Findings

Congress finds the following: (1) The Constitution of the United States grants the President broad authority to issue reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States. This power is meant to serve the interests of justice and offer a pathway to remedy unfair outcomes within the criminal legal system. (2) The breadth of the pardon power demands it be used judiciously. At times, Presidents have made questionable clemency decisions throughout American history, creating legitimate concerns about potential misuse across the political spectrum. (3) Alarmingly, President Donald Trump has gone further than any of his predecessors and fundamentally transformed the Presidential pardon from an instrument of mercy into a currency for insiders, repeatedly using clemency to reward political donors, loyalists, cronies, and individuals with direct access to him, while ordinary petitioners languish for years in the Department of Justice process. (4) In his current term, President Trump has granted only a tiny handful of pardons and commutations to the roughly 10,000 people who followed the formal Department of Justice review process in 2026, while showering clemency on high-profile allies, business associates, and well-connected offenders whose chief qualification was deep pockets or proximity to the President, not the merits of their cases. (5) President Trump has exploited clemency to erase the crimes and consequences of some of the most notorious white-collar offenders in United States history, including the longest-sentenced Medicare fraudster in the country. All told, President Trump’s pardons have wiped out nearly $2,000,000,000 in victim repayments and taxpayer recovery. (6) President Trump has used the pardon power to undercut ongoing law enforcement investigations, including commuting the sentence of a predatory lender whose cooperation Federal prosecutors were actively seeking, instantly stripping prosecutors of leverage and signaling that well-connected criminals can buy or lobby their way out of accountability. (7) President Trump has leveraged clemency for convicted narcotraffickers and enablers of the international drug trade, such as the former Honduran President who turned his government into a cocaine pipeline to the United States and the creator of the Silk Road dark web drug market, even while demanding the death penalty for traffickers and campaigning on a promise to wage war on cartels. (8) On the first day of his second term, President Donald Trump issued a sweeping clemency proclamation granting blanket pardons and commutations to nearly all offenders charged or convicted for crimes arising from the January 6, 2021, attack on the United States Capitol, instantly wiping away the criminal records and prison time of roughly 1,600 rioters who assaulted law enforcement and violently disrupted the peaceful transfer of power. (9) President Trump’s Department of Justice is now actively seeking to vacate and dismiss the seditious conspiracy convictions of multiple top Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders, including Stewart Rhodes and other organizers who helped plan and direct the assault, moving to erase the last remaining jury verdicts against the extremist ringleaders of the insurrection and to nullify years of painstaking prosecutions by career Federal law enforcement. (10) President Trump’s pattern of clemency for wealthy benefactors, the politically connected, and corrupt officials paired with his deliberate neglect of ordinary, meritorious petitioners, has weaponized the pardon power against the rule of law, turning a constitutional safety valve into a commodity to be purchased or bartered for through political allegiance. (11) Although the Supreme Court of the United States erroneously held in Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593 (2024), that the President has absolute immunity for the exercise of core constitutional powers, that immunity only attaches to the President and does not extend to private individuals who corruptly offer things of value to obtain clemency, or act as intermediaries in such corrupt arrangements. Congress has authority and responsibility to address corruption by clemency seekers and intermediaries, even if the conduct of the President may be beyond the reach of Federal criminal prosecution.