Who Gets a Pardon in Trump's America — and Why?

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Speaker 1: Breaking news, President Trump just pardoned one of the most powerful people in the crypto world.

Speaker 2: That was Changpeng Zhao who had been convicted of money laundering.

Simone Leeper: In October of 2025, news outlets reported a bombshell, a presidential pardon for a cryptocurrency billionaire.

Speaker 4: He founded this company called Binance that is the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, but that platform, I should note, was also used by criminals.

Speaker 5: And for that, he was sentenced and served four months in prison.

Simone Leeper: The president batted away questions about why he pardoned the founder of Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange.

Donald Trump: He was somebody that, as I was told, I don't know him, I don't believe I've ever met him, but I've been told... A lot of support. He had a lot of support, and they said that what he did is not even a crime. And so I gave him a pardon at the request of a lot of very good people.

Simone Leeper: With his felony conviction wiped away, Zhao was again legally allowed to serve on corporate boards. Indisputably, however, the pardon was part of a pattern. Just that year alone, President Trump pardoned more than 1, 500 people. Most had been convicted for offenses related to the January 6th attack on the Capitol, but many others, including the Binance founder, appeared to have channeled money to the president's business or political operations or hired lobbyists to secure a pardon.

Speaker 1: Informally, Binance has been very supportive of the Trump family crypto empire helping facilitate trades of World Liberty Financial's token, and that business alone has added an estimated $ 5 billion to the Trump family net worth.

Speaker 5: There are going to be questions about conflicts of interest here. Lots of questions about how much of this is motivated by money and profits.

Simone Leeper: I'm Simone Leeper, and this is Democracy Decoded, a podcast where we examine our government and discuss innovative ideas that can create a stronger, more transparent, accountable, and inclusive democracy. I work for Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan organization that for 25 years has been leading a campaign to solve the wide range of challenges facing American democracy.

This season on Democracy Decoded, we're focusing on something that is at the very foundation of our country, but doesn't usually get the splashy headlines, the rule of law. When it works well, we hardly notice it. But when a presidential administration and its allies undermine or outright ignore this constitutionally enshrined cornerstone of our democracy, things start going sideways very quickly for Americans.

Our episode today looks at executive clemency under President Trump. At its best, the constitutional ability for presidents to issue pardons or commute sentences can offer a final executive check on judicial mistakes, but few rules hold presidents to account for how they issue pardons. And we're seeing now what happens when a president leverages that enormous power for personal gain.

Liz Oyer: In my view, clemency provides a really important and valuable opportunity to grant second chances to some individuals who have been sentenced unfairly under mandatory minimum sentencing laws, including many laws that are now outdated.

Simone Leeper: This is Liz Oyer. From 2022 to early 2025, she led the office of the pardon attorney at the US Department of Justice. She and her colleagues reviewed applications for pardons and in turn made recommendations to Presidents Biden and Trump. Previously, she worked as a federal public defender. That position gave her a unique perspective on the pardon process.

Liz Oyer: Federal sentencing can be extremely harsh, sometimes unduly harsh. I saw many cases in which mandatory minimum sentencing laws drove sentences that were not necessarily commensurate with the seriousness of the crime or the amount of time of incarceration that was necessary for the individual. We have had some major changes in criminal sentencing in recent years, including a law called the First Step Act, which scaled back mandatory minimum sentences for recidivist drug offenses as well as for certain offenses involving possession of a firearm. Yet there are still thousands of people serving, in some cases, life sentences under those outdated laws who have no avenue of relief available through the courts. So really executive clemency is the only hope that they have of being released from prison before they die.

Simone Leeper: High profile pardons by presidents tend to draw the most news coverage when someone convicted of a crime avoids prison time, but a pardon or commutation often repairs the life of someone who long ago served their time.

Liz Oyer: Having even a very dated criminal record can prevent you from getting a professional license, for example, taking out a small business loan, getting certain types of employment or educational opportunities for people who are parents and grandparents that can even prevent you from going on a field trip with your child or your grandchild if you've got a criminal conviction on your record.

