The president can pardon almost anyone for almost anything, at almost any point in the process. That's not really a political opinion, it's the plain reading of the Constitution's pardon clause, and the Supreme Court settled the "how far does it actually reach" question back in 1866. So when people argue that one specific pardon was wrong, they're not making a legal argument. They're making a moral one. Once you actually look at the list going back fifty years, that moral argument gets a lot more interesting than most people realize.
We already covered the January 6 pardons on this blog, stacked directly against the 30-year sentence handed to a man who dropped off a box that happened to include two zines. That comparison stands on its own, and if you haven't read it yet, it's linked at the bottom of this piece. This one is a different list. It's presidents from both parties, going back to the 1970s, using that same pardon power on people a lot closer to home than most of the country ever hears about: their own former officials, their own family members, their own political allies and donors.
At Quietly Loud Prints, we think the receipts matter more than which team happens to be holding them, so here's the fuller list, arranged by who actually benefited and why.
What the Pardon Power Actually Allows
Article II of the Constitution gives the president power to grant "Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment." That's the entire text. No list of qualifying crimes, no waiting period, no requirement that anyone even be formally charged first. In 1866, the Supreme Court read that clause about as broadly as the language allows. Ruling in Ex parte Garland, the Court wrote that the power "is unlimited, with the exception stated. It extends to every offence known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken, or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment." Before charges, during trial, after sentencing, it doesn't matter. If it's a federal offense, the president can wipe it out.
That's not a loophole one party discovered while the other one was looking away. It's been available to every president since Andrew Johnson used it to pardon roughly 12,600 former Confederates after the Civil War. What's changed over time isn't the power itself. It's who it keeps landing on.
Presidents Protecting Their Own Administrations
The clearest pattern in the modern era isn't presidents showing mercy to strangers. It's presidents using the power to protect people who worked for them, sometimes before those people were even convicted of anything.
Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon on September 8, 1974, a month after Nixon resigned and before he'd been formally charged with anything connected to Watergate. Ford said it was about healing the country and moving past a national trauma. Critics called it the deal that let a president who resigned in disgrace skip the part where he actually had to stand trial.
Richard Nixon
Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon in September 1974, before Nixon was ever formally charged over Watergate. Photo: Official White House portrait, public domain (U.S. government work), via PICRYL.
Ronald Reagan pardoned two former FBI officials, W. Mark Felt and Edward Miller, in April 1981, just months into his first term. Both men had been convicted of approving illegal break-ins at homes connected to members of the Weather Underground during the 1970s, breaking the law in the course of supposedly enforcing it. Reagan gave them full, unconditional pardons anyway.
Ronald Reagan
In 1981, Reagan gave full pardons to former FBI officials W. Mark Felt and Edward Miller, who had been convicted of authorizing illegal break-ins. Photo: Official White House portrait, 1981, public domain (U.S. government work), via PICRYL/Library of Congress.
George H.W. Bush went further than either of them. On December 24, 1992, weeks before leaving office, he pardoned six people connected to the Iran-Contra affair, including former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, just days before Weinberger's own trial was set to begin. Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh, who had planned to call Bush himself as a witness at that trial, said the pardon "undermines the principle that no man is above the law" and amounted to a cover-up that had "continued for more than six years." Bush framed it as ending the criminalization of policy disputes. Walsh's read was that a sitting president used his own clemency power to make sure nobody ever had to explain, under oath, what he personally knew.
George H.W. Bush
In December 1992, Bush pardoned six Iran-Contra figures, including Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, days before Weinberger's trial was set to begin. Photo: Official presidential portrait, public domain (U.S. government work), via PICRYL.
Presidents Protecting Family and Friends
The second pattern is even more direct: pardons that go to people connected by blood, marriage, or friendship rather than by job title.
Bill Clinton pardoned his own half-brother, Roger Clinton, on his final day in office, wiping out a 1985 cocaine conviction. That same day, January 20, 2001, Clinton also pardoned Marc Rich, a financier who had fled the country rather than face over 50 federal counts including fraud, tax evasion, and illegally trading with Iran during the hostage crisis. Rich had never served a single day. His ex-wife, Denise Rich, had donated over a million dollars to Democratic causes and to Clinton's presidential library while lawyers pushed for the pardon. Federal investigators later found no direct evidence the donations bought the outcome, but Eric Holder, who recommended the pardon as deputy attorney general at the time, told Congress years later, "Knowing everything that I know now, I would not have recommended to the president that he grant the pardon."
