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‘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

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

Jailer Trump Sends Former Death Row Prisones to Supermax – Update for October 17, 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.

PRESIDENT TRUMP MAKES BOP DESIGNATION DECISIONS

Among the last clemencies made by President Biden before leaving office were his commuting the sentences of 37 BOP death row inmates to life. Hours later, newly installed President Trump ordered that the life sentences of these men be made into what the Wall Street Journal called “a living hell.”

Based on the order Trump had Attorney General Pam Bondi issue, the BOP officials canceled plans to transfer most of the inmates to mainline prisons. Instead, Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove III executed Bondi’s order, directing that all but a few prisoners requiring medical facilities be designated to ADMAX Florence, which the Wall Street Journal called “the harshest institution in the federal system.”

The Journal said that Aaron Reitz, then an assistant attorney general, led a roundtable with the families and said he was disappointed that the cells “have windows to see daylight.” He suggested that prison food was too good for these men. “I’ve got no problem with gruel.” he said. “If made right, it’s a nutritious all-in-one meal.” Later in an interview, Reitz said, “If you’re not going to be killed lawfully at the hands of the state, well, your prison sentence is going to be hard as hell.” 

The Journal reported that “while the president’s authority to grant clemency for federal crimes is virtually unfettered, the power to impose vengeance via prison assignments isn’t clear.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi said Trump wanted to “ensure that they spend the remainder of their lives in conditions consistent with the egregious crimes they committed.” David Fathi, director of the National Prison Project at the ACLU, which represents 21 of the inmates, said that none of the prisoners qualified for ADX placement under the BOP’s Program Statement 5100.08, Inmate Security Designation and Custody Classification Manual. ‘None of our plaintiffs were designated for ADX,” he said. “Under Attorney General Bondi, all of our plaintiffs have been slated for ADX, not because of a security risk but to inflict maximum suffering.”

“People should be very concerned about the president and attorney general’s disregard for the law in this case,” Fathi said. “Today, it may be people who are very unpopular. Tomorrow, it could be anybody.”

Wall Street Journal, Biden Spared 37 Killers From Execution. Trump Ordered Up a Lifetime of Torment (October 11, 2025)

Bureau of Prisons Program Statement 5100.08 CN-2, Inmate Security Designation and Custody Classification Manual (March 5, 2025)

~ Thomas L. Root

Pardon Industry Grinds On Although Trump’s Not Signing – Update for August 27, 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 MESS

Senior Dept of Justice officials were left scrambling to interpret sweeping clemency orders that former President Joe Biden approved for thousands of federal prisoners in his final days in office, and they criticized the White House for falsely portraying the releases as limited to “nonviolent” offenders, according to internal emails revealed last week.

The records show that former Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer raised alarms immediately after Biden issued three autopen-signed warrants on Jan. 17, covering nearly 2,500 federal prisoners.

In a January 18th message to the White House and the DOJ Pardon Attorney, Weinsheimer wrote that one warrant granting clemency for “offenses described to the Dept of Justice” was so vague it could not be lawfully carried out.

Weinsheimer suggested that Biden provide “a list as to each inmate listing the offenses that are covered by the commutation.” He said Biden needed to clarify the “meaning of the warrant language” so the DOJ could implement it “in the manner intended by the President.”

Weinsheimer also pushed back against White House statements that the clemency recipients were only “non-violent drug offenders,” according to the emails. “In communication about the commutations, the White House has described those who received commutations as people convicted of non-violent drug offenses,” Weinsheimer wrote. “I think you should stop saying that because it is untrue or at least misleading.”

The clemency list included a prisoner who had killed a mother and her 2-year-old child to protect his drug business, another whose enforcer tortured an informant with a butane torch, and a Gangster Disciples member implicated in multiple murders and kidnappings.

Despite Weinsheimer’s warning, the White House promoted the mass commutations as relief for “non-violent drug offenses” and as the largest clemency action ever.

Biden later said he approved broad categories of inmates, leaving details on how to apply those standards to staff. The revelations come amid multiple probes by the Trump administration into Biden’s use of his autopen – a machine that automatically signs the President’s name to documents – for key decisions.

Meanwhile, President Trump – who at the start of his second term was as busy as Biden ever was with a clemency pen– has not granted a pardon or commutation in almost three months.

Trump granted multiple pardons every month from January through May (and, of course, did a massive clemency grant on Inauguration Day for the January 6th rioters). You may remember that at the time, Trump’s pardon of 1,500 J6ers was described in news accounts as a “last-minute, rip-the-bandage-off decision.”  In fact, one White House advisor said that as Trump’s team wrestled with the issue, “Trump just said: ‘F -k it: Release ’em all.'”

