# Office of the Pardon Attorney The Justice Department component that receives, investigates, and makes recommendations on petitions for executive clemency. It operates under 28 C.F.R. §§ 0.35–0.36 and §§ 1.1–1.11, is staffed at roughly 40 attorney and non-attorney personnel, and reports through the Deputy Attorney General. Its full machinery is drawn in [[The Pardon and Clemency Pipeline]]. The office's structural weakness is written into its own regulations: § 1.11 provides that the clemency rules are advisory only and create no enforceable rights in any person. The President may grant clemency to anyone at any time after an offence is committed without a petition ever reaching this office — which is what has happened to most of the consequential grants since 2025. Recent history: career Pardon Attorney [[Elizabeth Oyer]] was removed in March 2025 with more than 6,000 applications pending; [[Ed Martin]] was installed and, by early 2026, was reported to have been layered by the Deputy Attorney General and moved out of Main Justice, with his clemency role reduced largely to paperwork. Martin's departure was announced by the President on August 21, 2026. **As of September 11, 2026 no successor or acting designee had been publicly named.** A House Judiciary Committee minority staff report of August 21, 2026 put the pending application backlog at roughly 14,000. **Status:** stub — expand with the office's history (created 1893 as a standalone office within DOJ), its published clemency statistics by administration, and the § 1.6 U.S. Attorney consultation practice. ## See also - [[The Pardon and Clemency Pipeline]] — the process map - [[Pardon Power]] · [[Pardons as Currency]] - [[Elizabeth Oyer]] · [[Ed Martin]] · [[Alice Marie Johnson]] - [[Department of Justice]] · [[DOJ Component Tree]] · [[Attorney General]]