Pardoner-in-chief

0:00Noel King:The Justice Department website, justice.gov, has a list of people that President Trump has granted clemency during the first year of his second term. It runs the gamut from the, if we're being honest, kind of funny. You can call me a messy bitch. I've been called worse, but I'll take it. Former Congressman George Santos, imprisoned for wire fraud and identity theft, to the genuinely unfortunate. This is Christopher Moynihan on January 6th. And this morning, nine months after receiving a pardon from President Trump for ransacking the Capitol, he's back in custody, charged with threatening to kill House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

0:35Noel King:After January 6th, Emily Hernandez ended up driving down I-44 drunk. She killed a mother. Hundreds of people on this list, a lot of fraud, a little cocaine, some tampering, a shoplifter. So is this Donald Trump's latest unprecedented or is he really not that much worse than his predecessors? We're going to look into it ahead on Today Explained.

1:22Ask Atio anything. What's the status of this deal? What should I know before my next meeting? Atio will search across all your data to give you exactly what you need. If you want a CRM built for how you want to work, you can check out Atio. You can go to atio.com slash todayexplained. You'll get 15 % off your first year. That's A-T-T-I-O dot com slash todayexplained.

1:44Noel King:As AI reshapes professional services, law firms and in-house teams are rethinking how complex work gets done. Harvey AI is an AI platform built specifically for legal practice, helping teams analyze documents, draft with precision, and collaborate securely across matters. Today, more than half of the Amlaw 100 use Harvey. Learn more at Harvey.ai.

2:11I am the president of Today Explained. Clothed in immense power. I'm Ben Wallace-Wells, and I'm a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine.

2:22Noel King:OK, so here we sit, January of 2026. And this month alone, President Trump has issued some pardons. Who? Well, he has pardoned notably Wanda Vasquez Garcet, who's the former governor of Puerto Rico, who had been convicted of accepting bribes to appoint a particular financial regulator who a bank had chosen. Trump also pardoned the banker who was convicted of bribing her. He also pardoned the former FBI agent who was convicted of helping to set up the deal. He pardoned Adriana Camberos, who was a two-time fraudster. Trump had commuted her sentence at the end of his first term for a separate crime in which she had made tens of millions of dollars selling fake five-hour energy drinks.

3:06And then eventually she got free on that commutation. And then a couple of years later, was convicted again for a completely separate fraud. And now she's being pardoned for that. Right now, the batch right now, aside from Vázquez Garcet, it's largely fraudsters like Comberos. It's largely white-collar people who often have donated a lot of money to an affiliated political committee or have a lawyer or advocate who's close to Trump. It's just sort of a grab bag of grifters.

3:37Noel King:We're like 12 months in. Do we know how many people he's granted clemency to this term? We do. It's a little bit more than 1 ,600, which is record-setting pace. The most significant population of that, though, are about 1 ,500 January 6th participants and schemers. And so, you know, beyond that, we do have a couple hundred, which is highly unusual still, but not quite as eye-catching a number. So 1 ,500 of them are J6ers, and then there's about another hundred, and they, what type of people are they? Well, we got a couple categories, I think. One is political allies or politicians who might become allies.

4:17You know, maybe the most salient example there is Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former president of Honduras, who had been sentenced to 45 years in federal prison for overseeing while in office an absolutely massive drug trafficking conspiracy. A Manhattan jury found Hernandez guilty of accepting millions of dollars in bribes to protect cocaine shipments bound for the United States. If you have some drug dealers in your country and you're the president, you don't necessarily put the president in jail for 45 years. That was a Biden-inspired witch hunt. Trump let him go. There's the former Illinois governor, Rod Blagojevich, a corrupt Democrat with phenomenal hair.

5:00You know, you may remember a real pompadour. I do. He was left free in February. Rod Bogoyevich was convicted in 2011 of trying to sell then-President Barack Obama's vacated Senate seat and was sentenced to 14 years in prison. I didn't know him other than I believe he was on The Apprentice for a little while. He was just a very nice person. That's one category. You know, there's political allies and potential political allies. A second is just the rich, people who have committed just base white-collar fraud. In addition to Comberos, a guy named Trevor Milton, who is an electric truck entrepreneur, who is convicted of defrauding his own investors by effectively faking that his trucks worked when they didn't.