However, despite rumors to the contrary, Trump has gone “full stop” on commutations and pardons since the end of last May.

At the time, media reports said that more clemency grants were expected “in the coming days.” So what happened?

Writing in Sentencing Law and Policy last week, Ohio State law professor Doug Berman wondered whether some of the pundit criticism around the last group of grants may have had some impact on how Trump is thinking about clemency action.

No one can be sure, but the pardon industry continues apace, with reports still being published about some people spending millions to buy access to the President for clemency. Last week, I had two prisoners separately say that the rumor mill reports a big commutation/pardon push in a month. I consider that to be myth. With a major push against supposed gangs rampaging in Washington, DC, Trump is not likely to think this is a good time to let some people out of prison.

Bloomberg Law, How a $30 Million Pardon Scheme Failed Before It Got to Trump (August 18, 2025)

New York Times, Flattery, Lobbyists and a Business Deal: Crypto’s Richest Man Campaigns for a Pardon (August 9, 2025)

Washington Examiner, Biden ignored DOJ warnings over legally flawed autopen pardons (August 19, 2025)

Axios, “F–k it: Release ’em all”: Why Trump embraced broad Jan. 6 pardons (January 22, 2025)

New York Post, Biden DOJ ripped White House over clemency grant to ‘non-violent offenders’: ‘Stop saying that because it is untrue’ (August 19, 2025)

~ Thomas L. Root

The Wild, Wild West Wing – Update for June 3, 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.

TRUMP MANAGES TO MAKE CLEMENCY EVEN CRAZIER

wildwildwestwing250603The rolling waves of pardons and commutations emanating from the White House seem like good news to federal prisoners, who are filing clemency petitions to get in on the frenzy. Think Robinhood investors piling into a meme stock…

Over the past several weeks, President Donald Trump has issued a wave of pardons and sentence reductions to dozens of people. That’s good news. The bad news is that the recipients of Trump’s largesse are largely political allies, campaign donors, law enforcement officials, and Republican politicians.

I won’t try to recount them all, people from crooked cops to digital dope peddlers to gang bangers to celebrity fraudsters. Even George Floyd murderer Derek Chauvin and accused sex monster and rapper Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs are being talked about as candidates for Trumpian clemency largesse. Instead, I’ll look at the lessons to be derived from the freedom frenzy:

The three sure-fire ways to get clemency from this Administration are (1) to be a rabid Trump supporter, (2) to have millions to spend, or (3) to know someone who knows someone who knows someone in Trump’s inner circle.

clemencypitch180716For more than a century, career civil servants led the Dept of Justice Office of Pardon Attorney, evaluating clemency petitions based on legal and humanitarian criteria that were criticized for the glacial review pace, too much DOJ input, and opaque and sometimes inconsistent decisions. But now, newly appointed Pardon Attorney Ed Martin, a vigorous MAGA partisan, “has begun turning the office into a new pipeline for political allies to get their cases in front of Trump,” the Wall Street Journal reported last week.

Martin unabashedly described his pardon approach last week on X: “No MAGA left behind.”

Martin said he is working closely with Alice Johnson, the White House pardon czar whom Trump pardoned of drug offenses during his first term. That’s good news. The bad news is Martin’s approach: “The message should be clear that we’re sticking by people that do good things and the right things.”

MAGAhat250603Martin’s first pardon recommendation, adopted by Trump last week, was Scott Jenkins, the former sheriff of Culpeper County, Virginia. Jenkins was to report to prison last week after being convicted of selling no-show auxiliary sheriff’s deputy positions for over $75,000 in bribes. The evidence included videos of the sheriff accepting bags of cash and testimony of some of the people who bought the badges. He was sentenced to 120 months.

But as the Bulwark explained last week, “Jenkins was a rabidly anti-immigrant, pro-Trump sheriff who’d become a minor celebrity in MAGA world. Trump himself may not have known of him, but Ed Martin did… Martin celebrated his achievement just after the pardon: ‘Thank you, President Trump! I am thrilled that Sheriff Jenkins is the first pardon since I became your Pardon Attorney.’”

For those not connected to MAGA, seeking clemency “has become big business for lobbying and consulting firms close to the administration, with wealthy hopefuls willing to spend millions of dollars for help getting their case in front of the right people,” a lobbyist told NBC News. “From a lobbying perspective, pardons have gotten profitable.”

pardonsale210118Two people directly familiar with proposals to lobbying firms said they knew of a client who’d offered $5 million to help get a case to Trump. “Cozying up to a president’s allies or hiring lobbyists to gain access to clemency isn’t new,” NBC said. “But along with the price spike, what’s different now is that Trump is issuing pardons on a rolling basis — rather than most coming at the end of the administration.”

