Bessette/Pitney’s AMERICAN GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS: DELIBERATION, DEMOCRACY AND CITIZENSHIP reviews the idea of "deliberative democracy." Building on the book, this blog offers insights, analysis, and facts about recent events.
President Trump quietly denied nearly 6,000 clemency applications this month from people who mostly lacked political connections and had waited patiently in a queue while he awarded pardons and commutations to allies who had skipped the line.
The denials were announced inside the Justice Department in a July 14 letter from Ed Martin, the U.S. pardon attorney, to United States attorneys across the country.
The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. ...
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States...
He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
...
[He] shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.
"Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, is to and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose– and you allow him to make war at pleasure ...This, our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us." -- letter to William Herndon, February 15, 1848
"Was it possible to lose the nation, and yet preserve the constitution? By general law life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful, by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the constitution, through the preservation of the nation." --letter to Albert G. Hodges, April 4, 1864
Since January 20, 2025: Iran, Venezuela,counterterrorism Strikes in Iraq, Nigeria, and Somalia.
The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. ...
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States...
He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
...
[He] shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.
"Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, is to and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose– and you allow him to make war at pleasure ...This, our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us." -- letter to William Herndon, February 15, 1848
"Was it possible to lose the nation, and yet preserve the constitution? By general law life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful, by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the constitution, through the preservation of the nation." --letter to Albert G. Hodges, April 4, 1864
Since January 20, 2025:
Iran
Venezuela: boat bombings and capture of Maduro):
Yemen: Air strikes against Houthi militants
Counterterrorism Strikes in Iraq, Nigeria, and Somalia.
The president has a totally unchecked power to start a nuclear war. The process exists to authenticate the president's commands, not to challenge them.
James Comey: charges of making false statements to Congress and obstruction related to his 2020 testimony. The indictment was dismissed.
John Bolton: indictment for alleged unauthorized retention and transmission of classified information.
Letitia James New York Attorney General indicted in October 2025 on bank fraud and false statements charges. Case dismissed.
Jerome H. Powell said DOJ as opened a criminal investigation into Powell; prosecutors are looking at cost overruns.Threats: Regulatory Action and Funding
Universities and funding
Law firms representing Trump adversaries: contracts
Media companies and FCC license threats
Soft Power: "Power to Persuade"
Support from congressional Republicans and One Big Beautiful Bill
It is based in part on the proposition that paying the right person to deliver a message tailored to Mr. Trump’s politics or grievances is more important than demonstrating remorse or a low likelihood of recidivism.
A growing number of practitioners promise access in this murky enterprise, but some also may exaggerate their effectiveness to elicit payments from clients desperate to avoid incarceration. Pardon seekers routinely offer to pay as much as $1 million or more, often with bonus payments triggered by a successful outcome, according to lobbying filings and people familiar with the fees.
This transactional approach to clemency has been welcomed by white-collar offenders like those serving time at the Otisville camp, a minimum-security facility about 75 miles northwest of Manhattan.
Many of its inmates cheered Mr. Trump’s election, seeing him as a kindred spirit who shares their grievances about the unfairness of financial crime prosecutions like the one that led to his own conviction, according to four people familiar with conversations at Otisville.
Over the course of his first term and the first year of his second, Mr. Trump has granted pardons or commutations to at least nine inmates who served at Otisville’s camp or the adjacent medium-security prison. That includes two inmates who were freed after Mr. Schwartz from the minimum-security camp, which typically houses about 100 inmates.
Earlier this week marked the one year anniversary since Donald Trump (R) assumed office as the 47th president of the United States, making him one of only two U.S. presidents to serve two non-consecutive terms. Here’s a look at the first year of his second term, by the numbers, though Jan. 16.
Trump nominated, and the Senate confirmed 27 Article III federal judges, including 21 to U.S. District Courts and six to the U.S. Courts of Appeals. During the first year of his first term, Trump nominated, and the Senate confirmed 23 Article III judges, including one Supreme Court Justice, 12 to the U.S. Courts of Appeals, and 10 to the U.S. District Courts.
