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PARDON OUR MESS AT THE OFFICE OF PARDON ATTORNEY
The Dept of Justice Office of Pardon Attorney has always been rather opaque. Last week, we got a glimpse of President Trump’s OPA, and what we saw was not good.
Under the Constitution, the President holds unreviewable clemency power. However, since 1789, various government offices have provided the President with administrative support for the exercise of executive clemency. In 1865, a DOJ office was formally delegated the responsibility of assisting the President in vetting clemency petitions. It became the “Office of Pardon Attorney” in 1894. Historically, presidents have relied on OPA’s pardon review process to rely on the pardon attorney process before making pardons, but they are not required to do so.
OPA used to apply five standards for someone to be considered for clemency, including conduct since conviction, seriousness of the offense, acceptance of responsibility for the crime, the extent of punishment already suffered (especially collateral consequences), and references from other people who could attest to the applicant’s good character and rehabilitation.
Not anymore. A troubling New York magazine article last week detailed the mess that OPA has become, and the implications for federal prisoners without rich parents or powerful friends.
Elizabeth Oyer, who headed OPA when Trump came into office, was the first former public defender to serve as Pardon Attorney. Her staff of 45 was responsible for reviewing the cases of thousands of offenders to determine who was worthy of clemency. But within hours of President Trump taking office, “she was cut out of the process, which was rerouted from the top down.” Oyer told New York that she began learning about Trump clemency grants “when they popped up in the news.”
Oyer was fired last March when she refused to agree that actor and friend of Trump Mel Gibson should have his gun rights restored. Gibson was disqualified under 18 USC § 922(g)(9) because of a misdemeanor conviction for violence against his ex-girlfriend and the mother of his 1-year-old daughter at the time. New York described Oyer’s firing as “a death knell for the office, according to some former staffers.”
“The office has been totally decimated,” an ex-staffer was quoted as saying. The office is down from 45 to about 15 employees. Many took buyouts when Elon Musk’s DOGE offered them last April. “Others,” New York said, “quit rather than stick around in an office where their work was being ignored.” (DOJ, of course, denies that OPA has been sidelined).
Two people appear to be in charge. Alice Marie Johnson, the “pardon czar” Trump appointed a year ago – a former federal prisoner serving life for a cocaine trafficking conspiracy before Trump commuted her sentence in 2018 (and later upgraded her to a full pardon) – works out of the White House. “Some ex-staffers hoped Johnson would maintain the office’s mission-based work…” one former OPA employee said. “But I don’t know that she has a staff,” says another former employee.
The official head of OPA is Edward Martin, named Pardon Attorney as a consolation prize after he was found to be too controversial to pass the Senate appointment process to be US Attorney for Washington, D.C. New York reported that Martin is uninterested in the Pardon Attorney position and apparently appears at the office about once a week. “He’s just not there that much,” the staffer said.
The best way to obtain clemency in the current environment is to pay big in order to go around OPA. Lobbying for clemency is big business. Billionaire Changpeng Zhao, who violated money-laundering prevention statutes at his crypto exchange, Binance, was pardoned last fall, about a month after hiring the lobbying firm of Donald Trump Jr.’s friend Ches McDowell. The cost for a month’s lobbying? $450,000. (It helped that Binance was also a major backer of the Trump family’s cryptocurrency stablecoin). Nursing-home magnate Joseph Schwartz paid conservative lobbyists nearly $1 million last April to lobby for a pardon on tax-fraud charges; by November, Schwartz was free.
“Attorneys close to Trump are now seeking fatter fees,” New York reported. “Rudy Giuliani was reportedly shopping around a $2 million price last year. One former pardon-office lawyer… said they were hearing lobbyists go as high as $5 million to work their connections in the White House.”
Last Tuesday, in his State of the Union address, Trump asked that Congress “pass tough legislation to ensure that violent and dangerous repeat offenders are put behind bars and importantly, that they stay there.” Trump is not a friend of federal inmates who have neither connections nor a lot of money. Yet I hear weekly from prisoners believing that Trump is about to grant a large number of commutations to federal prisoners.
Not likely. All that is certain is that OPA has been broken and made irrelevant by the White House. “It’s heartbreaking,” one attorney who left OPA shortly after Oyer was fired told New York. “It’s not that they’re doing it differently that makes it heartbreaking. It’s that it’s corrupt.”
New York magazine, Trump’s Pardon Office Is ‘Totally Decimated’ The team has been virtually replaced by highly paid lobbyists and friends of the president. (February 27, 2026)
Politico, Trump showcases gruesome stories throughout the night (February 24, 2026)
~ Thomas L. Root