Simone Leeper: Many, many Americans seek pardons from the president. The process typically runs through the office of the pardon attorney. People apply before, during, and after they serve their sentences. Career staffers review those applications and offer recommendations to the president.

Liz Oyer: The president is free to disagree with the recommendations of the Justice Department, but in virtually every case, the Justice Department is consulted and relied upon to give some sort of advice, even if the President ultimately does not accept the advice of the Pardon Attorney. In my experience as pardon attorney, my communications were mostly with the leadership of the Justice Department who in turn would communicate up the chain with the White House about these issues, but it really depends on the preferences of the president who is considering the clemency requests. The process is designed to be fair and accessible to everyone. It's designed to be the type of process where you don't need to pay a lawyer or a lobbyist to help you to get through that process. And those individuals who did not have lawyers were just as successful as those who did in receiving the benefit of clemency if they were truly deserving of it.

Simone Leeper: In other words, the pardon process traditionally has been accessible to a broad cross section of Americans.

Liz Oyer: There are really no legal limits on who the president can pardon. He can pardon anyone he chooses for any reason. Of course, there are ethical considerations around all of that as well as a lot of norms that would say that the president should not use the power in that way. But legally he is permitted to exercise total discretion over the clemency power. One of the things that has historically characterized the pardon process is secrecy surrounding it. People in the public don't necessarily understand how the pardon process works, and that's in part because the president has a tremendous amount of discretion under the Constitution to grant clemency to whomever he wants.

There have been examples throughout history of pardons that were not in the public interest or that appeared corrupt, but we've never seen any past president systematically use the pardon power in virtually every case in a way that is not in the public interest and instead is for private financial gain or for personal or family benefit. That's what we're seeing, however, under Donald Trump.

Brendan Fischer: President Trump has transformed the presidential pardon power into a tool for rewarding allies and those with the deepest pockets.

Simone Leeper: This is Brendan Fischer, a colleague of mine at Campaign Legal Center. He's the director of strategic investigations, and lately he has been watching pardons very closely. Brendan's analysis unfortunately tracks with Liz Oyer's view into President Trump's second administration. Never before in American history has the pardon system been so blatantly transactional.

Brendan Fischer: Since Trump has taken office, he has repeatedly issued pardons to wealthy individuals after they made large contributions to his PACs, to his inaugural fund, to Trump family businesses, which creates at least the appearance of a pay- to- play clemency system where pardons seemingly are for sale. In other instances, Trump has issued pardons to corrupt politicians and other criminal actors, not because they've shown evidence of rehabilitation or because they were unjustly sentenced, but instead because they've demonstrated loyalty to Trump. Taken together, we've really seen the creation of a market for pardons where the justice system has one set of rules for those with money and those close to Trump and another set of rules for everybody else.

Simone Leeper: President Trump has issued more than 1700 pardons so far in his second term. Brendan has sorted them into three distinct varieties, reward pardons, corrupt pardons, and brokered pardons. We'll go through them one at a time. First up, President Trump's reward pardons.

Brendan Fischer: Reward pardons are grants of clemency that benefit donors and supporters who break the law on the president's behalf. So this category of pardons are the most obviously transactional where Trump issues a pardon after a person makes a large donation to a super PAC. But also this includes those pardons for January 6th defendants, individuals who broke the law to try and keep Trump in power after he lost the 2020 election.

Simone Leeper: Reward pardons tend to be straightforward. If you do something for the president, whether that's storm the Capitol, support him in public, or further his business interests, he can get you out of trouble. These pardons may appear to be quid pro quos, but President Trump also seems to issue these pardons on mere vibes.

Brendan Fischer: Trump's pardons of individuals who broke the law for him are really important because they send a dangerous signal to supporters. If Trump supporters act to subvert future elections, including even to break the law to benefit Trump and his supporters, Trump will use the full power of the presidency to protect them from consequences.

