District of Virginia US Attorney Lindsey Halligan make a hash of the criminal action against former FBI director James Comey provided a month’s worth of entertainment last week. It’s why a lot of people watch NASCAR – not for the racing but because there may be an awesome wreck at some point.

Last week’s legal festivities culminated in US District Court Judge Cameron McGowen Currie dismissing the Comey and Letitia James indictments this past Monday because crack insurance lawyer Halligan – although eminently qualified to be a United States Attorney – was never properly appointed to her position.

The legal geek in me was somewhat disappointed, because it left some of the meaty, substantive issues – such as did the grand jury ever really see the indictment that was ultimately handed up and is this the queen mother of all vindictive prosecutions – unanswered. But regardless, the litigation has thus far been a master’s course for a defendant seeking access to the records of the grand jury that indicted him.

Previously, a US Magistrate Judge, recognizing that ordering the prosecution to turn over grand jury material was “an extraordinary remedy,” had nonetheless noted that “given the … prospect that government misconduct may have tainted the grand jury proceedings, disclosure of grand jury materials under these unique circumstances is necessary.” The 24-page opinion granted the defense full access to grand jury material, finding evidence that Halligan may have misinformed the grand jurors of the law, violated the defendant’s attorney-client privilege by using materials seized from one of his lawyers at the time of the search, violated the 4th Amendment, and handed up an indictment that was never approved by the grand jury.

The Magistrate Judge found eleven separate, detailed and serious allegations supported release. “The traditional policies underlying grand jury secrecy are only moderately applicable to this case,” the Court said. “Here, the grand jury’s role in this case is over and the statute of limitations has expired so there is no danger that release of grand jury materials could impact future grand jury proceedings. The only person to testify before the grand jury was a single federal agent. There are no other ‘persons who have information with respect to the commission of crimes’ who testified before the grand jury, either voluntarily or pursuant to a subpoena. The government has offered no particularized reason why grand jury materials should be kept from the person the grand jury indicted… On the other hand, as the Court has found, these materials are essential if Mr. Comey is to fully and fairly defend himself in the face of the irregularities that have characterized this investigation from its inception.”

The decision underscores the level of detail required to obtain access to grand jury materials. It should be required reading for defendants who figure that a “pretty please” is all it takes to get access to grand jury materials.

United States v. Comey, Case No 1:25-cr-272, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 226131 (E.D.Va. November 17, 2025)

~ Thomas L. Root

Bureau of Prisons Slipping on ICE – Update for November 25, 2025

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We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

THAT GIANT SUCKING SOUND…

Remember H. Ross Perot? During his unsuccessful third-party bid for president in 1992, he warned that the “giant sucking sound” we all heard was the sound of jobs going to Mexico.

It turns out that Bureau of Prisons director William K. Marshall III is hearing one of his own, the sound of BOP correctional officers quitting for the gold-plated working conditions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Last week, Pro Publica reported that “ICE has been on a recruiting blitz, offering $50,000 starting bonuses and tuition reimbursement at an agency that has long offered better pay than the federal prison system. For many corrections officers, it’s been an easy sell.”

By the start of November, the BOP had lost at least 1,400 more staff this year than it had hired, according to ProPublica. “We’re broken and we’re being poached by ICE,” one union official told ProPublica. “It’s unbelievable. People are leaving in droves.”

The exodus comes amid shortages of critical supplies. Staffers told Pro Publica that some facilities had even stopped providing basic hygiene items for officers, such as paper towels, soap and toilet paper.

Fewer corrections officers result in more lockdowns, less programming, fewer health care services for inmates, greater risks to staff, and more grueling hours of mandatory overtime. Prison teachers and medical staff are being forced to step in as corrections officers on a regular basis.

In a video posted last Wednesday afternoon, Deputy Director Josh Smith said that the agency was “left in shambles by the previous administration” and would take years to repair. Staffing levels, he said, were “catastrophic,” which, along with crumbling infrastructure and corruption, had made the prisons less safe.

He also frankly appraised the agency’s approach to the First Step Act:

The First Step Act was sabotaged by the Biden DOJ and BOP.  They have mismanaged millions meant for FSA implementation – building a time credit calculator that has never worked right – and FSA programming required by the law never materialized. Instead, they hired an outside contractor that blocked every outside program submitted by some of the most impactful faith-based organizations. They only approved internal BOP classes, and, despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars, the BOP still only added 100 halfway house beds in six years… all while reentry services division lost over 90 critical positions.

