Trump’s Secret Pardons

The money and influence-peddling surrounding Trump’s second-term pardons have been much discussed. But less attention has been paid to another alarming feature: the secrecy.

Last week, Donald Trump reportedly granted pardons and commutations to 30 people. But even as word of these clemencies has spread, most of the recipients remain unknown. The White House made no announcement of the clemency actions when they were granted. Nearly a week later, there still has been no official statement, and no list of recipients has been disclosed.

News of the clemencies began to trickle out on September 3, when attorneys for John Dougherty, a Philadelphia union leader, announced that the president had commuted Dougherty’s prison sentence. He was serving six years for bribing a city council member and embezzling around $600,000 from Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Two years into his sentence, Dougherty sought early release to care for his sick wife; prosecutors opposed the request.

At first, Dougherty’s commutation appeared to be a standalone; no other clemencies were announced that day. But 24 hours later, Donald Trump’s “Pardon Czar,” Alice Marie Johnson, announced in a post on X that the president had granted 30 clemencies on September 3.

Johnson’s post named just four of the recipients: Emory Jones (a close associate of Jay-Z), as well as Molly Ann Bloom, Holly Leanne Frantzen, and Shemika Williams. Frantzen and Williams appear to be regular folks, with little public profile, whose cases were supported by traditional clemency advocacy organizations. Bloom was prosecuted as part of a large-scale gambling and money laundering operation; her memoir later became a Hollywood movie.

Two more clemency recipients, Jerry Haymon IV and Kevin Harden, were subsequently reported by Marijuana Moment. Both men were serving prison sentences for crimes related to marijuana trafficking. Meanwhile, various Second Amendment groups reported on the pardons of four men convicted of violating federal firearm laws: Patrick Adamiak, George Peterson, Shane Cox, and Jeremy Kettler. Adamiak’s case was a focal point for gun rights activists, and his pardon was celebrated by the NRA.

As of this writing, I’ve been able to piece together only 11 of the 30 recipients who reportedly received clemency on September 3. The other 19 remain unknown.

This is not normal.

The secrecy surrounding Trump’s pardons is not normal. In normal times, there would be a formal announcement from the White House, accompanied by a list of recipients. The official clemency documents, signed by the president and embossed with the Justice Department seal, would be promptly posted for public inspection on the Pardon Attorney’s website. A press release would typically explain the rationale for the clemency grants. Prompt public announcements of clemency actions have been a feature of every modern presidency, Republican and Democratic. Even during Trump’s first term, these conventions were generally followed.

But not so during his second term. The failure to promptly announce and document pardons has been a problem since Day One. The Administration has abandoned its first-term practice of issuing detailed press releases. Observers are left to cobble together bits and pieces based on social media posts, court filings, and whatever else makes its way to the press. News often trickles out over multiple days.

Official documents in many instances eventually have been posted on the Pardon Attorney’s website. But not without delay. At the start of Trump’s second presidency, when I was still Pardon Attorney, it was like pulling teeth to get signed clemency documents from the White House. The paperwork often was not forthcoming for days and seemingly was produced only after badgering from the press.

This is much more than a paperwork problem.

The absence of clemency paperwork is not “just” a paperwork problem. It is a fundamental problem with the integrity of the pardon power. The failure to timely document and disclose clemency grants creates chaos. It fuels corruption. And it begs the question: Are there more?

Chaos reigned during my brief tenure as Pardon Attorney under Donald Trump. It began the night of January 20, 2025—Inauguration Day—when Trump pardoned all of the January 6 rioters without giving my office any heads up. We were then expected to facilitate the immediate release of around 400 federal prisoners, scattered across the country, that night, without any warning. Frantic calls started coming in from the Bureau of Prisons, reporting that family members were showing up at prisons, banging on gates, demanding the release of their loved ones. Meanwhile, we didn’t even have a list of names to work from, let alone the signed paperwork.

The secrecy that has surrounded the pardon process under this Administration is a breeding ground for corruption. Some of the pardons that have come to light are literally unexplainable other than as the product of corrupt dealings. Take, for example, Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former president of Honduras, imprisoned for trafficking hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States. Trump’s decision to pardon him—while simultaneously blowing up purported drug traffickers at sea—is not defensible by any logic or reason. We can only speculate about what Hernandez might have offered Trump in exchange for this extraordinary action. Doing away with the detailed press releases Trump favored during his first presidency seems to reflect the impossibility of even fashioning a non-corrupt rationale for some of his recent pardons.

The pardon process has long been criticized—and justly—as opaque and insulated from public scrutiny. But Trump has taken the lack of transparency to new levels. There is no longer even a clearly established process for applying for clemency. The orderly process once run through DOJ’s Office of the Pardon Attorney has been abandoned. The detailed criteria for clemency memorialized in DOJ’s Justice Manual have been discarded. In August, Attorney General Todd Blanche said that Trump does not consult him on pardons, and “the president takes his own counsel” on matters of clemency.