The Trump administration filed 32 emergency applications with the Supreme Court. An emergency application asks the Court for immediate intervention in a case that has not fully progressed through the ordinary procedures required for the Court to issue a regular opinion. The Court granted the Trump administration’s request for intervention in 21 cases.
Trump issued 181 presidential pardons and commutations, not including instances of mass pardons. According to the Department of Justice, during fiscal year 2017, Trump issued one pardon and no commutations. Joe Biden (D), Barack Obama (D), and George W. Bush (R) issued no pardons or commutations during their first fiscal year in office.
Tie-breaking votes in the Senate
Under Article I, Section 3, Clause 4 of the U.S. Constitution, the vice president also serves as the president of the Senate and may cast the deciding vote when there is a tie in the Senate. Vice President J.D. Vance (R) cast seven tie-breaking votes in the Senate.
In 2021, a convicted fraudster named Adriana Camberos was freed from prison when President Trump commuted her sentence.
Rather than taking advantage of that second chance, prosecutors said, Ms. Camberos returned to crime. She and her brother were convicted in 2024 in an unrelated fraud.
This week, Mr. Trump pardoned both siblings, marking the second time Mr. Trump had opened the prison gates for Ms. Camberos.
Their pardons were among a handful of clemency grants quietly issued by Mr. Trump this week.
Among the other lucky recipients: a man whose daughter had given millions to a Trump-backed super PAC, a former governor of Puerto Rico and a former F.B.I. agent — all of whom had pleaded guilty in a political corruption case.
...
Three of the recipients were scheduled to be sentenced this month in a political corruption case related to accusations that former Gov. Wanda Vázquez of Puerto Rico had accepted bribes from Julio Herrera Velutini, a Venezuelan-Italian banker, in 2020.
In late 2024, while Mr. Herrera was facing felony bribery and other charges in the case, his daughter, Isabela Herrera, donated $2.5 million to MAGA Inc., a super PAC devoted to Mr. Trump and run by his allies.
In May, her father’s lawyer, Christopher M. Kise, who had served on Mr. Trump’s legal defense team, negotiated an unusually lenient deal with the Justice Department. Under the deal, which was authorized by a top Trump appointee, Mr. Herrera agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor campaign finance charge, disappointing career prosecutors who had pushed for a harsher sentence.
Mr. Trump this week pardoned Mr. Herrera, Ms. Vázquez and Mark Rossini, a former F.B.I. agent who had worked as a consultant for Mr. Herrera. All three had pleaded guilty in August to misdemeanor campaign finance charges.
The pardon power is the only authority that the US Constitution places entirely in one person’s hands, immune from legislative override or judicial review. Alexander Hamilton, defending this arrangement in Federalist 74, understood the danger. But he wagered that shame would restrain abuse – that a president, bearing sole blame for corrupt use of the power, would hesitate where a legislature might not. “The sense of responsibility is always strongest,” Hamilton wrote, “in proportion as it is undivided.”
Hamilton was wrong. He did not anticipate a shameless president.
Hamilton’s case for the pardon was political, not moral. He barely mentioned mercy. The power’s core purpose was emergency peace-making: “in seasons of insurrection or rebellion, there are often critical moments, when a welltimed offer of pardon to the insurgents or rebels may restore the tranquillity of the commonwealth.”
This was the rationale for Massachusetts’ offer of clemency to participants in Shays’s Rebellion, and for George Washington’s pardon of those who took part in the Whiskey Rebellion during his presidency. The pardon was an ad hoc instrument for ending conflict after rebellion was suppressed – a discretionary tool for restoring peace when peace took priority over justice.
Crucially, Hamilton insisted that clemency must remain unpredictable. “It would generally be impolitic beforehand,” he wrote, “to take any step which might hold out the prospect of impunity.” A standing promise of pardons would encourage rebellion. The power works only if potential lawbreakers cannot count on forgiveness in advance.
Trump has inverted every element of this design. He has transformed the pardon from an instrument for ending conflict into a weapon for stoking it, from an ad hoc exercise of discretion into a standing promise of impunity, from a tool of reconciliation into a system for rewarding loyalty. Hamilton envisioned a president using clemency to heal divisions after insurrection; Trump pardoned the insurrectionists who attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, only after returning to the presidency four years later, signaling that loyalty to him guarantees impunity.