5:46He cut one video with them in neutral, rolling downhill so it looked like they were actually driving. He is a huge Republican donor and his pardon came roughly five months after he and his wife donated nearly two million dollars to the Trump campaign. They say the thing that he did wrong was he was one of the first people that supported a gentleman named Donald Trump for president. He supported Trump. He liked Trump. I didn't know him, but he liked him. And maybe most significantly, a really important guy named Changpeng Zhao, who is the founder and head of the crypto exchange Binance, the biggest crypto exchange in the world.

6:24He's one of, by Forbes' estimate, the 30 wealthiest people in the world. And he'd been convicted of effectively making it possible for people to launder money on his exchange. So a money laundering conviction. And significantly, he had, just prior to his pardon, conducted a massive deal where he underwrote Trump's family's crypto coin, which has been estimated as giving them a value of more than a billion dollars. So, you know, that's the second category, just like base white collar fraud, a fair amount of Medicare and Medicaid fraudsters in there. And then you also have some random famous people thrown in on the back end, like Daryl Strawberry, the former Mets baseball star, who was convicted of tax evasion and later became an evangelical preacher.

7:08President Trump has gone to bat for Daryl Strawberry, pardoning the Mets legend for his tax evasion conviction from 30 years ago. And he said, you did some very bad things, but you know what? But you have straightened your life out and you have given your life back to helping other people. A real figure from my own childhood, six foot six, really elegant right fielder and be a young boy, the rapper. So, you know, there's there's a grab bag, but there are still these kind of buckets you can identify.

7:37Noel King:I am assuming, tell me if I'm wrong, that many of these people have money. Many, if not all of them, have money. What is the process like for actually getting a pardon? How do you come to Trump's attention? There's not a formal process. But the Wall Street Journal, the political reporting website Notice, others have documented a really extensive lobbying effort where lobbyists, people close to the president, are taking millions of dollars from the families and allies of people in prison to try to get their name before the president. And when you look at these individual cases and you go through the names that pop up who are involved in the lobbying, Roger Stone is involved in one.

8:18Chris Kyes, the president's former defense lawyer, was also the defense lawyer for one of these figures. There's often some element of just straightforward money, like a lot of these people have donated to political committees associated with the president. But there's also some element of connection, you know. And I would say this is less remarked upon, but I would say there's also often a narrative element. You know, there is often something that might grab the president's attention. You know, he might be able to say this person was charged just as I was by an overreach by the Biden administration.

8:52It was set up by a lot of bad people, some of the same people that I had to deal with. Or it might, you know, illuminate some issue he wants to. You know, he pardoned a few people at the outset of his term who had been convicted of various crimes against abortion clinics. So anti-abortion protesters. So, you know, there's the straightforward money part of it. There's the connections part of it. And there's the narrative part of it.

9:19Noel King:Does Trump ever talk about why he's pardoning specific people? I guess he does sometimes. You said January 6th is the obvious one, right? Yeah. But what does he get out of it? Like, there's a sense that if he's pardoning people, they must be, I don't know, paying him directly. What is the deal? I mean, I guess I'd say a couple of things. The first is like a lot of things with Trump. He sort of talks around it a lot without actually addressing why he's pardoning people a lot of the time. You know, when 60 Minutes asked him why he was pardoning Zhao, he said he didn't know anything about that case.

9:50OK, are you ready? I don't know who he is. I know he got a four month sentence or something like that. And I heard it was a Biden witch hunt. I think that one thing that is striking, and I think a real vulnerability for him, is that in a lot of cases, he doesn't give a real reason. What does he get out of it? You know, I think that the way that Trump has operated in the second term, there's not a lot of legislation. He's leaned very heavily on things that he can make a kind of show of and do directly, you know, and that's executive orders and it's deals made with foreign countries and universities.

10:24And the pardons feel to me very much of a piece of that. It's a place where he has enormous leverage and he can seem beneficent and he can do it without a lot of procedure. And that seems to me just like a very, very friendly to Trump realm of power exercise.

