Alexander Hamilton defended the unilateral presidential pardoning power as a practical necessity for a young republic. He argued that it enabled the chief executive to act with the speed and secrecy required to offer timely mercy and restore tranquility “during seasons of insurrection or rebellion.” He also argued that the power was needed to soften punishments when the law “would wear a countenance too sanguinary and cruel.”
Recent presidents, however, have strayed from the restrained idea that pardons would only be used to ameliorate extraordinary conditions. Today, pardons are often wielded to protect political allies and trade favors. The abuse is bipartisan and has produced a moral malaise that stifles accountability. To counter and fix this, Congress must review and reform the pardon power to restore the Founders’ original vision.
President Donald Trump’s recent spate of inexplicable pardons drives the point home. This month, former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, sentenced last year for 45 years for his central role in trafficking over 400 tons of cocaine into the United States, walked out of federal prison a free man after receiving a pardon. Trump defended the move aboard Air Force One, saying that Hernandez had been “set up” by the Biden administration. Bafflingly, this pardon came against the backdrop of Trump intensifying his war on “narco-terrorists.”
That act of clemency wasn’t the only one given this month to someone who inflicted great harm on Americans. On Dec. 1, Trump commuted the seven-year sentence of former private equity CEO David Gentile, who had been convicted in 2024 on charges of securities fraud and wire fraud, bilking more than 10,000 investors in the process. The Eastern District of New York presented a compelling case against Gentile, detailing his firm’s fraudulent performance guarantees and misrepresentations about its funding over a three-year period. The conviction was upheld by a federal jury and a Trump-appointed judge after an eight-week trial. Now, thanks to the commutation, Gentile walks away a free man.
Trump’s mercy toward white-collar criminals also extended to Changpeng Zhao, founder of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance. Zhao pled guilty to a money laundering charge in 2023 and stepped down as CEO of Binance, which agreed to pay more than $4 billion in fines as part of a settlement with the federal government. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the move, saying Zhao had been “overly prosecuted” under the Biden administration, which she claimed was “very hostile to the cryptocurrency industry.” Trump, who is famously or notoriously friendly to the crypto industry, has pledged to make the U.S. the “crypto capital of the planet.” His family also has direct financial links to Binance.
It all smells rotten because it is. Trump is hardly alone in this regard among recent presidents. His predecessor, Joe Biden, granted historic “preemptive” pardons for over 20 political allies to block future prosecutions. He also became the first president ever to pardon his own son for crimes he may or may not have committed over a suspiciously specific time frame. Biden’s attempt to cover-up crimes in which he may have been implicated turns Hamilton’s vision of a tool for mercy into a personal shield.
TRUMP PARDONS DEMOCRATIC REP. HENRY CUELLAR
Corrupt use of the pardon has marked this century. Biden’s former boss, former President Barack Obama, caved to pressure from his donors to pardon a pair of anti-American subversives, Chelsea Manning and Oscar López Rivera, who leaked over 750,000 classified documents in the WikiLeaks scandal and carried out more than 130 bomb attacks in the United States, respectively. Former President Bill Clinton pardoned fugitive commodities trader Marc Rich, who’d been indicted on 65 counts of tax evasion, wire fraud, racketeering, and trading with Iran during the hostage crisis. His wife, Denise, made donations of $1 million to the Democratic Party and $450,000 to the Clinton presidential library. The quid pro quo was obvious and nauseating.
The presidential pardon has become a national embarrassment and a blatant tool of corruption. It’s time for Congress to rein it in.