“It’s like the Wild West,” a Trump ally and lobbyist said. “You can basically charge whatever you want.”

But what about Alice Johnson, appointed as Pardon Czar to bring worthy clemency candidates to President Trump? Is that working?

Alice apparently was instrumental in bringing reality TV stars and celebrity whiners Todd and Julie Chrisley to Trump for full pardons of their bank and tax fraud convictions. Todd stayed in the headlines for the 24 months he served of his 12-year sentence by claiming, among other things, that FPC Pensacola was “literally” starving inmates to death, that the prisoners were forced to live in filth and eat contaminated food, and that he “feared for his life.”

“I know not only their stories, but I make sure that I’m selecting people who have either been rehabilitated, who pose no safety risk, and also we look at cases where there has been obvious weaponization against these individuals,” Alice Johnson told NewsNation Now. She was quoted in Eonline as saying “The celebrity part really didn’t play a role in this… These are everyday Americans who deserve a second chance,” she continued. “I’ve really been looking at those who pose no safety risk, don’t have victims of violent crimes. These people need to be returned to their families. They really get a chance to have a second shot at life.”

money170419A month ago, Trump pardoned Paul Walczak, a former nursing home executive sentenced to 18 months in prison and ordered to pay more than $4 million in restitution for tax crimes. The pardon came after Walczak’s mom, a GOP donor, Walczak’s pardon has received attended a $1-million-per-person fundraising dinner at Mar-a-Lago, the New York Times reported.

Even some of the people who are not rich or famous are lucky enough to get in on the act. An “everyday American” prisoner who was not a Chrisley but received clemency last week was serving a 50-year sentence for healthcare fraud. One of his co-defendants, however, had been Alice Johnson’s cellie at FCI Aliceville. Alice got her sprung in 2020. Five years later, the co-defendant lobbied Alice to get him out, too.

I helped him with his clemency petition a few years ago, a 100-page tome. No doubt he deserved clemency but no more or less than countless others whose conspiracies did not include someone who became Alice’s cellmate.

clemencytornado250603Ultimately, it’s depressing. Clemency has always been like a tornado tearing through a neighborhood, taking some lucky inmates seemingly at random while leaving others in their bunks to serve out their time. Now, there isn’t even a randomness factor anymore, a sense among prisoners that maybe, despite the ordinariness of their offense or their families’ quotidian circumstances, they may be the beneficiaries of a Presidential act of grace.

Now, it’s all about loyalty, wealth, connections.

We’re in a different clemency world than ever before, but the average federal inmate is further from fair consideration than ever.

CNN, ‘No MAGA left behind’: Trump’s pardons get even more political (May 28, 2025)

NBC, Trump pardons drive a big, burgeoning business for lobbyists (May 31, 2025)

Washington Post, Trump’s clemency spree extends to ex-gangster, rapper, former congressmen (May 29, 2025)

The Bulwark, Trump’s Dangerous Pardon Power (May 27, 2025)

Pensacola News Journal, Todd Chrisley served sentence at Pensacola Federal Prison Camp before pardon. What to know (May 28, 2025)

New York Times, Trump Pardoned Tax Cheat After Mother Attended $1 Million Dinner (May 27, 2025)

– Thomas L. Root

Pardon News Continues Unabated – Update for May 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.

ALICE IS BACK… AND A ‘SUBSTANTIAL BATCH” OF CLEMENCY GRANTS MAY BE COMING

After President Trump appointed former federal inmate Alice Marie Johnson to be his “pardon czar” last February, she seemed to disappear. No one even knew whether she’d have a White House office as opposed to mere corresponding privileges with Trump.

alicesrestaurant250224Last week, we learned a little about what she is doing and got a hint that a clemency release is looming. In a Fox News interview with Lara Trump (which included a lot of fawning over the President), Johnson said, “President Trump had asked me to go find people like myself, and I brought many to the White House and President Trump gave those individuals a second chance…” She said that she “sent over 100 clemency and pardon petitions to the White House” and “46 people really were able to get a second chance in life…”

Johnson suggested that her criteria included people “who deserve this second chance who are similarly situated, not just like me, but who have served enough time, who have paid their debt to society, plus there are those who have been, I’m going to say, the victims of lawfare the same way our President was.”