10:42Noel King:Who is he not pardoning? Like who's asked and has been told no? A bunch of white collar criminals, but notably Sean Combs, the rapper Diddy, you know, convicted of sex trafficking crimes. Ghislaine Maxwell has been reported to be publicly preparing, there's a number of months ago, but she was reported to be publicly preparing a commutation application. And he sort of said, I'm not going to do that, you know. I have a lot of people who have asked me for pardons. I call them Puff Daddy who's asked me for a pardon. But she was convicted of child sex trafficking. Yeah, I mean, I'm going to have to take a look at it.

11:20I'd have to ask DOJ. And I think that that is just a sign that there is some boundary here, that there are some cases that are just sort of too toxic.

11:29Noel King:To be fair to Trump, the situation around pardons has felt unprecedented for a while now. I remember when Biden was on his way out and he pardoned some of his family members, Anthony Fauci, Mark Milley. There was criticism that, like, this has gone too far. our presidents are just willy-nilly issuing pardons, you know, to protect themselves on their way out. Do you think Trump is fundamentally changing the way presidents will decide to issue pardons in the future? Like, have we hit a point here where it's like, I'm on my way out and anybody who I want to protect from the next administration, I'm going to pardon them?

12:05Noel King:Or do you think this will get back to normal at some point? No, I don't know. I don't know that this This will get back to normal. I think that this is a kind of odd—I think you're very right to point out that this did not start with Trump. And there was real grossness at the end of the Clinton administration and the Biden administration. And this is also something that, you know, the Constitution explicitly allows. You know, it's not really a murky area. The president can pardon basically whoever he wants for whatever reason. The only check on him is politics. Trump has preceded his whole presidency on a kind of assumption of impunity, you know, especially in the second term.

12:45And I think this is maybe an extreme example of what we'll see, but I don't necessarily think this is going to stop. I suspect that presidents will keep finding it in their interests in discreet ways to let allies or contributors or people that might convey some political meaning for them off the hook and to wave their crimes away and to think either there will be no political consequence or I can take the hit.

13:16Noel King:Benjamin Wallace-Wells, he's with The New Yorker. Coming up, why on earth did the Founding Fathers give presidents this kind of power? Mama, let's research.

13:36Support for Today Explained comes from Grow Therapy. Every chapter of life brings new challenges, and Grow Therapy can connect you with someone who's equipped to help you navigate them. Whether it's your first time in therapy or your 50th, Grow says that they make it easier to find someone who fits you from a network of thousands of independent licensed therapists across the United States. You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability, and get started in as little as two days. You can cancel up to 24 hours in advance at no cost. Grow says that there are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments, and you just pay per session.

14:16Whatever challenges you're facing, Grow Therapy can help. Grow accepts over 100 insurance plans. Sessions average about$21 with insurance, and some pay as little as$0, depending on their plan. You can go to growtherapy.com slash explain today to get started. That's growtherapy.com slash explained. growtherapy.com slash explained. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.

14:50Support for Today Explained comes from Samsara. A lot of companies have to get products from point A to point B. That means hiring drivers, which in turn means insurance, dash cams, and accepting the fact that accidents can happen. That's exactly where Samsara comes in. Samsara brings AI dash cams, vehicle tracking, and asset visibility together in one simple platform. Samsara says that they want to help you protect your drivers, cut costs, and operate smarter. Their AI dash cams capture real-time video that can help prove when your drivers aren't at fault, which might help protect them from false claims.

15:29Samsara's data shows companies that use their system have reduced fuel costs and improved driver retention thanks to better visibility and coaching. You don't need to wait for the next accident to take action. You can go right now to samsara.com slash explain to request a free demo and see how Samsara brings visibility and safety to your operations. That's samsara.com slash explained. Sam Sarah. Operate smarter.

16:02Support for this show comes from American Giant. As we inch toward the spring and temperatures begin to rise ever so slowly, it can be tricky to figure out the right amount of layers to put on. But one article of clothing you can always count on, no matter the weather, is the hoodie. That's why American Giant says that their classic full-zip hoodie is made to last a lifetime, ready to bring you warmth and comfort year after year. But it's not just the hoodie. American Giant says that they have a wide range of clothing options that are built to last. Recently, our colleague Andrew Melnizek got to order some American Giant.