Liz Oyer: Trump has not relied on the office of the pardon attorney to advise him on clemency in the same way that past presidents have.

Simone Leeper: Once again, former pardon attorney Liz Oyer.

Liz Oyer: I was pardon attorney during the first seven weeks of the second Trump administration, and during that time, numerous clemencies were issued, including some mass clemencies like the clemency that was granted to the January 6th rioters. I was not consulted. My office was not consulted on any of that decision making. The decisions were made entirely within the White House and many of the individuals who received clemency had not even applied for it. There was no vetting that was conducted of the clemency recipients.

And one problem when you don't do vetting is you don't necessarily know what the risks are of granting clemency. We've already seen dozens of cases in which January 6th defendants who were convicted of crimes in connection with the Capitol insurrection later went on to commit new crimes after receiving their pardons. And in many of those cases, they committed very serious new crimes, including crimes involving the sexual exploitation of children, violent crimes, et cetera. So that is a real problem that comes from failing to appropriately vet recipients of clemency.

Simone Leeper: Like those en masse January 6th pardons, President Trump issues many reward pardons as favors. Liz Oyer testified to Congress this summer that she lost her job because she wouldn't recommend restoring firearms rights to Mel Gibson. The actor was convicted of domestic violence in 2011, but he is an ally of the president. So in 2025, after Liz Oyer was gone, President Trump saw that Mel Gibson got back his right to own guns. That may not have been a financially motivated pardon, but plenty of President Trump's pardons do involve money and brazenly so.

Brendan Fischer: We don't know how much other individuals who've received pardons may have channeled to Trump's various business and political operations, but there are plenty of examples of disclosed donations that have correlated with pardons.

Liz Oyer: It's hard to choose which are the most egregious. Many clemencies have been granted to individuals who have committed serious financial crimes that have actually deprived victims of money, and the pardons have had the effect of wiping out the obligations of the recipients to repay the victims of their crimes.

Brendan Fischer: There's Paul Walczak. He was a nursing home executive who was convicted of siphoning over $ 10 million from his employees' paychecks. He was actually sentenced in Trump's second term by Trump's own Department of Justice, and he received a pardon. That pardon came just weeks after his mother contributed $ 1 million to Trump's super PAC.

Liz Oyer: There was an individual named Trevor Milton, for example, who was pardoned in the early months of the Trump presidency who had defrauded his investors in the amount of nearly $ 700 million. Milton received a pardon from Donald Trump before he had served a day of his prison sentence and before he had paid back a dollar of the money that he owed to his investors.

Brendan Fischer: Milton poured nearly $ 2 million into pro- Trump political committees during Trump's 2024 presidential campaign and then received a pardon a few months after Trump took office.

Liz Oyer: The pardon had an incredibly demoralizing effect on those people who were hoping and expecting to be repaid, at least in part. And now Milton has started a new business. He's back up and running thanks to receiving clemency from Donald Trump, which he did not earn and he did not deserve.

Brendan Fischer: And there's the founder of Binance, Changpeng Zhao.

Simone Leeper: This is the same cryptocurrency billionaire we mentioned at the top of this episode.

Brendan Fischer: So he pled guilty in this sweeping money laundering case, agreed to pay $ 4 billion in penalties, but then as Trump and his family began organizing their cryptocurrency venture in 2024, Binance channeled billions of dollars in funding and technical support to the company, all of which eventually enriched the Trump family by billions of dollars, at least on paper.

Liz Oyer: There are a large number of other examples. I could talk for hours about all of the egregious pardons that have been granted to individuals who have committed financial crimes. One common thread seems to be that these people have access and connections that have enabled them to get pardons without going through the ordinary process.

Simone Leeper: These are the reward pardons, and we're still warming up. The second category of problematic pardons under this administration is corrupt pardons. These are pardons for public officials who have abused their office, but who President Trump sees as politically loyal to him.