“Lawfare” as commonly used refers to an attempt to damage or delegitimize an opponent, or to deter an individual’s usage of his or her legal rights. President Trump has said that his indictments for January 6th conspiracy, mishandling of national security documents, Georgia election interference, and New York “hush money” allegations were all lawfare against him.

pardonme190123A batch of clemency grants may be on the horizon. Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that clemency for some plain folks may be coming, “The president, according to a senior administration official, has taken a particular interest in the work of Alice Johnson, the pardon czar he appointed earlier this year,” the Journal said. “He regularly asks her, ‘Where are my pardons?’ The White House is expected to announce a substantial batch of pardons in the coming weeks, the official said.”

But that’s about the only good news about clemency. Ed Martin, the man who was so reckless as acting District of Columbia U.S. Attorney that his nomination for that position couldn’t get out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has seized the helm as Dept of Justice Pardon Attorney. Last week, Martin–described as an “egregiously unqualified political hack who has never served either as a prosecutor or judge” by over 100 former federal prosecutors who signed a letter opposing his appointment to the U.S. Attorney position–said last week that “I do think that the Biden pardons need some scrutiny… And they need scrutiny because we want pardons to matter and to be accepted and to be something that’s used correctly. So I do think we’re going to take a hard look.”

Martin tried to use his office as Acting U.S. Attorney to threaten everyone from DOJ prosecutors to members of Congress to medical journals to people critical of Elon Musk to Wikipedia’s tax-exempt status.  Now, not the least bit inconvenienced by the fact that Presidential pardons cannot be undone, he intends to spend the Pardon Office’s time looking at pardons of which he disapproves (and this from a guy who as Acting U.S. Attorney dismissed a January 6th felony case against a man he had represented as defense attorney).

pardonsale210118Meanwhile, the pardon bazaar continues. Rumors are flying that Sean “Diddy” Combs is seeking a pardon to end his seamy federal sex crimes trial in New York, that former Minneapolis cop Derek Chavin could be pardoned for his federal civil rights conviction stemming the murder of George Floyd, that former Congressman George Santos is seeking a pardon to avoid a federal prison sentence imposed for fraud-related convictions, and that those perennial celebrity prisoner whiners Todd and Julie Chrisley are renewing their campaign for pardons from their federal fraud convictions.

A couple of clemency grants for just plain prisoners would be a welcome change.

Fox News, Trump ‘pardon czar’ details how she’ll help incarcerated Americans who ‘paid their dues’ (May 17, 2025) (video)

The Wall Street Journal, The Wild West of Presidential Pardons in Trump’s Second Term (May 13, 2025)

Law and Crime, ‘We want pardons to matter’: Trump admin will ‘take a hard look’ at final grants of clemency issued by Biden, Ed Martin says (May 13, 2025)

– Thomas L. Root

A Nikola Truckload of Pardons – Update for May 9, 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.

CLEMENCY BAZAAR

Trevor Milton knew how to do it. The founder of the electric-truck maker Nikola Corp. was convicted of wire fraud in 2022 for a promotional video that purported to show its electric semi rig hauling a trailer but was really a prototype without any electroc motors that Nikola had recorded rolling downhill.

nikola250509Trevor applied for a presidential pardon, arguing that his trial was flawed by a biased juror, lousy jury instructions, and prosecutors bringing charges in the wrong venue.

Complaining about an unfair prosecution hardly separated Trevor from thousands of other federal prisoners unhappy about their convictions. But Trevor had more: he pointed out that the prosecutors were the same people who had previously investigated some of President Trump’s allies. And he prepared for seeking a pardon by donating almost $1.7 million to support Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and hired two lawyers well-known in conservative circles to push for his pardon.

“All the effort appeared to pay off,” Bloomberg Law reported this week, when Trevor got a phone call. “[A]fter 30 seconds on hold, President Donald Trump got on the line and told Milton that he was going to grant him a full pardon.” A week later, Trump called him again to report “’[i]t’s signed. You’re cleaner than a baby’s bottom, you’re cleaner than I am, Trevor,’ Milton recalled” to Bloomberg.

The president “is effectively and responsibly using his constitutional authority,” White House spokesman Harrison Fields explained. “Over the past four years, we have witnessed the weaponization of the justice system against the president’s allies. The president is committed to righting those wrongs and ending lawfare.”

clemencyjack161229Some critics suggest that Trump is not righting wrongs as much as running a pardon bazaar. Gregg Nunziata, former general counsel for Marco Rubio when he was a senator and now executive director for the Society for the Rule of Law, told Roll Call that Trump’s actions are “deeply un-American.”

“From the first days in office, there has been a pattern in pardons, in personnel, in the policies of using the powers of government to reward the president’s friends and allies and punish his perceived enemies,” Nunziata said. “That is the rule of a man out for his own interest and that is an assault on the full protection of the law and notions of fair play that our society, our country, depend on.”

