'If You Can Keep It': Pardons In The Trump Administration
President Donald Trump has taken an increasingly personal role in the government’s clemency process, wielding pardons aid his allies and advance his own political grievances.
A Reuters investigation found that 96% of Trump’s second-term clemency grants have gone to recipients who didn’t fulfill longstanding DOJ guidelines for such requests. Past presidents on have sidestepped those rules before, but fewer than 1% of those who received clemency during the Biden administration and just 14% of recipients in Trump’s first presidency failed to meet the guidelines.
Pardon applicants once had to…
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