Pardon Me Boys (and Girls)
Presidential pardons need some serious reform.
Before he even completed his first full day in office of his second term, Trump signed a proclamation granting about 1,500 people full pardons.
This wasn’t just any group of people.
These were American citizens participating (and mostly convicted) of misdemeanors and felonies associated with the January 6th attack on Congress.
In other words, these were people who were convicted in a court of law of assaulting, resisting, or impeding federal officers, obstructing an official proceeding, and committing seditious conspiracy. Later, Trump commuted the sentences of 14 other defendants, who were involved with the Oath Keepers or Proud Boys, two far-right organizations with histories of political violence.
Trump also ordered that everyone currently imprisoned be released immediately, and directed the Attorney General to pursue dismissal with prejudice of all pending indictments tied to the events.
In other words, everybody involved in the January 6th riot walked away “scot-free.”
There’s the problem.
Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution gives the president “power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.”
Since George Washington, Presidents have taken full advantage of their pardon power (on both sides of the aisle) and have used it for all kinds of reasons. Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon and George H.W. Bush pardoned six Iran-Contra defendants, including former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, before they could stand trial. Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan each issued more than 400 pardons in their eight years in office, while Biden provided mass pardons for those convicted of federal marijuana possession.
While his volume doesn’t match Clinton or Reagan, Trump’s reasons for pardoning people have put democracy in the crosshairs. Here are some of the ways he’s used his pardon power:
- Self-interested clemency: The fake-electors pardons and other 2020-election-related grants.
- Mass, symbolic pardons: Rather than individualized review, entire categories of defendants — including some convicted of assaulting police officers — were pardoned in a single proclamation, a break from the case-by-case clemency process historically overseen by the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney.
- Institutional changes: The sitting pardon attorney, who had overseen clemency review since 2022, was removed in March 2025 and replaced with a Trump loyalist who signaled a more politically directed approach to the office.
- Foreign and high-profile grants: Clemency extended to figures such as former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, serving a 45-year sentence for a large-scale international drug-trafficking conspiracy, and to individuals convicted of public corruption, extending the pardon’s reach well beyond the traditional domestic sentencing-relief function.
- Pardons before sentencing: Several recipients had been convicted but not yet begun serving time — a rare use of the power that skips the traditional step of demonstrated rehabilitation.
Each of these examples erodes trust in democracy and threatens the rule of law. If Democracy is to be bulletproofed in order to survive beyond the Trump Administration, we need to seek reform of the president’s pardon power.
But how?
The Supreme Court has given the President broad power in presidential pardons, and only an Amendment to the Constitution could change the law (a high bar for any reform-minded group or party). To put that into perspective, only 27 amendments have been ratified in the nation’s history, and none has ever curtailed a core presidential power.
One solution has already been introduced into Congress — the bipartisan Pardon Integrity Act, introduced by Rep. Johnny Olszewski (D-MD) with Republican co-sponsor Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE). This bill would let 20 House members and 5 senators jointly initiate a challenge to a specific pardon, giving Congress 60 days to nullify it with a two-thirds vote in both chambers — effectively a congressional veto over individual clemency grants.
But even critics who favor reform warn that a congressional veto could further politicize clemency rather than depoliticize it, making pardons subject to the same gridlock and party-line votes as everything else in Washington.
Perhaps another solution would be to make the pardon power more transparent and harder to abuse quietly. Here are a few ideas:
- Mandatory disclosure:Require the Department of Justice and the White House to provide Congress (and the public) with the case file, rationale, and any communications tied to a pardon — especially one benefiting the president, his family, or his associates. The 2021 Protecting Our Democracy Act included a version of this, passing the House before stalling in the Senate.
- Restoring an independent Pardon Attorney’s office:Statutorily protect the career review process — case-by-case investigation, victim notification, DOJ recommendation — from being bypassed or politicized, so mass or personally beneficial pardons face at least a documented review trail.
- Codifying existing limits:Congress could write into statute the widely accepted (but not judicially settled) principle that a pardon cannot be used to obstruct an ongoing investigation into the president’s own conduct, and that self-pardons are void, removing ambiguity that currently exists only in legal scholarship.
- Sunshine requirements:Require real-time public listing of every pardon and commutation with the recipient’s offense, sentence served, and stated justification — closing the gap where mass proclamations currently name only some recipients.
Whatever path toward pardon reform Democrats choose once they return to power, the question must always be: will this effort strengthen and “bulletproof” Democracy for generations to come? If the answer is “no,” then Democrats must simply try harder.
“Pardon me, boy” should only be associated with a song, not diabolical presidential machinations. Enough already.
This article and others can be found on the Orange County Democratic Party Substack page here: https://substack.com/@orangedemsnc.