As for its role, the Dept of Justice – which is without a Pardon Attorney since the firing of Elizabeth Oyer over the Mel Gibson gun flap two months ago – is “committed to timely and carefully reviewing” all clemency applications and making unbiased, consistent recommendations to the president, according to a DOJ statement.

Milton said he filed for clemency with the DOJ Pardon Attorney in January. Bloomberg reported, however, that the pardon didn’t follow the normal DOJ review process.

President Joe Biden set a record for granting clemency during his term, handing out over 4,000 commutations but only about 80 pardons. The commutations went overwhelmingly to federal prisoners and people who fell within classes of convictions – primarily for marijuana possession – or for CARES Act home confinees. Biden received widespread and bipartisan criticism for preemptively pardoning his family and allies to prevent Trump from going after them criminally.

obtaining-clemencyTrump, on the other hand, has set a presidential record for granting pardons – 1,590 and counting – starting with the January 6th Capitol rioters and then expanding to include white-collar defendants, cryptocurrency entrepreneurs, and anti-abortion activists. Pardon recipients include “numerous others who praised him or served as a witness against political rivals, including former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich… He also pardoned Devon Archer and commuted the sentence of Jason Galanis, former business partners of Hunter Biden who served as witnesses in the House probe against the former president,” Roll Call reported yesterday.

Trump has even extended his pardon efforts beyond the limits of presidential authority (which does not extend to pardons for state offenses). He posted on TruthSocial Monday night that has directed DOJ “to take all necessary action to help secure the release” of Tina Peters, a former Colorado local election clerk in Colorado who was sentenced to nine years in state prison last fall for her role in a voting system data breach, a failed attempt to find voter fraud from the 2020 election.

Last March, DOJ filed a statement of interest in Peters’ pending 28 USC § 2254 habeas corpus case pending in US District Court for the District of Colorado. The post-conviction action seeks federal review of the constitutionality of her state conviction. The DOJ claims that it is concerned about Peters’ health and allege that “[r]easonable concerns have been raised about various aspects of Ms. Peters’ case.”

The pace of Trump’s pardons eclipses the president in second place, Bill Clinton (396 pardons in eight years) and in the process has fostered a “breakdown in the traditional vetting process for deciding who gets relief and supercharged a pardon economy unlike anything seen before,” as Bloomberg put it.

As a result, people who can afford it are spending big to get their applications in front of Trump, devoting tens of thousands of dollars to fees for attorneys, lobbyists and consultants on the pardon process.

money160118“There’s a huge level of interest,” said  Margaret Colgate Love, who served as the US Pardon Attorney during the Clinton years and now represents clemency clients. “People think Trump is going to do something for them.”

Presidents from both parties have long used their authority to circumvent official process and dole out pardons to friends and supporters. The constitution puts almost no limits on the practice, though leaders typically wait until the end of their tenure to award clemency. Trump has announced clemency grants on a dozen occasions since he took office three months ago.

All of this is not good news for the ordinary federal defendant, let alone a prisoner who can afford a donation of several Honeybuns and a couple of soups to the Trump campaign. “It seems like ordinary people who don’t have the resources to hire a lobbyist or well-connected lawyer and don’t have political connections and access to the White House front door are not being considered for clemency at all,” Oyer told Bloomberg.

A White House spokesman said Trump would work with the administration’s pardon czar, Alice Marie Johnson, to “continue to provide justice and redemption to countless deserving Americans.” Those with fat wallets and MAGA hats, that is.

Bloomberg Law, Lawyers Are Quoting $1 Million Fees to Get Pardons to Trump (May 7, 2025)

Roll Call, Pardons for friends, retribution for foes (May 7, 2025)

Democracy Docket, Trump Orders DOJ to ‘Secure the Release’ of Convicted Election Denier Tina Peters (May 6, 2025)

– Thomas L. Root

Cash Registers Ringing for Presidential Clemency… Just Not For Uncle Sam – Update for May 5, 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: CRIME AND DRAMA

theatremasks250505Former Dept of Justice Pardon Attorney Elizabeth Oyer last week claimed on social media that President Trump’s pardons of white-collar defendants have cost Americans $1 billion.

Oyer totaled the money that the pardoned people owed or might owe in restitution and fines. Some pardon recipients had not yet been sentenced, leading her to estimate the restitution that might be imposed. The pardoned people who had already begun paying restitution can now seek reimbursement from the government.

Oyer, who has been outspoken against the Trump administration since she was fired in March over her opposition to a DOJ decision to restore actor Mel Gibson’s gun rights, said “that the $1 billion figure highlights the unusually high number of Republican allies convicted of fraud and pardoned by Trump before they served their sentences.” She called that “a significant break from the traditional and often protracted pardon application process,” the Washington Post reported.

