Since taking office in January 2025, President Trump has granted executive clemency to more than 1,800 individuals, a figure encompassing Jan. 6 rioters, drug traffickers, corporate fraudsters, and a former foreign head of state. The volume and scope of these pardons have prompted calls for constitutional reform, with Rep. Don Bacon becoming the first House Republican in February 2026 to cosponsor the Pardon Integrity Act, which would grant Congress veto power over presidential clemency. “It is clear to me the pardon authority has been abused,” Bacon said. Rep. Steve Cohen has proposed a separate amendment prohibiting self-pardons and clemency for crimes that directly benefit the president.
Roughly 1,500 of those pardons arrived on Trump’s first day back in the White House. That sweeping order covered everyone charged or convicted for their role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, including those found guilty of seditious conspiracy and individuals who assaulted police officers. In April 2026, the Department of Justice (DOJ) moved to fully dismiss the remaining convictions of defendants it had previously only commuted, including Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, calling them “Biden-era weaponized prosecutions.” Defense lawyers have since argued the pardons extend far beyond their apparent scope.
In March 2026, lawyers for Brian Cole Jr., accused of planting pipe bombs outside the RNC and DNC on the eve of Jan. 6, filed a motion to dismiss his charges, arguing Trump’s blanket pardon covered him. The DOJ responded in April with a superseding indictment adding terrorism and weapons of mass destruction charges.
Also on day one, Trump pardoned Ross Ulbricht, who created the Silk Road dark web marketplace and was serving two life sentences plus 40 years. Ulbricht’s platform facilitated more than $183 million in drug sales and was connected to at least six overdose deaths. His pardon eliminated roughly $183 million in fines and restitution.
Among the most eyebrow-raising grants of clemency was the November 2025 pardon of Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras. Hernández had been sentenced to 45 years in federal prison after being convicted of enabling the transport of 400 tons of cocaine into the United States. Longtime Trump ally and political operative Roger Stone contacted the president to advocate for the pardon.
Trump also pardoned Garnett Gilbert Smith in May 2025, a figure the DEA identified as one of Baltimore’s most prolific cocaine and heroin distributors. Smith trafficked more than 1,000 kilograms of cocaine in under two years.
Corporate fraud cases feature heavily in the pardon roster. Trevor Milton, the Nikola electric truck startup founder convicted of defrauding investors, received a full pardon in March 2025 that eliminated approximately $675 million in restitution to shareholders. Milton and his wife had contributed more than $1.8 million to a Trump re-election fund before the November election.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao also secured a full pardon after pleading guilty to failures in anti-money laundering controls that permitted funds to reach terrorists and child abusers. The pardon drew scrutiny because of Zhao’s business connections to World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency venture involving the Trump family.
Jason Galanis, who received a 15-year sentence for a scheme that defrauded the Oglala Sioux Nation of $60 million, saw his $84.4 million restitution requirement vanish. Paul Walczak, convicted of stealing $4.4 million from employee paychecks, had both his prison term and restitution erased weeks after his mother gave $1 million to a Trump fundraiser.
A staff analysis from Rep. Jamie Raskin of the House Judiciary Committee found that Trump’s pardons erased $1.3 billion in restitution and fines that had been owed to crime victims and American taxpayers. A broader March 2026 analysis by the California Governor’s Office, accounting for both Trump terms, put the total at nearly $2 billion in court-ordered restitution, forfeitures, and fines wiped by executive clemency. More than half the pardons went to individuals convicted of money laundering, bank fraud, or wire fraud. Half of all recipients were business executives or politicians.
The Wall Street Journal reported that lobbyists now routinely charge $1 million for pardon advocacy work, with some seeking success fees as high as $6 million. A March 2026 investigation by El País found that lobbying firms disclosed nearly $5.2 million in clemency-related revenue in 2025, approximately eight times the amount reported for similar efforts directed at President Biden the prior year.
Alexander Hamilton, Founding Father who served as the first U.S. secretary of the treasury from 1789 to 1795 under the presidency of George Washington, wrote in The Federalist Papers: No. 74 (The Command of the Military and Naval Forces, and the Pardoning Power of the Executive) that vesting pardon authority in one individual would “naturally inspire scrupulousness and caution.” Hamilton believed presidential responsibility would ward off abuse because no leader would be shameless enough to corrupt such a serious power. He envisioned pardons as tools of mercy meant to temper the severity of criminal law for cases of “unfortunate guilt.”
Constitutional experts have labeled this thinking “Hamilton’s Folly,” a miscalculation based on overly optimistic 18th-century assumptions about executive virtue. The Constitution provides virtually no restraints on the pardon power. Impeachment demands a two-thirds Senate supermajority that has never been achieved. The Supreme Court has no original jurisdiction over pardons.
Any constitutional amendment would need two-thirds approval in both the House and Senate, plus ratification by 38 states, a near-impossible threshold in today’s polarized climate. Until then, the pardon power remains what it has always been: stunningly unfettered, relying completely on the integrity of the person exercising it. In April 2026, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had repeatedly told senior administration officials he intends to pardon them before leaving office, at one point quipping he would pardon “everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval.” Hamilton wagered everything on presidential character. History suggests that was a losing bet.