# Pardons as Currency The framing — used by legal scholars (most prominently at the [[Brennan Center]], ACLU, and the Knight [[First Amendment]] Institute), watchdog organizations (CREW, ProPublica), and a growing body of academic literature on unitary-executive abuse — for the use of the **Article II §2 [[Pardon Power]]r** as a **patronage instrument** rather than a corrective tool of mercy. The concept describes a pattern, not a single act: presidents can use the pardon power to **reward loyalty**, **protect family**, **align with movement priorities**, **silence cooperating witnesses**, and **buy political support**, with the power's **constitutional unreviewability** providing a structural shield against accountability. The Trump-era usage of the pardon power is the most extensive and systematic deployment of pardons-as-currency in modern American history. The pattern has four distinct functions: 1. **Family protection** — pardoning relatives, in-laws, and family-adjacent figures to insulate the family from cooperating-witness risk 2. **Political ally rewards** — pardoning campaign aides, advisers, and donors as compensation for loyalty under prosecution 3. **Movement signal** — pardoning movement-aligned figures (most spectacularly the **mass January 6 pardon** of approximately 1,500 defendants on Trump's first day of T2) to consolidate political-base allegiance 4. **Regulatory clearing** — pardoning industry-aligned figures (crypto, finance) to align with the regulatory-capture priorities of the second term ## The Constitutional Design Failure Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 of the Constitution grants the President "Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment." The clause is, by 18th-century constitutional design, **unreviewable** — neither Congress nor the judiciary can override a presidential pardon. The Framers' assumption was that the political costs of abusive pardoning would constrain the power; Hamilton in *Federalist 74* argued the pardon power was needed to prevent excessive harshness in criminal law and that "the dread of being accountable to public opinion" would prevent its abuse. That assumption was made in a context of: - Single-term presidents - Pre-mass-media political culture - A presumption that pardons would be public, post-conviction, and exceptional - A presumption that political parties would discipline their own None of those assumptions hold in 2026. Trump's use of the pardon power has demonstrated that: - A president can pardon **before** prosecution (preemptively), eliminating cooperating-witness leverage entirely - A president can pardon **categorically** (mass pardons of a class of defendants) without case-by-case review - A president can pardon **pre-trial** (as in pre-investigation), preventing factual development - A president can **promise** pardons during a campaign, converting future clemency into current political support - The Office of the Pardon Attorney's traditional vetting role can be **bypassed entirely** The unreviewability is **operationally absolute** — there is no judicial mechanism to set aside an Article II pardon, even one made in apparent corrupt exchange. ## The Trump Pardons (T1, T2, by category) ### Family-Protection Pardons | Year | Pardonee | Connection | Function | |---|---|---|---| | **2020-12-23** | **[[Charles Kushner]]** | Father of [[Jared Kushner]], father-in-law of [[Ivanka Trump]] | Family protection; subsequently appointed **Ambassador to France** in T2 | | **2020-12-23** | **Aviem Sella** | Israeli intelligence officer | Adjacent to Kushner family / Israel network | | **2025–** | Various crypto / finance figures | WLFI / family business adjacencies | Operational clearance for the family's commercial vehicles | Charles Kushner is the central case. Convicted in 2005 by then-U.S. Attorney **[[Chris Christie]]** of 18 counts of tax evasion, witness retaliation (he hired a prostitute to seduce his sister's husband, who was cooperating with prosecutors, and recorded the encounter), and illegal campaign contributions. Sentenced to 24 months. The pardon — issued December 2020, in the final wave of Trump's first-term clemency — was the **first family-in-law pardon** in modern presidential history. Charles Kushner's subsequent appointment as **U.S. Ambassador to France** in T2 makes the post-pardon trajectory a textbook example of the **pardon → office → access** pattern. ### Political-Ally Pardons (T1) | Year | Pardonee | Conviction | Mueller / political nexus | |---|---|---|---| | **2018-08-31** | **[[Dinesh D'Souza]]** | Campaign-finance felony | Movement signal | | **2020-02-18** | **Bernie Kerik** | Tax fraud, lying to officials | Giuliani ally | | **2020-02-18** | **Rod Blagojevich** (commutation) | Selling Obama Senate seat | Governance norm break | | **2020-07-10** | **[[Roger Stone]]** (commutation, then pardon Dec 2020) | Lying to Congress (Mueller) | Mueller-related | | **2020-11-25** | **[[Michael Flynn]]** | Lying to FBI (Mueller) | Mueller-related | | **2020-12-23** | **[[Paul Manafort]]** | Tax fraud, bank fraud, FARA (Mueller) | Mueller-related; Russia thread | | **2020-12-23** | **[[George Papadopoulos]]** | Lying to FBI (Mueller) | Mueller-related | | **2020-12-23** | **Alex van der Zwaan** | Lying to FBI (Mueller) | Mueller-related | | **2021-01-20** | **[[Steve Bannon]]** | Wire fraud (We Build the Wall) | Movement signal; pre-trial pardon | | **2021-01-20** | **[[Elliott Broidy]]** | FARA violations | Foreign-influence adjacent | The Mueller cluster is structurally important. The Mueller Investigation produced 8 convictions and ~34 indictments. **Trump pardoned 5 of those convicted defendants.** The signal to future cooperating witnesses is that Mueller-style cooperation is unrewarded and pardons are available to those who refuse to cooperate — most explicitly modeled by [[Allen Weisselberg]]'s decision to serve two Rikers terms rather than testify against Trump. ### The Mass January 6 Pardon (T2) **January 20, 2025** — On his first day of his second term, Trump issued **Executive Order 14155** ("Granting Pardons and Commutation of Sentences for Certain Offenses Relating to the Events at or Near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021"), granting: - **Full pardons** to approximately **1,580 defendants** convicted of or awaiting trial for January 6 offenses - **Commutations** for **14 leaders** of the [[Proud Boys]] and [[Oath Keepers]], including: - **[[Enrique Tarrio]]** (Proud Boys chairman) — 22-year sentence for seditious conspiracy - **[[Stewart Rhodes]]** (Oath Keepers founder) — 18-year sentence for seditious conspiracy - Approximately 12 additional senior militia figures This was the **largest single-act mass pardon in U.S. history** by number of defendants. Among the pardoned: - **600+** defendants with assault or law-enforcement-obstruction convictions - **170+** defendants with use-of-deadly-weapon enhancements - Several defendants with concurrent **unrelated** federal charges (child pornography, illegal firearms possession in unrelated cases) — at least 33 such cases per CREW reporting The mass pardon's **operational effect**: 1. **Released the militia leadership.** Tarrio, Rhodes, and the Proud Boys / Oath Keepers high command were freed. 2. **Eliminated cooperating-witness leverage** in any future J6-adjacent prosecution. 3. **Converted the J6 defendants into political constituents** — Trump met with pardonees publicly, including at [[Mar-a-Lago]]. 4. **Functionally legitimized political violence in service of Trump.** The signal to future Trump-aligned mobs is that legal consequences for political violence in his support can be absorbed by him. ### Total T2 Clemency (through April 2026) Per DOJ Office of the Pardon Attorney records and aggregator tracking: - **~1,600+** total T2 grants of clemency (pardons + commutations) as of mid-2025 - The vast majority concentrated in the **January 6 mass pardon** of January 20, 2025 - Subsequent individual pardons running roughly 5–10 per month: white-collar defendants, crypto figures, family-adjacent figures, military figures, political donors - **June 2026**: [[Stephen Buyer]] pardon extends the pattern to rank-and-file Republican allies convicted of crimes unrelated to Trump's legal exposure — Buyer's insider trading conviction was reframed as "lawfare" and "[[Deep State]]" targeting by 40+ former GOP congressmembers Compared to historical norms: - Obama: ~1,927 pardons + commutations across 8 years (most via end-of-term clemency initiative; mostly drug-sentence commutations under Pardon Attorney process) - Trump T1: ~237 grants (143 pardons + 94 commutations) - Trump T2: ~1,600+ in 15 months The volume itself is unprecedented; the **categorical** nature (one EO, ~1,580 defendants) is also