“It’s unprecedented for a president to grant pardons that have the effect of wiping out so much debt owed by people who have committed frauds,” Oyer said. “They do not meet Justice Department standards for recommending a pardon.”

Law360 reported last week that the spate of White House pardons is resulting in white-collar defendants being solicited by scammers who promise to influence White House connections to secure pardons and commutations in exchange for big fees.

clemencyjack161229The clemency pitches call for payments of hundreds of thousands or millions, “prey on the desperation of people serving or facing prison time,” some experts say. “Historically, seeking a pardon was seen as a low-percentage effort, something that would be very difficult to pursue as part of the defense strategy, except in the most obvious circumstances,” Joe Whitley, chair of law firm Womble Bond Dickinson’s white collar defense practice, told Law360.

One clemency pitch that a “consultant” recently sent to a bank fraud defendant called for payment of $155,000 a month for six months, along with an additional $1 million “success fee” once clemency was granted. The consultant claimed to have access to Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort, according to the defendant’s lawyer. The defendant was also pitched a different clemency service for $3 million, including a $2.5 million success fee, for “advocacy with the Trump administration for a pardon and/or case dismissal,” Law360 said.

“Unfortunately, a lot of what’s going on and a lot of the decisions being made are setting up corruption — it’s making this all dependent on having access to people in power and charging money for that access,” one big law firm partner told Law360.

money240822A white collar sentencing consultant was quoted as saying that a typical clemency package costs about $40,000 to $50,000. Law firms might charge up to $200,000 for clemency work.

“Selling a guaranteed pardon because of a perceived relationship is a problem,” the consultant told Law360. “In my opinion, it’s gross negligence to say, ‘I can get the president of the United States to grant this clemency on your behalf’.”

Washington Post, Fired DOJ attorney says on TikTok that Trump pardons cost U.S. $1 billion (May 1, 2025)

Law360, Pardon Me? Why Offers To Secure Clemency Might Be A Scam (April 24, 2025)

– Thomas L. Root

‘Go Ask Alice – I Think She’ll Know’ – Update for February 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.

TRUMP NAMES FORMER PRISONER ALICE JOHNSON ‘PARDON CZAR’

President Trump announced last Thursday that Alice Johnson, whose 1996 life sentence for a cocaine conspiracy was commuted in 2018, would serve as White House “pardon czar,” a position in which she will “advise him on criminal justice issues,” according to the NY Times.

goaskalice250224No one knows exactly what this position entails or its significance but having a White House liaison responsible for clemency issues and who has the President’s ear is unprecedented in modern times. Still, many federal prisoners are starting to think that Jefferson Airplane had it right in “White Rabbit” when it advised, “Go ask Alice – I think she’ll know.”

After Kim Kardashian talked Trump into commuting Johnson’s sentence, Johnson initially convinced Trump to grant clemency to a couple of her FCI Aliceville cellies. Later, at Trump’s request, she suggested the names of people to receive clemency at the end of his first term.

The New York Times reported that in announcing her appointment, Trump said Johnson “would be advising him on cases of people convicted of nonviolent crimes who had gotten sentences not likely be handed down today. Ms. Johnson’s case was seen as an example of draconian sentencing laws that disproportionately affected nonviolent offenders, particularly women and members of minority groups.”

Trump told reporters that “Alice was in prison for doing something that today probably wouldn’t even be prosecuted.” That’s probably not quite correct: Her indictment, which named 16 defendants, described Alice as a leader in a multi-million-dollar cocaine ring, and detailed dozens of drug transactions and deliveries. At sentencing, her judge said she was “the quintessential entrepreneur” in an operation that dealt in 2,000 to 3,000 kilos of cocaine, with a “very significant” impact on the community.

second170119Still, Johnson’s post-sentencing record was exceptional, and her work since her release seven years ago has been tireless. “Alice Johnson has been a relentless advocate for second chances, and her own story is a testament to the power of redemption,” Weldon Angelos, another Trump clemency recipient and founder of the criminal justice organization The Weldon Project, told Marijuana Moment last week.

The Times said that Johnson’s appointment illustrates how Trump’s

approach to criminal justice reform is rife with contradictions. He signed the bipartisan First Step Act, which aimed to reduce prison sentences for certain nonviolent drug crimes, during his first term, then told advisers privately soon afterward that he regretted it, according to multiple officials working with him at the time… During his 2024 campaign, he called for shooting thieves who steal from drugstores and for the death penalty for drug traffickers and dealers. Then, in one of his first acts as president in his second term, he issued a grant of clemency to all of the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — violent and nonviolent alike.”