Brendan Fischer: In almost every instance, they are receiving a pardon because they pledge loyalty to Trump and his political agenda.

Simone Leeper: Once again, Brendan Fischer of Campaign Legal Center.

Brendan Fischer: The best known case here is George Santos, the former member of Congress. He defrauded his voters and he was even expelled from Congress by a bipartisan House vote. Santos did not show any remorse for his crimes, did not show any evidence of rehabilitation, but Trump pardoned him. And with Trump not claiming that Santos was unjustly targeted or that he had shown evidence of remorse, instead, Trump cited Santos's longest report for the Republican Party. And then there's the case of Michelle Fiore. She was a Nevada politician who raised money to honor a slain police officer, but instead spent the money raised on plastic surgery and on personal expenses like her daughter's wedding. Trump pardoned Michelle Fiore in April 2025. He didn't contest the evidence against her. He just cited the fact that she had outspoken conservative views. These are pardons being issued because the politicians were loyal to Trump and his party, not because they were unjustly targeted or that the evidence against them was weak.

There are many, many other cases like this where public officials abused the public trust or committed campaign finance violations. These corrupt politicians were rewarded with pardons because again, they showed evidence of dedication and loyalty to Trump.

Simone Leeper: Not all of the pardons in the corrupt pardons category are strictly speaking even pardons. President Trump's Justice Department also halts investigations when it appears his allies may be guilty of corruption.

Brendan Fischer: There are many examples of Trump using the Justice Department to excuse corruption by his allies before presidential pardon even becomes necessary. Former New York City Mayor Eric Adams, he was accused of accepting bribes from Turkish Nationals. Justice Department was pursuing him on corruption charges, but then senior officials at Trump's Justice Department demanded that the case be dropped after Adams agreed to help advance Trump's immigration agenda. This was incredibly controversial at the time. A number of career prosecutors quit to protest the fact that the Justice Department senior leadership was demanding that they drop these charges, but they did it anyway. Seemingly in exchange for Adams helping to advance Trump's immigration agenda, his administration used its prosecutorial discretion to drop the charges against Adams.

Then there's the example of Tom Homan, who's now Trump's border czar. Before Trump took office, undercover FBI agents posing as prospective government contractors handed Homan a $ 50,000 paper bag of cash and Homan took it and the DOJ was investigating him for potential corruption, and of course that pro vanished after Trump took office. These examples are not strictly abusive of the pardon power, but they fit the same pattern of Trump reshaping and abusing the justice system to protect the president's allies and to excuse political corruption when it happens to people who are loyal to President Trump.

Simone Leeper: The third category of pardons happening under President Trump, brokered pardons. Some people aren't necessarily useful to the president financially or politically, yet they're leveraging money and connections to get pardons anyway, regardless of the merits of their case.

Brendan Fischer: Brokered pardons are where wealthy individuals hire lobbyists or well- connected political fixers to help secure clemency, and there are many examples of this. One is Joseph Schwartz. This is an individual who was sentenced under Trump's own Justice Department to three years in prison for a $ 38 million tax fraud scheme. Schwartz then paid nearly 1.1 million to two lobbying firms and then hired some Trump affiliated influencers and then got a pardon. Trump granted Schwartz clemency in November 2025. Across the board, we've seen a substantial increase in the amount of money flowing to lobbying firms from clients seeking clemency from Trump.

Liz Oyer: Individuals are using lawyers and lobbyists as a substitute for demonstrating that their case has any merit.

Simone Leeper: Liz Oyer again.

Liz Oyer: They're getting clemency based purely on access and connections, and there's been a whole industry that has developed around it. There's a whole pardon economy that has developed under Donald Trump. Most of the lawyers who are operating in this space aren't necessarily considering their work lobbying in the legal sense, so they're not filing lobbying disclosures, and I think that we know very little about how much has actually changed hands in connection with pardons, but many people who are operating in this space report that they're being paid seven figures in many cases to submit a clemency application and then sometimes double that if the application is successful. It's really transparently corrupt. It's incredible how out in the open the corruption is.