They diverted hundreds of millions of First Step Act funding into non-FSA programming and unrelated projects that they just labeled ‘FSA.’ This mismanagement squandered taxpayer money and undermined public safety. Lockdowns and collective punishment have become knee-jerk reactions… BOP has been consistently voted the worst place to work in all the federal government… This is the hand that we’ve been dealt, a Bureau on the brink scarred by decades of failure…

The so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law on July 4th, could offer some financial support for the agency’s staffing woes, as it will route another $5 billion to the BOP over four years — $3 billion of which is specifically earmarked to improve retention, hiring and training. Yet exactly what the effects of that cash infusion will look like remains to be seen: Pro Publica reported that the “Bureau declined to answer questions about when it will receive the money or how it will be spent.”

Pro Publica, “We’re Broken”: As Federal Prisons Run Low on Food and Toilet Paper, Corrections Officers Are Leaving in Droves for ICE (November 20, 2025)

BOP, Video Message from the Deputy Director: A Bureau on the Brink (November 19, 2025)

~ Thomas L. Root

‘Hell’ vs. Truth on Federal Clemency – Update for November 24, 2025

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We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

GIVING ‘HELL’ TO THE CLEMENCY POWER

President Harry S Truman’s supporters liked to shout, “Give ‘em hell, Harry!” at his rallies. However, as Truman explained it, ‘I never did give them hell. I just told the truth, and they thought it was hell’.”

I once again heard from a reader last week that some of the guys at his facility thought I was too negative about President Trump. Seven years ago, I wrote glowingly about his support for the First Step Act, still the most consequential piece of criminal justice reform legislation in the last 30 years. But Trump has done nothing for federal criminal justice reform since then, and that’s the truth. To my critics, it just seems like ‘hell’.

‘Hell’, you ask? Minnesota constitutional lawyer Marshall Tanick last week aptly described the hellscape of Trump clemencies:

In addition to the unconditional pardons issued on the first day of his current term to all 1,500-plus January 6th rioters, as he promised during the campaign, with Floridians comprising the largest state group, and the 77 more recently to white collar election denier operatives, the president has issued more than 1,600 pardons and commutations of sentences this year. Nearly all of them, with a few exceptions like star baseball player Darryl Strawberry, have been given to political supporters and financial donors to his campaign or their relatives or those with business interests aligned with the president and his family. Most of them were charged and many convicted of massive fraudulent schemes.

A transparent theme has been political leanings, as reflected in his explanation for commuting the seven-year sentence of mendacious Republican former Congress member George Santos after serving a puny four months. The president said he released the discredited New Yorker from confinement because he did “ALWAYS VOTE REPUBLICAN,” as if that is the criterion for the exercise of presidential lenity.

Still waiting for your pardon or commutation? You probably don’t fit the criteria. Not like Dan Wilson, a man who – perhaps alone in American history – has received two presidential pardons in a single year. Wilson, a Kentucky militia member who joined the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, was indicted for that and as a felon-in-possession under 18 USC § 922(g)(1) for the guns agents found when they searched his home on a J6-based search warrant.

Trump had already erased Wilson’s felony conviction for his role in the riot when he issued his Inauguration Day pardon for all of the 1,500 participants in the attack. But Wilson remained in prison because the federal court concluded that the pardon was limited to J6 conduct and did not extend to separate crimes. Dan still had three years to serve for the 922(g)(1).

Last week, Trump quietly pardoned Wilson for the felon-in-possession count, reasoning that “because the search of Mr. Wilson’s home was due to the events of January 6, and they should have never been there in the first place…” according to a White House official.

In a separate action, Trump pardoned Suzanne Ellen Kaye for having threatened to shoot federal agents if they came to her house to question her about January 6th. The White House said her case was “clearly a case of disfavored First Amendment political speech being prosecuted and an excessive sentence.”

Meanwhile, if you were not at the January 6th riot, your clemency application will sit at the Office of Pardon Attorney. As I noted last week, only 1% of Trump’s clemencies this year went through the OPA.

‘But wait,’ you say. ‘You don’t have to be a rioter or election denier to get a pardon.’ Right you are. Just last week, Trump also pardoned Joseph Schwartz, a nursing home magnate who was sentenced last April to 36 months in prison for failing to pay $38 million in payroll taxes withheld from employees’ earnings. Schwartz hired a couple of right-wing lobbyists, paying them $960,000 to secure a pardon. Although Trump’s own interim US Attorney at the time, Alina Habba, said last April the offense deserved prison time (recommending a shocking 12 months and a day sentence), Trump signed off on the pardon. Schwartz walked out of FCI Otisville camp last week after serving three months.

