FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump attends a roundtable discussion on the day he announced an aid package for farmers, at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., December 8, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo
Since returning to the White House almost 11 and one-half months ago, President Donald Trump has issued a long list of pardons — from the January 6, 2021 defendants to former Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas). And that is in addition to the many pardons he issued during his first presidency.
In an article published by The Atlantic on December 15, Liz Oyer — who served as a pardon attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) during Joe Biden's presidency — stresses that being able to issue pardons is an important power for U.S. presidents but warns that they do the country a huge disservice when they misuse it.
"When Donald Trump pardoned U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar earlier this month," Oyer explains, "he added to a spate of clemencies that has directly attacked a founding principle of America's democratic republic: the expectation that elected representatives will serve as fiduciaries of the public trust…. Joe Biden issued individual pardons to just two state-level elected officials, but not for crimes that occurred while they held public office. Neither Barack Obama nor George W. Bush pardoned any elected officials during their respective eight years in office."
Oyer adds, "Trump, by contrast, has pardoned both well-known figures such as Cuellar, accused of taking $600,000 in bribes from foreign companies; Rep. George Santos of New York, who defrauded his constituents in virtually every conceivable way; and Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who tried to sell a U.S. Senate seat; and lesser characters, such as a state official in Nevada who stole money from a police memorial fund, an elected sheriff in Virginia who sold badges for cash, and a former Tennessee state legislator who defrauded taxpayers to win contracts for his business."
Oyer notes that the Cuellar pardon "came just days after Trump's unprecedented pardon of a foreign head of state — former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez — who was convicted of corrupting his own government from the top down by operating it as a narco-state." And she warns that Trump is "engineering a return to a patronage system, in which pardons feature prominently."
"The Justice Department used to rely on merit-based guidelines, rooted in considerations of remorse, rehabilitation, and redemption," Oyer explains. "Trump has abandoned those, favoring instead a transactional approach. Pardon seekers once applied for relief through the Office of the Pardon Attorney, a process that can be lengthy and cumbersome due to rigorous vetting requirements. Today, wealthy and powerful pardon hopefuls are funneling their requests straight to the president's desk by way of well-connected intermediaries. Untold sums are changing hands along the way, in the form of lobbying fees, legal services, donations, and investments."
Liz Oyer's full article for The Atlantic is available at this link (subscription required).