The Rule of Law: Justice, Mercy, and the Power to Pardon

Under the U.S. Constitution, the president is granted the power “to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States except in Cases of Impeachment.” Article II, §2. The president’s authority is broad, although limited to “offences against the United States,” meaning that state criminal offenses and civil claims are not covered.

The origin of the power to pardon can be traced to English history, when the concept was known as the “prerogative of mercy.” Alexander Hamilton advocated for the pardon power to address individual cases of mercy or injustice, allowing the executive to correct potential failures in the justice system and heal national divisions.

As historically envisioned, the power to pardon would serve as a vehicle for tempering justice with mercy. But when used for partisan, political, or personal interests, or to reward or excuse criminal conduct, a pardon will result in an injustice that is inconsistent with the Rule of Law.

President Trump’s pardons have in most cases been used for vindication of perceived wrongs to himself or for other personal interests, such as reward or protection from punishment for supporters, or as quid pro quo for some kind of support. We have seen the reversal of just and legally sustained judicial determinations, including voluntary guilty pleas. Some of these pardons undo convictions that have the effect of denying restitution to deserving victims of the fraud or other wrongdoing overturned by the pardons. See Bruggeman, L., “Trump’s pardons have shortchanged fraud victims,” (June 12, 2025) (abcnews.go.com).

The following is a brief summary of only some of the president’s second term pardons:

• January 6 Defendants. President Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of over 1500 defendants convicted in connection with the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Of these defendants, 1009 plead guilty, 608 were charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding law enforcement officers, and 174 were charged with using dangerous or deadly weapons against a law enforcement officer. With these pardons and commutations, Trump in effect sanctioned an event that the Georgia Supreme Court described as a “violent takeover of the Capitol to overturn the 2020 election.” See, In the Matter of W. McCall Calhoun Jr., January 21, 2026.
• Reality TV stars Julie and Todd Chrisley were convicted in 2022 of bank fraud and tax evasion, having taken out fraudulent loans worth millions and hiding their earnings from tax authorities. The Chrisleys were already serving jail terms imposed by the U.S. District Court in Atlanta when Trump was lobbied for clemency by their TV personality daughter, Savannah, a vocal Trump supporter who endorsed his candidacy in a speech at the Republican National Convention in 2024. She claimed that the case against her parents was politically motivated, despite the fact that a Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney obtained the indictment against them, a jury convicted them beyond a reasonable doubt, and the verdict was affirmed on appeal. They received a presidential pardon in 2025.
• Devon Archer was found guilty by a Manhattan federal jury in 2018 of conspiring with other promoters to defraud the Oglala Sioux Tribe by lying about $60 million in bonds sold to unsuspecting investors and using proceeds to benefit themselves. Archer was sentenced to a year in prison and ordered to pay $43 million in restitution to defrauded investors. The US Supreme Court upheld the verdict in January 2024. In March of 2025, before Archer served any of his prison sentence or paid any restitution, President Trump granted him a full pardon of his criminal conviction, which relieved him of the obligation to make restitution. The pardon came after Archer testified in a Republican-led inquiry involving his former business partner, Hunter Biden.
• Trevor Milton, the founder and CEO of Nikola Corporation, was convicted by a federal jury in New York in 2022 of three counts of securities fraud for repeatedly lying to investors about his company’s technology. Milton was sentenced to four years in prison, ordered to pay a $1 million fine, and return certain Utah property. During his appeal in 2025, while he was free on bond, the president pardoned him, claiming that Milton had been targeted for his political support of Trump. Notably, in October 2024, just weeks before the presidential election, Milton and his wife donated more than $1.8 million to Trump’s campaign and related committees, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
• Carlos Watson, the founder and CEO of Ozy, was convicted by a Brooklyn federal jury of securities and wire fraud. In 2024, he was sentenced by a federal judge to 116 months in prison and ordered to pay $96 million in restitution to defrauded investors. On March 28, 2025, mere hours before Watson was to surrender himself to custody, the president granted him clemency, commuting his sentence and nullifying the court’s restitution and forfeiture orders. According to Reuters and other news media, Watson cultivated Trump’s pardon czar Alice Marie Johnson, while casting himself as a victim of “selective prosecution.”
• Changpeng Zhao is the founder of cryptocurrency exchange Binance. He plead guilty to money laundering in 2023 and served a prison sentence until he was released in September 2024. President Trump pardoned Zhao in 2025, which lifted restrictions on his ability to do business in the United States. It has been reported by Coin Desk that Binance holds approximately 87% ($4.7 billion) of the total supply of USD1, the stablecoin issued by the Trump-family controlled crypto venture World Liberty Financial.
• Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former president of Honduras, was sentenced to 45 years in prison by a Manhattan federal court after he was convicted of bribery and drug trafficking involving more than 400 tons of cocaine. Trump has asserted that Hernandez was treated unfairly and “set up” by the Biden administration, despite overwhelming evidence at trial showing his receipt of bribes from traffickers, including “El Chapo” Guzman, leader of the Sinaloa Drug Cartel, that is now designated by the Trump Administration as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. Trump pardoned Hernandez but curiously supported the January 2026 indictment of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife on cocaine trafficking charges, as well as the extrajudicial killings of low-level suspected drug runners in the Caribbean.
• Paul Walczak, a former nursing home executive, plead guilty to willfully failing to pay federal income, social security, and Medicare taxes which he withheld from his employees, and then embezzled the money to support his luxurious lifestyle. He was pardoned in April 2025 soon after his mother attended a high-dollar Trump fundraiser.
• Rudolph Giuliani, Mark Meadows, and, according to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, at least 16 other former officials received presidential pardons or have been granted clemency for participating in the unlawful efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

None of these pardons served the interests of justice or mercy. The exercise of the pardon power by this president demonstrates how the Rule of Law continues to be undermined, which has undoubtedly caused the ordinary citizen, with no ties to the administration, to have little faith in our justice system.