Reuters: 96% of Trump's clemency fails the DOJ's own standards

Editor's note: a Reuters review documents that clemency now turns on personal, political and financial connections to the president, but no official finding establishes a return to him.

A June 2026 Reuters review - built on pardon records, lobbying disclosures, campaign-finance data and more than 80 interviews - found that 96% of the 1,700+ clemency grants in Trump's second term failed longstanding DOJ guidelines, which require a five-year wait after conviction or release, acceptance of responsibility, evidence of rehabilitation, and a formal petition. Winning clemency, Reuters concluded, now depends on reaching the president through personal, political or financial connections; it documented Trump-connected lobbyists on winning applications and donations around grants, including Trump's personal call to Trevor Milton days before his pardon.

The structural change enabling this is documented separately: Trump fired career Pardon Attorney Liz Oyer on March 7, 2025 and installed Ed Martin, who described the operating principle as 'No MAGA left behind'; office staffing collapsed from ~45 toward ~15 while decisions moved to the White House. Oyer testified to the Senate about 'ongoing corruption' at DOJ. ProPublica separately found Trump erasing prosecutions brought by his own first-term DOJ - Sittenfeld, Archer, Kelsey, then Tennessee's Casada and Cothren - none of whom met a single DOJ criterion.

The market is priced: disclosed clemency lobbying hit $5.2 million in 2025, roughly eight times the prior year, and NBC reported solicitations as high as $30 million to broker pardons - prompting the administration itself to try to curb outside pardon lobbying.