The effects are already visible in courtrooms and law offices across the US. “If I were any defendant now,” a former senior Department of Justice official told the Financial Times, and “I had the financial wherewithal or connections, my thought would be, maybe I’ll be convicted, but I very well may get a pardon as well.” Defense attorneys are reportedly advising clients that conviction need not be the end for those who meet the criteria. Hamilton’s nightmare has become litigation strategy.
President Donald Trump announced he is issuing a “pardon” for a former elections clerk who was convicted of state charges in Colorado last year. But there’s one teensy-weensy hangup.
Tina Peters, a Trump supporter and former clerk of Mesa County, was found guilty of tampering with voting machines after the 2020 election. At her trial last year, Peters was convicted of helping a non-public employee gain access to the county’s voting machines. Upon receiving access, the individual took county passwords and proprietary information about the machines, which were made by Dominion Voting Systems. Trump and his allies have alleged that the company helped rig the 2020 election against him.
On Thursday night, Trump announced a “pardon” for Peters on Truth Social:
For years, Democrats ignored Violent and Vicious Crime of all shapes, sizes, colors, and types. Violent Criminals who should have been locked up were allowed to attack again. Democrats were also far too happy to let in the worst from the worst countries so they could rip off American Taxpayers. Democrats only think there is one crime – Not voting for them! Instead of protecting Americans and their Tax Dollars, Democrats chose instead to prosecute anyone they can find that wanted Safe and Secure Elections. Democrats have been relentless in their targeting of TINA PETERS, a Patriot who simply wanted to make sure that our Elections were Fair and Honest. Tina is sitting in a Colorado prison for the “crime” of demanding Honest Elections. Today I am granting Tina a full Pardon for her attempts to expose Voter Fraud in the Rigged 2020 Presidential Election!
The president only has the power to issue pardons and commutations for federal crimes, as Article II of the Constitution clearly states.
From a U.S. prison cell, Honduras' ex-president secured a likely pardon for drug trafficking thanks to a letter he penned praising President Trump — whom he called "Your Excellency" — and a persistent lobbying campaign by longtime Trump pal Roger Stone.
Why it matters: The surprise announcement of Juan Orlando Hernandez's looming pardon is a window into the unorthodox, norm-shattering way Trump grants clemency.
Driving the news: Trump announced Friday that he planned to pardon Hernandez ahead of Sunday's elections in Honduras, where the White House backed the right-wing National Party that Hernandez led as president from 2014-2022.National Party candidate Nasry "Tito" Asfura is narrowly leading a center-right candidate as votes are being counted in a three-way race, according to the BBC.
Zoom in: Shortly after Trump took office in January, Stone wrote threeseparateSubstack posts calling for the pardon of Hernandez, who was indicted the day he left office in 2022 and extradited to the U.S. to face cocaine-trafficking and weapons charges.
Stone cast Hernandez as a victim of leftist "lawfare" in Honduras and in President Biden's administration.Stone told Axios that on Friday he reached out to Trump and reiterated those points. Stone claimed a pardon announcement would energize the National Party and called Trump's attention to Hernandez's four-page letter begging for clemency.
Hours later, at 4 p.m., Trump posted on Truth Social that he'd endorse Asfura. Less than 20 minutes later, he posted that he'd pardon Hernandez.
"It was a Biden setup," Trump told reporters Sunday about the case against Hernandez, who's serving a 45-year sentence.
Except that the first Trump administration launched the Hernandez investigation:
When President Trump pardoned the former leader of Honduras this week, he erased the crowning achievement of years of work by one of his own former criminal defense lawyers and top Justice Department officials, Emil Bove III.
Mr. Bove, a firm believer in the prerogatives of executive power, became known for defending Mr. Trump against several prosecutions, and his profile rose further when, at the Justice Department, he oversaw the firing of dozens of prosecutors and F.B.I. agents Mr. Trump perceived as enemies. In May, the president nominated him as a federal appeals court judge and the Senate confirmed him in July.
But before that, Mr. Bove was a hard-charging prosecutor in Manhattan bent on convicting members of a Honduran drug-trafficking conspiracy.