A White House official, asked by the Washington Post whether Trump or others in the White House or Justice Department had met with Schwartz’s lobbyists, responded with a statement:

No one from White House Counsel nor [White House pardon czar] Alice Johnson met with the individuals named. Either way, the President is the final decision-maker on all pardons, and any one spending money to lobby for pardons is foolishly wasting funds.

Uh-huh.

I’m not alone in criticizing Trump’s gross abuse of clemency (at the expense of federal prisoners who deserve thoughtful consideration if not outright grant of commutation or pardon). Law professor Mark Osler, a national clemency expert, wrote last week on Sentencing Matters Substack:

These are hard days for people like me who believe that the pardon power is an essential part of the Constitution and a beautiful machine that embodies one of our primary national virtues: a belief in second chances. While clemency has been subjected to sharp criticism before (most recently, in the wake of Bill Clinton’s shady pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich), the wave of criticism now — most often turning on President Trump’s grants to loyalists, celebrities, and business associates — has sometimes included outright calls to simply get rid of the federal pardon power.

Conservative writer Jonah Goldberg wrote last week that

[t]he president has some unique powers… including the sole, final authority to grant pardons. Pardons cannot be reviewed or repealed by Congress or the courts. It’s time we changed that—and the only way to do so is by amending the Constitution.

There are two reasons for getting rid of the president’s power to pardon. The first is the grotesque abuses of that power by Presidents Trump and Biden. In his first term, Trump issued a series of egregious pardons for, among others, lackeys, war criminals and political allies.

Biden then issued blanket and preemptive pardons for his family and various political allies… and a raft of other pardons and commutations that Biden allegedly just outsourced to ideologues on his staff.

Back in office in 2025, Trump has outdone Biden and himself. He launched his second term by granting mass pardons to the goons who beat police with flagpoles and stormed the Capitol on his behalf on January 6, 2021. Since then, he’s pardoned a rogues’ gallery of donors, partisan allies, and people with business ties to him or his family…

This coming week, the White House will pardon two turkeys out of the 219 million to be slaughtered in the US over the next 12 months. That puts a turkey’s odds of clemency at about 1:110 million. Sadly, for federal prisoners without money or political ties to the Trump Administration, the odds are not much better.

I’m for any president, regardless of party, who properly uses the clemency power to correct injustice. That has not been Trump in 2025. 

Just truth. Not hell.

Naples News, Presidential pardon process needs to be changed (November 20, 2025)

Washington Post, The case of a felon who paid lobbyists nearly $1 million to seek a Trump pardon (November 22, 2025)

Politico, Trump re-pardons a Jan. 6 defendant to erase unrelated gun conviction (November 15, 2025)

NPR, Trump issues two pardons related to Jan. 6 investigation (November 15, 2025)

Sentencing Matters Substack, A Terrible Use of a Beautiful Machine (November 17, 2025)

Los Angeles Times, Instead of Addressing Injustice, Pardons Only Pervert Justice (November 19, 2025)

USA Today, You can choose the names of turkeys to get a presidential pardon. Here’s how. (November 22, 2025)

~ Thomas L. Root

BOP Union Sues For Its Place At The Table – Update for November 21, 2025

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We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

EMPLOYEES UNION SUES BOP TO REVERSE CANCELLATION

A lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut challenges the BOP’s termination last September of collective bargaining rights with Council of Prison Locals 33, which represents over 85% of all BOP employees.

The lawsuit asks the court to reverse the termination of collective bargaining.

The decision to terminate collective bargaining came after President Trump signed an executive order to end collective bargaining for agencies whose primary functions involve intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative or national security work.

The lawsuit argues the executive order did not require the BOP to cancel collective bargaining, and was “arbitrary and capricious,” retaliation against union speech and advocacy.  The BOP claimed the union as “an obstacle to progress instead of a partner in it” when announcing the decision to terminate the CBA.

WHBF-TV, Federal lawsuit challenges termination of collective bargaining by U.S. Bureau of Prisons (November 14, 2025)

~ Thomas L. Root

Meanwhile, in the Supreme Court Certiorari Petition Pile – Update for November 20, 2025

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We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

MORE FUN WITH SCOTUS

The Supreme Court has relisted a case that asks whether sentencing decisions based on uncharged, acquitted, or dismissed conduct violate the 5th and 6th Amendments.

A “relist” means that the Court could not decide whether to hear the case at its initial conference and has relisted it to consider it again. Cases rarely get picked for review without being relisted one or more times.

In 2023, the Supreme Court relisted a group of about 10 cases asking the same question before denying review to all of them at once at the end of the term in July.