unprecedented. ## The Promise as Currency A distinct mechanism: **pardons promised before they are issued** function as **political-support purchases** even if the pardon never materializes. During the 2024 campaign, Trump explicitly promised: - Pardons for January 6 defendants (delivered January 20, 2025) - Pardons for [[Ross Ulbricht]] (Silk Road; delivered January 21, 2025 — the transaction is documented end to end in the [[Silk Road Darknet Market Timeline]]) - Pardons for "patriots" prosecuted by the Biden DOJ - Implicit pardons for any allies indicted in connection with election-interference investigations The promise itself functioned as currency during the campaign — converting the prospect of future clemency into present political loyalty. This is structurally different from earlier presidential pardon practice and, scholars argue, raises corrupt-bargain questions even before any pardon is issued. ## Cooperating-Witness Suppression The most analytically important effect of the pardon-as-currency pattern is its **chilling effect on cooperating witnesses**. The traditional model of federal white-collar / national-security prosecution depends on offering reduced sentences in exchange for testimony against more senior figures. The Trump-era pattern undermines this: - **[[Paul Manafort]]** refused to cooperate with Mueller; received a pardon. - **[[Roger Stone]]** refused to cooperate; received a commutation, then a pardon. - **[[Allen Weisselberg]]** refused to cooperate against Trump in two prosecutions; received no pardon (state, not federal — Trump's pardon power doesn't reach NY state law) but was rewarded with continued financial support and the [[Trump Organization]]'s loyalty. - **[[Michael Cohen]]** *did* cooperate; received no pardon and was prosecuted aggressively. The signal to future witnesses is that **non-cooperation is more reliably rewarded than cooperation** when the patron is an Article II principal. This has substantive implications for federal prosecution capacity in any future Trump-aligned investigation. ## Structural Reform Discussions Academic and reform proposals include: - **Constitutional amendment** limiting pardons in cases involving the president's own prosecutions or the prosecutions of family members (similar to language proposed by Senators Whitehouse and Blumenthal). Politically remote. - **Statutory rules** governing the Office of the Pardon Attorney's vetting process and requiring public disclosure of pardon decisions and reasoning. - **Congressional oversight** of the pardon process via mandatory reporting requirements. - **Self-pardon** challenges — academic literature is split on whether a sitting president can self-pardon, with most scholars concluding either no (DOJ Office of Legal Counsel 1974 memo) or yes-but-politically-disastrous. Trump has not yet attempted a self-pardon as of April 2026, but his legal team has reportedly explored the option. ## Cross-references - Process spine: [[The Pardon and Clemency Pipeline]] — the ASCII map of how a grant actually happens, formal track beside informal, and why access rather than merit is the scarce input this page is about - Theater in: [[Trump Family Corruption Ecosystem]] — Theater V (Pardons as Currency) - Related concept: [[Emoluments Clauses]] - Family-protection case study: [[Charles Kushner]] - Mass-pardon event: [[January 6 Capitol Attack]] - Cooperating-witness pattern: [[Allen Weisselberg]], [[Michael Cohen]] - Mueller-cluster pardons: [[Mueller Investigation]] - Movement-signal pardons: [[Proud Boys]], [[Oath Keepers]] - Ally-protection pardon (non-Trump-adjacent): [[Stephen Buyer]] — insider trading conviction erased; extends pattern beyond Mueller/J6 clusters - White-collar fraud cluster: [[Trump 2025 Pardon Spree]] — the rolling, individualized program of clemency for convicted financial fraudsters (regulatory-clearing function extended to garden-variety fraud) - Party-internal application: [[Republican Officeholder Fraud]] — nine-plus former Republican members of Congress and governors whose financial-crime convictions were pardoned or commuted, alongside the cases that were not. Supplies the natural experiment for this page: the variable predicting clemency is proximity to [[Donald Trump]] and federal office, not severity of conduct. The control case is [[Patricia Derges]], a Missouri state legislator convicted on 22 counts who has received nothing.