From 2015 to when he left the job in 2021, Mr. Bove helped lead the investigation that identified Honduras as a key conduit for cocaine shipments into the United States. The inquiry revealed the violence that had cleared a pathway for the drugs through Honduras, as the country’s officials mowed down anyone who sought to thwart them. And it ultimately led to the conviction in 2024 of President Juan Orlando Hernández, who prosecutors said had been at the center of the conspiracy.
"The Former JAGs Working Group unanimously considers both the giving and the execution of these orders, if true, to constitute war crimes, murder, or both"
Statement on Media Reports of Pentagon “No Quarter” Orders in Caribbean Boat Strikes pic.twitter.com/eXo0bs4zyb
President Trump and his top aides have said that drug cartels present one of the most pressing dangers to the United States, and have promised to eradicate them from the Western Hemisphere.
As part of that effort, Mr. Trump signaled on Saturday that he was ratcheting up his campaign against drug cartels, saying in a social media post that airspace above and surrounding Venezuela should be considered “CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY.”
Less than 24 hours earlier, Mr. Trump had announced on social media that he was granting a full pardon to Juan Orlando Hernández, a former president of Honduras who had been convicted in the United States of drug trafficking charges in what was seen as a major victory for authorities in a case against a former head of state. That pardon has not yet been officially granted.
The two posts displayed a remarkable dissonance in the president’s strategy, as he moved to escalate a military campaign against drug trafficking while ordering the release of a man prosecutors said had taken “cocaine-fueled bribes” from cartels and “protected their drugs with the full power and strength of the state — military, police and justice system.” In fact, prosecutors said that Mr. Hernández, for years, allowed bricks of cocaine from Venezuela to flow through Honduras en route to the United States.
Trump began his presidency by issuing a blanket pardon to virtually all Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot defendants, but his use of the pardon power has only intensified since then. Here is an incomplete list of all the people to whom Trump has granted clemency in his first months as president:
Michele Fiore, a former Republican Las Vegas City Council member convicted of fraud last year for using money meant to honor a slain police officer for plastic surgery, rent and her daughter’s wedding
(You can see the complete list from the Justice Department here.)
The list highlights just how much Trump relishes one of the clearest powers of the presidency, as he grants pardons for crimes like fraud, bribery and corruption. The people granted these pardons are often Trump supporters, many of whom have close ties to the president and his movement.
— The pardon comes after nearly a year of effort by Zhao and Binance to lobby Trump for clemency and marks a big win for Checkmate Government Relations and its founder Ches McDowell, who was hired by Binance in September. Binance paid the firm $450,000 in the third quarter for work on policy issues related to cryptocurrencies and “executive relief,” according to a disclosure report.
— Lobbying for Zhao in his personal capacity was BakerHostetler’s Teresa Goody Guillén, a leading crypto lawyer who Trump once reportedly considered to lead the SEC. Zhao hired Goody Guillén in February to work exclusively on his pardon effort, according to disclosure reports, but she appears to have played a limited role in recent months, reporting no activity on Zhao’s behalf in the third quarter. In addition to her pardon work for Zhao, Goody Guillén is part of a BakerHostetler team lobbying on Binance’s behalf — a team that includes former U.S. Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) and former House Financial Services Committee chief counsel Kevin Edgar.
— Zhao served four months in prison last year after pleading guilty to charges that he intentionally ignored anti-money laundering laws and allowed Binance to be used by criminals looking to turn illicit crypto assets into clean cash. As part of the plea agreement, Zhao stepped down from his position as CEO of Binance and agreed to pay a $50 million fine. The company was separately fined $4 billion and has since been subject to compliance monitoring by the Justice and Treasury departments.
— Binance has an on and off history of lobbying in Washington. The company’s U.S. subsidiary, Binance.US, signed its first contracts with Ice Miller Strategies and Hogan Lovells in late 2021 and went on to spend more than $1 million on lobbying in 2022. In the first nine months of 2023, as Zhao and Binance negotiated their futures with federal prosecutors, the company spent nearly $1.2 million on lobbying.