Angelos, however, is focused on the appointment rather than the President’s record on criminal justice. “The creation of a pardon czar position is a significant step in prioritizing clemency and criminal justice reform,” he said, “signaling a commitment to addressing injustices in the system and ensuring that mercy is applied more fairly and efficiently.”

MSNBC complained, “It’s not clear that this position will have real power. Ultimately, the president determines who receives pardons, so it’s possible this role will have as much actual authority as Trump’s Diet Coke retriever. But it seems pretty obvious what he’s after with this stunt. Trump has perverted the pardon process, most glaringly with his pardons of violent insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on Jan 6. And now he has made a sympathetic figure the face of that process.”

alicesrestaurant250224Prisoners and their loved ones are wondering how Johnson’s appointment might upend the current clemency system, which has been characterized over the past decade by Byzantine review procedures while thousands of petitions gathered dust in the DOJ Office of Pardon Attorney. Must a commutation petition still begin with a filing with OPA? Will clemency petitions now be routed directly to Johnson’s White House office?

No one knows. However, a Substack blogger on healthcare already has solicited people to contact Johnson to urge that a father and his sons convicted of selling toxic industrial bleach as a fake COVID-19 cure through their online church be pardoned.

New York Times, Trump Names ‘Pardon Czar’ to Advise on Clemency (February 21, 2025)

New York Times, Trump May Name a Woman He Once Pardoned to Be His ‘Pardon Czar’ (February 18, 2025)

Marijuana Moment, Trump Confirms He’s Appointing Former Drug Prisoner He Freed As New ‘Pardon Czar’ (February 20, 2025)

MSNBC, In ongoing stunt, Trump names Alice Johnson his ‘pardon czar’ (February 21, 2025)

Robert Yoho, Surviving Healthcare (Feb 22)

– Thomas L. Root

The Wreckage That Is Clemency – Update for January 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.

THANK A GOLDFISH

When a neighbor’s kid (who is now a successful real estate attorney) was in 7th grade, he entered a science fair project studying exactly how short a goldfish’s attention span might really be. I just recall that his conclusion was that it was pretty short.goldfish200731

For the sake of federal clemency, we should all hope that the American public’s focus is as brief.

President Biden granted clemency a week ago Friday to 2,490 people with drug offenses (including a few CARES Act releasees who were overlooked in the December 12, 2024, commutation of sentence for 1,499 people already on home confinement). That only raised a few of the predictable howls about unleashing violent criminals on the public (the fact than none had committed a violent crime being lost on those few critics).

Biden followed these with pardons on Sunday to members and staff of the House of Representatives January 6th Committee, Dr. Anthony Fauci, General Mark Milley, and Capitol police officers who testified about the January 6th riot. A chorus of voices from Trump supporters who wanted revenge – as well as a few thoughtful complaints that such pre-emptive pardons were a bad idea as a matter of policy – followed.

The January 19 clemencies included several other less controversial pardons. However, among the pardonees were members of Biden’s own family (which Biden cravenly only had the White House announce on Monday, January 20, after 11 a.m., as Biden sat in the Capitol rotunda awaiting President Trump’s inauguration).

Also in the final moments of his administration, Biden also commuted Leonard Peltier’s life sentence for a 1975 killing two FBI special agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to home confinement. Peltier, 80 years old and in ill health, has always maintained his innocence.

Monday night, Trump said Biden’s pardon of family members, whom he said were under unfair threat of investigation by Trump, “Now with that being said, it sets an unbelievable precedent, it creates poor precedent. But the precedent is unbelievable.”

Trump, however, eclipsed Biden’s “poor precedent” within hours of his own inauguration, issuing a sweeping clemency – consisting of 14 commutations of sentence and about 1,500 unconditional pardons – to people under indictment or convicted of crimes related to the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the United States Capitol.

The J6 clemency grant was “a last-minute, rip-the-bandage-off decision to try to move past the issue quickly, White House advisers familiar with the Trump team’s discussions told Axios, illustrating Trump’s light on his “unpredictable decision-making process” and showcasing his “determination to fulfill a campaign promise to his MAGA base — regardless of political fallout.”

j6240702Despite months of the Trump campaign and transition team suggesting that people who engaged in violence on January 6 would not be getting clemency, Trump “vacillated” over whether to give a blanket pardon or a more detailed “targeted clemency.” However, as “Trump’s team wrestled with the issue, and planned a shock-and-awe batch of executive orders Day 1, ‘Trump just said: “F-k it: Release ’em all,”’ an adviser familiar with the discussions said,” according to Axios.