Donald Trump pardoned Charles Kushner in December 2020, the father of his own son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Charles Kushner had served two years in prison for tax evasion, retaliating against a federal witness, his own brother-in-law, by hiring a sex worker to entrap him and secretly filming it, and lying to federal election officials. Trump's White House cited his philanthropy since release, not the underlying crimes. That same month, Trump also fully pardoned Roger Stone, a longtime friend and political adviser convicted of lying to Congress and witness tampering connected to the 2016 Russia investigation. Trump had already commuted Stone's sentence months earlier to keep him out of prison in the first place.
Joe Biden pardoned his own son, Hunter Biden, on December 1, 2024, after saying for months that he wouldn't. The pardon covers any federal offense Hunter Biden committed between January 1, 2014 and December 1, 2024, reaching well beyond the specific gun and tax charges he'd already been convicted on or pleaded to. Biden said the prosecution had been infected by "raw politics" and that "enough is enough."
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The Bottom Line
What's true: every single president discussed above, spanning fifty years and both parties, used the pardon power on someone with a personal connection to them rather than a stranger who needed mercy.
What changes: only the specific relationship. Sometimes it's a boss protecting a subordinate who took the fall for following orders. Sometimes it's literally a sibling or a son. The legal mechanism never changes.
The takeaway: none of this required bending the law. The pardon power really is this broad, for everyone who's ever held the office. That's the part worth sitting with, instead of only getting outraged when the other team's jersey is the one doing it.
Not Every Pardon Is the Problem
To be fair about this, not every pardon on the historical record fits the self-serving pattern above, and lumping them all together wouldn't be honest. Jimmy Carter's blanket pardon of Vietnam-era draft evaders in January 1977 covered hundreds of thousands of Americans he'd never met, aimed at closing a painful chapter for the whole country rather than protecting anyone close to him. Barack Obama's 2017 commutation of Chelsea Manning's 35-year sentence for leaking classified documents is still debated on the merits, but nobody has ever accused Obama of a personal or financial connection to Manning. Those are pardons reasonable people can disagree about on policy grounds. They're a different category entirely from a president pardoning his own brother, his own son, or the men who worked directly for him.
The point of putting this list together isn't that every name belongs in the same bucket of outrage. It's that the family-and-friends pattern specifically shows up in every recent administration covered here, Republican and Democratic alike, which makes it a much harder thing to blame on one party's character than most people assume when they're only tracking the other side's pardons.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Is the pardon power itself unconstitutional or somehow unusual? No. It's explicitly granted by Article II of the Constitution, and the Supreme Court confirmed in 1866 that it's nearly unlimited for federal offenses. Every president listed here used a power that's always been available to the office.
Has literally every recent president pardoned someone close to them? Not every single one, but the pattern spans Ford, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Trump, and Biden, six administrations across both parties over fifty years. That's a long enough streak to call it a pattern rather than an exception.
Isn't pardoning a family member worse than pardoning a former official? Reasonable people disagree, but legally they're the same power used two different ways. Both routes end with someone facing real federal consequences walking away because of a personal connection to the president, not because a court found them innocent.
What about the January 6 pardons specifically? We cover that comparison in a separate, more detailed piece, since it's a specific sentencing outcome that deserves its own space rather than getting folded into this broader list.
Can a president pardon themselves? Nobody actually knows. It's never been tested in court, and legal scholars are genuinely split on whether the Constitution allows it.
Read the Record, Not the Talking Point
None of this requires taking anyone's word for it. Every pardon listed here is a matter of public record, dated, documented, and covered by outlets across the political spectrum at the time it happened.
Browse our Anti-MAGA and Political Stickers collections, and if you want the sharper, single-case version of this same argument, read January 6 Pardons vs. the Zine Case next.
Related Reading
January 6 Pardons vs. the Zine Case: The specific, single-case version of this same pattern.
Did Democrats "Start the KKK"?: Another case where the full record tells a more complicated story than the slogan.
The Prairieland Zine Case, Explained: The case that started this whole line of questioning.
Sources: Justia, Ex parte Garland, 71 U.S. 333 (1866); NPR, "Trump Pardons Roger Stone, Paul Manafort And Charles Kushner"; CBS News, "Pardoned Financier Marc Rich Dead At 78"; NPR, "President Biden Pardons Son Hunter"; Brown University, "Understanding the Iran-Contra Affair: The Pardons"
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