In other news, the Supreme Court will consider Melynda Vincent’s petition for certiorari that asks whether 18 USC § 922(g)(1)’s felon-in-possession provision violates the 2nd Amendment by prohibiting her from acquiring a gun. Vincent was convicted of bank fraud 15 years ago for writing some bad checks while in the throes of drug addiction. Since then, she cleaned up, graduated from a drug treatment program, earned an undergraduate degree and two graduate degrees, and founded the Utah Harm Reduction Coalition – a nonprofit organization for drug treatment and criminal-justice reform – and a mental health counseling service, Life Changes Counseling.

Bartunek v. United States, Case No. 25-5720 (petition for certiorari pending)

Vincent v. United States, Case No. 24-1155 (petition for certiorari pending)

~ Thomas L. Root

The Pardon Power’s a Wreck – Update for November 18, 2025

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We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

PARDON OUR PARDONS

Sobering news on the clemency front. To many, it seems that President Trump has exercised his pardon and commutation pen unlike any of his predecessors. Recent reports from Politico and ProPublica make it clear that the President’s beneficiaries have mostly been people with access to him or his inner circle.  Those petitioners who have followed rules set out by the Dept of Justice have been left out in the cold.

Trump has granted clemency to allies, donors and culture-war figures — as well as to people like him who were convicted of financial wrongdoing. A week ago, he granted pardons to 77 people, including Rudy Giuliani and other allies tied to Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Those clemencies came on top of the commutation awarded last month to Republican George Santos, the disgraced former New York congressman found guilty of defrauding donors and lying to Congress. Trump freed Santos after he had served fewer than 3 months of his 87-year sentence

Politico said, “The pardons are the latest attempt by Trump to rewrite the history of his bid to seize a second term he didn’t win in 2020, an effort that culminated in the violent attack on the Capitol by a mob of his supporters who attempted to halt the transfer of power. Trump pardoned more than 1,000 of those who joined the mob within hours of his inauguration in January, including hundreds who assaulted police officers protecting the Capitol.”

For those who followed DOJ protocol, ProPublica reported, “the sense is growing that the process no longer matters; they’ve watched the public database of applicants swell with thousands of pending cases, while Trump grants pardons to people who never entered the system at all.”

In the 10 months since Trump took office, about 10,000 people have filed petitions for pardon or commutation, two-thirds of the total number of clemency applications (14,867) filed during the four years of the Biden presidency.

DOJ rules require that people seeking pardons wait five years after their release before applying, show good conduct and remorse, and file petitions through the Office of the Pardon Attorney. But in his second term, Trump has largely abandoned that process.

“It’s unfair to the little guy,” said Margaret Love, who served as pardon attorney from 1990 to 1997 under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton and now represents people in clemency cases. “I tell people, ‘Sorry, you don’t have a chance.’”

In Trump’s first term, fewer than half of his clemency recipients had applied through the Pardon Attorney. By one estimate, only 1 in 10 had been recommended by the OPA.

This term is worse. Now, only 10 of the roughly 1,600 people granted pardons (under 1%) had filed petitions with the Pardon Attorney, and even within that small group, some did not appear to meet DOJ’s standards and requirements.

St. John’s law professor Mark Osler, a national expert on federal clemency, wrote yesterday in Sentencing Matters Substack:

Imagine a classic Jaguar sedan, perhaps a 1972 XJ in British racing green — elegant, stunningly fast, unusual. It’s a joy to drive, wonderful to look at, and can come to define its owner in a way few cars can.

For those of us who care about federal clemency, watching President Donald Trump’s use of the pardon power in his second term has been like standing by as a driver uses that classic Jag to knock down an old house by slamming it into a wall again and again and again as a crowd gathers, aghast. It is a terrible use of a beautiful machine.

These are challenging times for individuals like me who believe that the pardon power is an integral part of the Constitution and a vital institution that embodies one of our primary national virtues: a belief in second chances. While clemency has been subjected to sharp criticism before (most recently, in the wake of Bill Clinton’s shady pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich), the wave of criticism now — most often turning on President Trump’s grants to loyalists, celebrities, and business associates — has sometimes included outright calls to simply get rid of the federal pardon power.

I somehow doubt that anything is likely to improve before it worsens. For now, it is harder than ever for a federal prisoner not connected to this President by money, politics or some other transaction deemed beneficial to Trump to get noticed – let alone approved – for federal clemency.

ProPublica, How Trump Has Exploited Pardons and Clemency to Reward Allies and Supporters (November 12, 2025)

Politico, Trump pardons top allies who aided bid to subvert the 2020 election (November 10, 2025)

Sentencing Matters Substack, A Terrible Use of a Beautiful Machine (November 17, 2025)

~ Thomas L. Root