The White House described the blanket pardon as being necessary to “end a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years and begins a process of national reconciliation.” On Tuesday night, he said, “These people have served years of jail, and their lives have been ruined. They’ve served years in jail, and, if you look at the American public, the American public is tired of it.”

Not really. A Reuters/Ipsos poll the day after the J6 pardons were announced showed 60% of respondents opposed Trump’s action. An Axios focus group of independent voters opposed the action by an 83% majority.

Trump followed those pardons with one for Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the Silk Road marketplace, described by MSNBC as “one of the biggest illegal drug markets in American history.” The irony is that Trump has spent the past decade campaigning against the scourge of fentanyl and opioid addiction. Of course, the primary difference between the other drug traffickers in federal prison and Ulbricht is that those other guys did not take Bitcoin in payment.

On Wednesday, Trump pardoned two District of Columbia police officers who had been convicted of murder after chasing a 20-year-old man riding a moped. Trump said, ““They were arrested, put in jail for five years because they went after an illegal. And I guess something happened where something went wrong, and they arrested the two officers and put them in jail for going after a criminal.” As it turns out, however, the man was an American citizen and his “crime” was illegally riding his moped on a sidewalk.

The pardon looks suspiciously like a sop to the police unions, who were understandably upset that their President on the previous Monday had pardoned people who had punched, kicked, bear-sprayed and tased police officers defending the Capitol on January 6th.

On Thursday, Trump pardoned nearly two dozen anti-abortion activists who had been convicted of blockading abortion clinic entrances. “They should not have been prosecuted. Many of them are elderly people,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “This is a great honor to sign this.”

So what is the takeaway in all of this? As I explained this week to a CARES Act home confinee months away from release, who was inexplicably omitted from all commutation lists, (1) be sure to assault a cop during your offense; and (2) whatever your crime, be sure to accept payment in Bitcoin.

Condemnation for both Biden’s and Trump’s actions is loud. A Washington Post columnist wrote:

It’s debatable which president’s abuse of the pardon power on Monday — Joe Biden’s or Donald Trump’s — was more damaging. But that’s the nature of tit-for-tat escalations. The public argues about who started it and who did it worse. At the end of the process, constraints on the use of political power are gone and everyone is equally exposed.

Start with Biden’s extraordinary preemptive pardons for select political allies and family members that came down just before Trump’s inauguration. They aren’t even really pardons, because they don’t clear their recipients of specific offenses. They’re grants of immunity…

[T]he breathtaking scope of Trump’s amnesty — including immediate release for even the most violent members of the mob — is not defensible on grounds other than political spite and retaliation. Even his vice president seems not to have expected it. Deterrence against political violence in Trump’s second term in office has been meaningfully weakened. Those on the right inclined toward violence in the next four years have reason to wonder whether they will be punished.

Reason wrote, “Monday was a big day for presidential clemency, but that does not mean it was a good day. Both outgoing President Joe Biden and incoming President Donald Trump used that power in self-interested, short-sighted ways, sacrificing the public interest to benefit political allies and, in Biden’s case, family members.”

clemencyjack161229Verdict argued, “Yet now, as with so much in contemporary politics, the return of President Donald Trump has changed how we think about the pardon power. The personal is political with Trump, only more so. With a President who views so much through the prism of himself, it is no surprise that we’re now talking about perhaps the most personal form of presidential power at the start of Trump’s second term rather than at the end.”

For now, the presidential clemency power has become solely a political tool, the use of which may completely obliterate its traditional use as a tool of mercy applied to people whose offenses had no political veneer. We can only hope that like goldfish memory, public perception of presidential clemency dims rapidly enough so that it once again is applied to address individual defendants’ situations rather than to score political points or favor political supporters.

Dept of Justice, Office of Pardon Attorney, Clemency Warrants (January 24, 2025)

Reason, President Trump Comments on President Biden’s Pardons: “An Unbelievable Precedent” (January 21, 2025)

White House, Granting Pardons and Commutation of Sentences for Certain Offenses Relating to the Events at or Near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 (January 20, 2025)

Axios, “F–k it: Release ’em all”: Why Trump embraced broad Jan. 6 pardons (January 22, 2025)

Reuters, Exclusive: Trump starts new term with 47% approval; Jan. 6 pardons unpopular, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds (January 21, 2025)

MSNBC, Jan. 6 defendants weren’t the only controversial Trump pardon recipients this week (January 23, 2025)

Washington Post, The Biden-Trump pardons show collapsing executive restraint (January 21, 2025)

Reason, Biden and Trump Show Presidents How To Abuse Clemency (January 22, 2025)

Verdict, Five Ways of Looking at Presidential Pardons (January 22, 2025)

– Thomas L. Root