Brendan Fischer: According to one analysis, there's been about eight times more disclosed in lobbying payments since 2025 from people seeking clemency from Trump as compared to the prior year from people seeking clemency under President Biden. And again, even that total is almost certainly only a fraction of the overall lobbying spending because much of paid pardon advocacy is not going to be reported on lobbying reports. So what this represents really is that Trump's repeated abuses of the pardon power is creating this market for pardons where money and influence and access matters a lot more than justice or the merit of a particular case.

Simone Leeper: Reward pardons, corrupt pardons, brokered pardons. All of them are troubling, but none of them are illegal for the president to issue, which raises urgent questions. How can pardons that are so blatantly corrupt be allowed to happen? And if we want to live in a country where the rule of law is respected, what can be done to repair this system? Brendan Fischer says it's really tricky.

Brendan Fischer: The president's pardon power is part of the constitution. The US Supreme Court says that the president cannot be held legally accountable for official acts, which certainly includes the pardon power. So it's an unfortunate fact that even if the president were to accept a bribe for issuing a pardon, he could not be prosecuted for doing so. However, the bribe giver could potentially be prosecuted if you had a Justice Department willing to pursue such charges. I think there's a lot that Congress can do to ensure that when a pardon is granted, that the public can see whether money changed hands and then the Congress can also give prosecutors the tool to prevent corruption. But even beyond Congress taking action, Americans should demand that this president and all future presidents use clemency carefully. It should be used as a corrective to an imperfect justice system rather than as a tool to reward political allies and financial supporters.

President Trump has repeatedly issued pardons to wealthy individuals after they've channeled money to his packs, to his inaugural fund, to his family businesses, and even what we've been able to see is likely just the tip of the iceberg because there's millions of dollars more that flow through dark money groups and Trump's private business ventures that have zero public disclosure. And on top of that, pardon seekers are spending millions of dollars on lobbyists and fixers to try and secure clemency and only a fraction of that spending is publicly known.

Simone Leeper: The most effective pardon reform would be a new constitutional amendment to redefine that presidential power, but the United States hasn't amended its constitution since 1992. Before that, 1971. A more realistic avenue to reform would be Congress passing laws. This summer, Democrats in the House and Senate announced a bill they call the No Payoffs for Pardons Act. If passed, it would target the people who try to bribe or otherwise pay the President for pardons. Here's Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who is co- sponsoring the legislation.

Chuck Schumer: Our No Payoff for Pardons Act will expose, deter, and prosecute corrupt pardons. Trump sees his pardon power as just another opportunity for grift, for graft, for personal profit. The American people always pay the price for Trump's corruption. Pardons are no exception. Trump picks the pocket of law- abiding Americans to enrich criminals, his cronies, himself.

Brendan Fischer: So what the act would do is mandate transparency and ensure accountability for those who seek to corruptly purchase pardons in this pay- to- play clemency system.

Simone Leeper: Once again, Brendan Fischer.

Brendan Fischer: In short, the bill requires that anyone who gets a pardon disclose anything of value over $10, 000 that they gave to the president, the president's family, or organizations that exist to advance the president's interests, a super PAC or a dark money group or the ballroom fund, for example. Coupled with that transparency requirement is accountability. The legislation clarifies and expands federal law to ensure that those who corruptly purchase a pardon or act of clemency can be prosecuted for doing so.

Simone Leeper: Without a federal law, Americans' options are limited, but holding this and future presidents to account on pardon abuse is vital to maintaining the integrity of our entire legal system.

Brendan Fischer: There are other sources of power that still have authority even when the pardon power is abused. One are independent federal agencies. So the pardon power only extends to criminal violations of federal law. It does not apply to civil accountability. So the Federal Election Commission, for example, still has authority to pursue civil campaign finance investigations against those who violate campaign finance law.