16:39American Giant just sent me a pair of their Roughneck pants. The material's great, and it's made up of a cotton canvas. It's one of those types of pants where you can wear while really doing anything. And this season, you can snag the hoodie that will bring you comfort for life, the American Giant Classic Full Zip, and save 20 % off your first order at American-Giant.com when you use the code EXPLAIN at checkout. That's American-Giant.com and use code EXPLAIN at checkout. That's 20 % off your first order at American-Giant.com. slash explained. Code explained.

17:33Noel King:Noel King with Sai Krishna Prakash of UVA. He teaches law there. And his book came out last week. It's called The Presidential Pardon, The Short Clause with a Long Troubled History. He has great timing, Cy. Oh, I'm, you know, very grateful to President Trump for doing all the pardons he's issuing because it makes it quite likely that this will sell more than it otherwise would. He has not disappointed, right? He's just been incredibly aggressive with the pardon pen. The presidential pardon is written into the Constitution, which means the founders were thinking something when they did this. What were they thinking?

18:09So every system of government has some ability to mitigate punishments imposed on people for violating the law. And they do this for several reasons. One, it's often thought that standing laws are just too harsh. The punishments are too harsh. So, they thought that they needed to have some means of modifying the sentence. They had also seen that, you know, in rebellions, a well-timed pardon could nip the rebellion in the bud. It enables people to step back from what they're doing and stop doing it. And so, So it's a combination of this need to pacify rebellions, a sense that criminal punishments are too harsh, that we have a pardon power across not only American jurisdictions, but across the world.

18:50Noel King:The framers were worried that any branch of government would have too much power. That's why we have three of them, right? No kings. We do a president. Did anyone at the time they were drafting the Constitution say, this is just giving the president too much power? Many people made that exact complaint, Noel. They thought that if you look at the state constitutions, they have all kinds of constraints on the pardon power. Some crimes can't be pardoned. Other crimes, you can suspend the sentence and the legislature has to decide. When you give a power to one person, it just makes it easier to exercise.

19:23And there's, you know, as you know, the Constitution doesn't impose any checks on its exercise. You don't need the Senate's consent. You don't need the House's consent. The courts can't review the merits of the pardon. And so a lot of people looked at this and said, this is just far too much power in one person. But the Constitution was an all-or-nothing question. And even if you thought this particular part of it was problematic, you voted on the entire thing up or down. And so if you liked the other things enough, you voted for it.

19:52Noel King:All right. So which American president was the first to use the power of the pardon? Well, George Washington used it first. He was the first kind of, you know, it's not obvious because, you know, you don't have to give out a pardon if you're president. But he got applications and he granted some of them and he was very cautious about it. He did a lot of research. He would talk to the judge. He would talk to the prosecutor. He would read the petition filed by the prisoner. And he would talk to other judges and he talked to people in his cabinet. Then he would reach a decision that, you know, reflected all that deliberation and caution.

20:26And his pardons actually mentioned the reasons why people were being pardoned, because he wanted people to know that he had reasons. It wasn't just, I like this person, or I had a good meal yesterday and I feel happy. He wanted to make it clear that he had public policy reasons for what he was doing.

20:44Noel King:All right, so walk me through some of the historical highlights, the big ones. Some of the more, maybe more famous episodes is Andrew Johnson pardoning Confederates, including Jefferson Davis. This is immensely controversial because they had fought a bloody war against the United States. And so some wanted them to be punished, right, with the death penalty or worse. Johnson pardons them and he's told, if you pardon these people, there's a greater chance that you will get the Democratic nomination for president. Now, he doesn't get the nomination, but it seems clear that he's using the pardon pen to help secure the nomination.

21:22You know, there's, of course, Gerald Ford's pardon of Nixon. And by these presents do grant a full, free and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon. You know, Jimmy Carter pardoned all the draft dodgers. And that was controversial because it was done, you know, very soon after the Vietnam War. I think that now is the time to heal our country after the Vietnam War. And I think that what the people are concerned about is not the pardon or the amnesty of those who evaded the draft, but whether or not our crime system is fair. And then, you know, that continues on into the last couple of administrations.

21:59We can talk about that if you want to.