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Fact check: How many pardons has President Biden granted compared to previous presidents?
Executive Summary
President Biden’s most documented use of the pardon power in the provided material is a June 26, 2024, proclamation granting full pardons to certain former service members convicted under the old Article 125 of the UCMJ, and commentators have also noted his controversial pardon of his son as a personal exercise of the power [1] [2]. By contrast, the analyses describe former President Trump as using pardons more aggressively and transparently, including a reported set of 19 pardons and eight commutations in a single May period, which commentators frame as transformative for modern pardon practice [3].
1. A Clear Case: Biden’s June 26, 2024 Military Pardons and Their Reach
The strongest concrete factual claim in the supplied material is that President Biden issued a proclamation on June 26, 2024, granting “a full, complete, and unconditional pardon” to individuals with court-martial convictions under former Article 125 of the UCMJ for consensual, private conduct between adults. This action is described as a significant use of the pardon power focused on rectifying specific military convictions and is framed in the material as a targeted, law-focused exercise rather than a broad clemency program [1]. The analyses imply this action stands out because it addresses a distinct historical injustice for a defined group, rather than functioning as a blanket policy.
2. Personal versus Institutional Uses: Biden’s Son and Perceptions of Undermining Justice
Multiple analyses reference Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter as illustrative of a more personal exercise of the pardon authority and suggest that critics argue it undermines the justice system by appearing self-serving [2]. The supplied material characterizes that particular pardon as politically fraught, prompting debates about fairness and equal treatment before the law. These sources present two competing frames: supporters might argue the pardon was lawful executive discretion, while opponents view it as eroding institutional trust; the materials do not offer exact counts comparing Biden’s total pardons to predecessors, making relative assessment difficult from these data alone [2].
3. Trump’s Assertive Playbook: Numbers and Narrative of Transformation
The provided analyses attribute to former President Trump a notably assertive pardon strategy, specifying he issued 19 pardons in May and commuted eight sentences, depicting an approach that commentators term more aggressive and transparent than many predecessors [3] [4]. The materials frame Trump’s pattern as transformative, potentially resetting expectations for presidential clemency by using it publicly and frequently. While those analyses emphasize the numerical burst in a specific period, they also interpret the strategy as part of a broader political statement about leveraging executive power above or outside conventional norms [3].
4. What the Provided Materials Do Not Show: Missing Comparative Counts
None of the supplied analyses provide a comprehensive, side-by-side tally of total pardons or commutations by President Biden versus prior presidents across their terms; the materials explicitly note the absence of such comparative data [5] [2]. This gap means the supplied corpus cannot definitively answer “How many pardons has Biden granted compared to previous presidents” in numeric terms. The sources do, however, offer qualitative contrasts—Biden’s targeted military pardon and controversial family pardon versus Trump’s high-profile, clustered actions—useful context but insufficient for a complete numerical comparison [5].
5. Competing Narratives and Potential Agendas in the Sources
The analyses display differing emphases that suggest potential agendas: legal scholars frame pardons as constitutional tools with historical roots [2], journalists highlight public perception and political consequences [1] [3], and commentators use numerical spikes to argue systemic change under Trump [3]. Each source is treated here as biased and selective; the corpus tends to spotlight high-profile instances—Biden’s military and familial pardons, Trump’s May batch—over routine clemency decisions, producing a narrative that amplifies dramatic uses of the power while omitting everyday casework that might shift raw counts [1] [2] [3].
6. How to Close the Data Gap: What a Full Comparison Would Require
A rigorous numeric comparison would require a neutral dataset listing every pardon and commutation granted by each president by date and category, plus contextual notes on blanket proclamations versus individual grants. The supplied material does not supply that dataset and instead offers illustrative examples and interpretations: Biden’s June 26, 2024 military pardon is a verifiable single-action data point, and Trump’s reported May pardons/commutations are a clear cluster, but total-term tallies are absent in the provided analyses [1] [3] [5]. Any definitive numeric claim would need supplemental primary records beyond these analyses.
7. Bottom Line for Readers: What We Know, What We Don’t, and Why It Matters
From the materials provided, we can confirm specific, impactful acts: Biden’s June 26, 2024 pardon for certain former service members and a high-profile family pardon noted in commentary [1] [2], and a period in which Trump issued many pardons and commutations, cited as 19 pardons and eight commutations in May [3]. What remains unresolved in these sources is a comprehensive count comparing Biden’s total pardons to prior presidents; that absence matters because it prevents straightforward comparisons and risks letting anecdote-driven narratives—about personal or transformative uses—dominate public understanding without full quantitative grounding [5].