What is the DOJ’s official list of presidential pardons and commutations under Trump, and how many involved drug offenses?
Executive summary
The Justice Department’s official record of Donald J. Trump’s federal clemency actions is posted by the Office of the Pardon Attorney and is organized into discrete pages: Pardons granted (2017–2021), Commutations granted (2017–2021), and Clemency grants for 2025–present, each with downloadable warrants and listings [1] [2] [3]. The DOJ does not publish a single, consolidated tally of how many of those clemencies were for drug offenses; public reporting identifies several high-profile drug-related pardons and commutations but a definitive count requires parsing the DOJ lists and categorizing each recipient by their charged federal offense [1] [2] [3].
1. What the DOJ’s official list is and where to find it
The authoritative DOJ record consists of the Office of the Pardon Attorney’s web pages that publish individual pardon warrants and commutation listings: a page for pardons issued during Trump’s first presidency with downloadable combined individual warrants, a separate page for commutations from 2017–2021, and a page the DOJ labeled “Clemency Grants by President Donald J. Trump (2025–Present)” detailing more recent actions [1] [2] [3]. Those DOJ pages are the primary source documents; they contain names, dates, and the formal warrants that describe the offenses and the form of clemency, and are the place to start for any definitive audit [1] [2] [3].
2. Why journalists and databases diverge on totals
Media summaries and third‑party lists often report different totals because some outlets count every individual act of clemency, others separate mass actions (such as mass January 6 pardons noted by multiple outlets) from case‑by‑case grants, and still others include later 2025–present actions that are listed separately by the DOJ [4] [5] [3]. Wikipedia and investigative outlets have assembled aggregate lists for convenience, but those compilations rely on DOJ warrants and newsroom reporting and can differ from a fresh, line‑by‑line DOJ parsing [6] [7].
3. What is known about drug‑related clemencies in reporting
Reporting has flagged several high‑profile drug‑related clemencies: Alice Marie Johnson, whose life sentence for nonviolent drug trafficking was commuted in 2018 and later pardoned in 2020, is widely documented [6] [8]; Ross Ulbricht, founder of the Silk Road dark‑web marketplace, was reported pardoned early in Trump’s second term [4] [9]; and former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández — convicted in U.S. federal court of conspiring to import cocaine and sentenced to 45 years — was pardoned in late 2025, a move covered extensively by NPR, The Washington Post, and congressional summaries [9] [10] [11] [12]. The Guardian and other outlets also note other commuted drug‑related sentences from Trump’s earlier docket, such as Jonathan Braun [5]. These named cases establish a pattern of multiple drug‑related clemencies but do not constitute an exhaustive list [6] [4] [9] [10] [11] [5] [12].
4. Why an exact DOJ count isn’t stated here and how to obtain one
The DOJ pages provide primary records but do not offer a ready, human‑summarized count specific to “drug offenses” across both presidencies; therefore, an authoritative numeric answer requires reviewing each warrant on the DOJ pardons and commutations pages and coding the statutory offenses listed on the warrants to identify which are drug offenses [1] [2] [3]. Independent trackers and newsrooms have done parts of that work and identified multiple drug‑related clemencies, but any definitive total must come from a methodical audit of the DOJ’s published warrants rather than from secondary summaries [1] [2] [3].
5. Bottom line and next steps for a precise figure
The DOJ’s official lists are the Office of the Pardon Attorney pages for 2017–2021 pardons and commutations and the 2025–present clemency grants; they are the authoritative records [1] [2] [3]. Public reporting clearly documents several drug‑related clemencies — including Alice Marie Johnson, Ross Ulbricht, Juan Orlando Hernández, and others — but a precise, DOJ‑based count of how many Trump clemencies involved drug offenses is not published as a single figure in the sources provided and requires a direct review and coding of the DOJ warrant listings [6] [4] [9] [10] [11] [5].