And then beyond that, the states still have the authority to enforce their own laws. The president's pardon power cannot be used to grant clemency for people convicted of breaking state criminal laws, and that's certainly important when it comes to those who have faced charges arising from efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Congress could also create a commission to oversee abuses of pardons, which could help both inform legislation to address pardon abuses, but also potentially even inform an impeachment inquiry. Congress does have the authority to impeach the president for excessive pardon abuses.

Liz Oyer: One reform that a lot of folks have suggested is we should eliminate the president's pardon power.

Simone Leeper: Once again, Liz Oyer.

Liz Oyer: I understand why people are saying that, but there is a beneficial purpose for pardons. There are many deserving people who have no pathways for second chances other than the hope of receiving a presidential pardon. So I think that before we embark on a road that would consider eliminating the pardon power, we need to think about are there reforms that would preserve the ability for deserving people to get the benefit of clemency? One possibility would be to enact other pathways for second chances, other avenues of relief for people who are deserving that don't necessarily have to go through the president.

Brendan Fischer: The president's abuses of the pardon power is helping to create this two- tiered system of justice where on one tier, donors, loyalists, those willing to commit crimes to benefit the president enjoy this degree of immunity that is really unprecedented in modern American politics. And then on the second tier are the rest of us, particularly those who are critical of the president and political opponents. They face intensified scrutiny, political targeting, the threat of selective prosecution, and that's not the way our democracy is supposed to work.

Simone Leeper: In July of this year, President Trump rejected nearly 6, 000 clemency applications from people who didn't have the money or connections to bump their applications to the front of the line, while continuing to grant pardons to those who donated to his campaign or aligned with him politically.

Brendan Fischer: We as Americans should demand more from our elected officials and we should demand that Congress use the power that it has to ensure that clemency decisions are guided by merit and justice and not money and loyalty.

Simone Leeper: As the framers of the Constitution envisioned them, pardons can be a healthy part of our democracy. Laws and courts are fallible. It makes sense to vest the president with the power to correct their mistakes, but this president is issuing pardons that thwart justice based on access, based on money, based on favors, and even if you don't ever expect to seek a pardon yourself, this issue affects you. As Liz Oyer mentioned, the president's pardons also wipe away financial restitution for victims of crimes. So far, that total is about $ 2 billion. This is why fixing pardons is so vital to the rule of law. If some people can so easily escape accountability, the rest of us have no recourse when they break the law.

Next time on Democracy Decoded, we'll take a look at the ways in which the president and his allies are subverting American elections and what that means for the election that is fast approaching this November.

This season of Democracy Decoded is produced by JAR Podcast Solutions for Campaign Legal Center. Campaign Legal Center is a nonpartisan legal organization dedicated to solving the wide range of challenges facing American democracy. For a quarter- century, Campaign Legal Center has been leading a campaign for democracy in courtrooms and capitals across the country, a campaign for voting rights and fair representation, a campaign to hold our government and elected officials accountable, a campaign to limit the corrosive influence of big money in our elections, and a campaign for the rule of law, so every American can participate meaningfully in the democratic process.

Today, the threats to our democracy go beyond anything we could have imagined when we first opened our doors. During this pivotal time for our democracy, Campaign Legal Center needs support to continue to fight on behalf of the American people. Your tax- deductible donation directly funds our efforts to do just that. If you would like to support our work, visit campaignlegal.org and click on the donate button.

Special thanks to our guests, Liz Oyer and Brendan Fischer. I'm your host, Simone Leeper. Thanks so much for listening. If you've learned something new today, find us on your podcast platform of choice and hit subscribe. You'll get updates as we release new episodes.

Leading this production for Campaign Legal Center are Casey Atkins, multimedia manager, and Madeleine Greenberg, communications associate. This podcast was produced by Sam Eifling. Editing and mixing by Luke Badio. Democracy Decoded is a member of the Democracy Group, a network of podcasts dedicated to engaging in civil discourse, inspiring civic engagement, and exploring the future of our democracy. You can learn more at democracygroup.org.