— Following the guilty pleas, Binance’s lobbying spending plummeted to zero for the remainder of 2023. Neither Zhao nor the company reported spending a dime on lobbying in 2024. But Trump’s inauguration jolted the company’s lobbying effort back to life. So far in 2025, Binance has reported spending $860,000 on lobbyists, putting it on track to equal or beat its 2023 peak spend.
High-ranking Biden administration officials repeatedly questioned and criticized how the president's team decided on controversial pardons and allowed the frequent use of an autopen to sign measures late in his term, internal emails obtained by Axios show.
Why it matters: The messages are the latest signs of the chaos surrounding the 82-year-old former president during the final weeks of his administration, in two areas that are now being investigated by the Republican-led House Oversight Committee.
President Trump has cited Biden's process in issuing pardons to try to justify many of his own controversial pardons or commutations on behalf of donor-connected supporters and others who were imprisoned for trying to overturn the 2020 election.
How it happened: After the political backlash to President Biden pardoning his son Hunter last Dec. 1, the White House began pushing to find more people to grant clemency to, according to people familiar with the internal dynamics.
"There was a mad dash to find groups of people that he could then pardon — and then they largely didn't run it by the Justice Department to vet them," a person familiar with the process told Axios.
Biden granted clemency to more people than any president in U.S. history — 4,245 people. More than 95% of those actions occurred in the final 3½ months of his presidency, according to Pew Research.
Many of those actions, including pardoning other members of his family on his last day in office, were signed using an autopen — a computerized version of the president's signature that didn't require him to physically sign the document.
Using lights, a camera and a tried-and-true narrative formula, Matt Nadel produces short films about incarcerated people in New York. His goal? To persuade the governor, Kathy Hochul, to grant his clients clemency.
Thanks to the tough-on-crime zeitgeist that began in the 1980s, governors have often come to view clemency as a political liability rather than an opportunity to give people second chances. Grants of clemency in New York, for example, have plummeted as a result. Filmmakers like Mr. Nadel — hired by lawyers — have become a last resort.
“It feels like I’m trying to hack a broken system,” he says.
Through silence or vocal support, House and Senate Republicans are backing an extraordinary set of new precedents for presidential power they may come to regret if and when Democrats seize those same powers.
Here are 10 new precedents, all set with minimal GOP dissent:
Presidents can actively profit from their time in office, including creating new currencies structured to allow foreign nationals to invest anonymously, benefiting said president.
Presidents can aggressively pardon supporters, including those who made large political donations as part of their bid for freedom. The strength of the case in said pardons is irrelevant.
Between the lines: Friday's Supreme Court ruling limiting nationwide injunctions — a decision widely celebrated by Republicans — underscores the risks of partisan precedent-setting.Conservatives sped to the courts to block many of President Biden's signature policies — and succeeded.
When a federal court imposes contempt sanctions, the U.S. Marshals Service enforces the order, including
arresting persons ordered imprisoned for contempt. The U.S. Marshals Service is an executive branchagency within the Department of Justice. Some commentators have expressed concerns that, if the
executive branch chose to defy a court order, it might also seek to prevent the U.S. Marshals from
enforcing contempt sanctions. The U.S. Marshals are required by statute to “execute all lawful writs,
process, and orders issued under the authority of the United States,” and the President’s pardon power
does not apply to civil contempt sanctions. The 2018 review of contempt against the federal government
notes that, historically, Presidents have complied with federal court orders and have not directed the U.S.
Marshals not to enforce contempt orders.
Legal experts said there is a major flaw in the system — the judicial branch must rely on the executive branch to enforce its rulings. Federal judges use U.S. marshals, for example, to apprehend anyone ordered to jail. Justice Department prosecutors are the ones who decide whether to bring cases anyone referred for criminal contempt charges.
And it remains to be seen whether the Trump administration would jail or prosecute one of its own officials.
Trump could also pardon anyone facing a criminal contempt charge or conviction.
“The Supreme Court, as Alexander Hamilton famously said in the Federalist Papers, has neither purse nor sword,” said Jeffrey Rosen, president and chief executive of the National Constitution Center. That means if the president were to defy the high court, the justices “would be powerless to enforce” their ruling.
