U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., launched a first-of-its-kind evaluation report on President Donald Trump‘s clemency actions since getting into workplace in January, revealing that the pardons largely benefited white and rich people.
“Presidential clemency needs to be used to deal with injustices—to not reward political allies, companies, and insurrectionists. As our report makes plain, the Trump White Home has used this profound authority to protect extremists, limit abortion entry, reward companies, and embolden corruption by erasing huge monetary penalties for the rich and well-connected,” Pressley mentioned in a press release.
“Whereas hundreds of thousands of individuals undergo below mass incarceration—together with Black, brown, low-income, LGBTQ+, and disabled people—the Trump Administration has a chance to vary course and use clemency to advance justice. We’re calling on them to just do that.”
The report “Trump’s Clemency Hole,” launched on Tuesday, accommodates compiled information of Trump’s greater than 1,700 pardons in 2025. Its outcomes revealed that the president prioritized what Pressley’s workplace describes as his “most excessive supporters and political donors” whereas neglecting communities which have been “harmed” by the nation’s “unjust” prison authorized system.
The report depends on publicly reported federal clemency actions issued from Jan. 20, 2025, by means of Dec. 15, 2025, in addition to Division of Justice information, america Sentencing Fee, tutorial analysis establishments, and information organizations.
In keeping with Pressley’s report, 85% of these pardoned or had their convictions commuted by President Trump have been white individuals, and only a few of them have been for drug offenses (solely 5%), a class by which research present these convicted are overcharged or disproportionately charged–particularly Black and Latino defendants.
The report additionally discovered that Trump’s pardons embrace a lack of $1.4 billion in restitution and fines that the federal authorities might have used to fund “public items, restorative justice packages, and extra.” Trump additionally granted the first-ever pardon of an organization to a multi-million-dollar international crypto firm, BitMEX, which was convicted of violating money-laundering protections.
Moreover, Pressley’s report calls out the Trump Administration’s undermining of girls’s reproductive well being by issuing pardons for 10 out of 17 girls who have been convicted of obstructing or denying girls’s entry to well being care.
“This point of interest reeks of irony. Girls in prisons are often denied high quality reproductive healthcare,” the report reads.
Most notably, the vast majority of pardons issued by President Trump (greater than 1,500) have been for convicted rioters concerned within the lethal Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol constructing.
“The rebellion resulted in a number of deaths, greater than 170 law enforcement officials injured, and $2.7 million in property damages. Over 1,500 contributors – 93% white and 87% male – have been charged with a number of offenses starting from theft of presidency property to assaulting legislation enforcement to seditious conspiracy,” the report reads.
The report additionally notes that regardless of greater than 18,000 clemency petitions pending with the Workplace of the Pardon Lawyer throughout the Division of Justice (DOJ), Trump “overwhelmingly granted clemency to individuals who circumvented the official DOJ evaluation course of.” Solely 17 individuals, or 0.08%, have been granted clemency by means of the Division of Justice utility course of.
In a letter to Trump’s pardon czar, Alice Johnson, whom Trump pardoned in 2020, Pressley urges her to make use of her affect within the White Home to “assist reunite households, tackle injustices in our authorized system, and set our nation on the trail towards ending mass incarceration.”
“The USA wants a clemency course of that’s rooted in justice for individuals disproportionately harmed. Using mass pardons might assist those that are serving prolonged sentences that may be considerably shorter at this time below present legal guidelines and people who have been convicted of drug offenses as a consequence of the failed Warfare on Medication,” reads Pressley’s clemency report. “This is able to result in clemency outcomes that end in extra Black people who find themselves incarcerated having a pathway to thrive in our society and meaningfully contribute to it.”
The report provides, “An individual’s wealth or connections shouldn’t decide whether or not they obtain clemency. The nation’s prisons are principally full of individuals who come from poverty and low-income backgrounds however nonetheless nonetheless deserve equal alternative.”