The malignant combination of chaos, corruption, and secrecy that has characterized Trump’s pardon process to date raises the very real question: Has he granted more pardons than we know about?

Yes, there might be a secret stash of pardons.

To suggest that Trump could have signed a stash of secret pardons might sound conspiratorial. But legally, there’s nothing that prevents the president from granting pardons in secret. The Constitution vests the president with broad authority to grant pardons. (Art. II, Sec. 2: “The President shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.”) While the framers assumed the president would use this power to serve the public interest, they did not expressly require him to inform the public when he grants a pardon.

As a practical matter, a commutation—which typically reduces a sentence of imprisonment—would be difficult to keep under wraps for an extended period, because of the paperwork required to effectuating an early release from prison. But unlike commutations, pardons are commonly granted to individuals who have completed their sentence of imprisonment (or were never sentenced to prison at all). In such cases, a pardon could remain a secret indefinitely. Could the president grant a pardon on the express or implied condition that the recipient not disclose it publicly for a certain period of time—say, until said president is out of office? I don’t see why not.

Is there any reason to believe Trump has actually granted secret pardons? I think there is, based in part on the ad hoc and disorderly way in which the pardons we know about have come to light. Take the September 3 clemency grants, for example. The first we heard of them was through counsel for one of the recipients. A day later, a post from Alice Marie Johnson claimed that a total of 30 clemencies had been granted. But she listed only four names. And it seems quite possible that Johnson isn’t in the loop on all of the decisions. Was she consulted, for example, on the case of Juan Orlando Hernandez? According to Todd Blanche, Trump makes his own decisions on matters of clemency. The lack of official White House announcements for the majority of the clemency grants that have come to light during Trump’s second presidency raises real questions about whether the president has granted more pardons than the ones we know about.

You might wonder, what would be the point of keeping a pardon secret? Or, alternatively, what’s the point of getting a pardon if you have to keep it a secret? Well, from Trump’s perspective, keeping questionable and corrupt pardons under wraps, at least until he leaves office, insulates him from political blowback. And for the recipients, delayed gratification is better than never, I imagine. Moreover, in the event the recipient partook in the pay-for-play pardon economy, they may prefer for legal and reputational reasons to keep their pardon quiet. One could imagine a Trump official saying, “I can get you a pardon for $5 million, but only if you agree to keep it a secret for five years”—which happens to be the statute of limitations for prosecuting the offenses of paying a bribe or a gratuity to a public official (18 U.S.C. § 201).

It seems especially plausible that Trump has already signed preemptive pardons for members of his family and his Administration. Keeping those under wraps would not be difficult, because the beneficiaries would have no need to display the paperwork unless and until a new administration takes over and initiates an investigation or prosecution. Trump could wait until the end of his presidency to sign preemptive pardons. The ones Joe Biden granted came in his final days. But in the lawless land of Trump, a preemptive pardon offers a valuable insurance policy to those doing his bidding. They (and he) might not want to wait until the end to know they are protected, particularly in case something should happen to the president.

Congress should enact transparency reforms.

To rein in the Trump Administration’s shameless abuses of the pardon power, Congress should enact transparency-focused pardon reforms. Some have called for reforms to limit the president’s pardon power. This would require a constitutional amendment, which won’t happen anytime soon. Moreover, limiting the pardon power runs the risk of cutting off the only available pathway to mercy for those who have earned and deserve it.

Transparency is a better place to begin. It is readily achievable, and it would tamp down corruption by greatly raising its costs. An easy way to start would be with legislation requiring prompt public disclosure of acts of clemency. Absent extenuating circumstances, it seems eminently reasonable to require the president to disclose pardon or commutation paperwork within 24 hours of signing it. Prompt disclosure promotes public scrutiny and accountability. The president cannot be held accountable by the electorate for pardons we don’t know about.

Another simple reform would be to require lobbying and conflict of interest disclosures. We know that enormous amounts of money are changing hands in the current pardon economy. Pardon hopefuls are engaging lawyers and lobbyists, who are charging millions for their services. Political donations and connections are playing an unprecedented role. Requiring pardon recipients and their representatives to disclose sums paid and relationships leveraged to obtain clemency would be a significant step toward accountability through transparency. It would not eliminate pardon corruption. But it would raise the reputational costs for those partaking by putting it all out in the open. The disclosures would also provide a roadmap to assess compliance with existing anticorruption laws, like the bribery and gratuity statutes referenced above.

If the Democrats retake either chamber of Congress in the midterms, we can expect to see them focus on the pardon power. Frankly, pardon abuse should be an issue of bipartisan concern. Whatever your political affiliation, it’s difficult to think of a principled rationale for opposing pardon transparency measures. I hope to see the next Congress focus on sensible, achievable reforms that will raise the reputational costs of participating in Trump’s secretive, pay-for-play pardon system.