Today, Explained Pardoner-in-chief
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Jan 29, 2026 
Sai Krishna Prakash, a law professor who studies the constitutional pardon power, and Ben Wallace-Wells, a New Yorker writer known for deep political reporting. They map Trump’s recent flurry of pardons, who gets them and why, the informal paths to clemency, historical precedents from Washington to Ford, and whether heavy politicized pardoning will become routine.
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Scale And Focus Of Trump's Clemency Push
- Trump has granted about 1,600 clemency actions so far in his second term, a record-setting pace.
- Roughly 1,500 of those are related to January 6 participants, leaving a few hundred varied pardons.
Patterns In Who Gets Pardoned
- Pardons cluster into categories: political allies, wealthy white-collar defendants, and celebrity or symbolic cases.
- Many beneficiaries are donors or connected to people close to Trump, showing patronage patterns.
Binance Founder Pardoned After Crypto Deal
- Changpeng Zhao, Binance founder, was pardoned after underwriting Trump's family's crypto coin.
- Wallace-Wells highlights Zhao's wealth and the money relationship with Trump's family as context for the pardon.
