Bidens total pardons
Executive summary
President Joe Biden’s clemency record for his four-year term is reported as 4,245 acts of clemency — consisting of roughly 80 pardons and 4,165 commutations — a total that multiple outlets and the Justice Department say is larger than any modern president’s clemency tally [1]. Official DOJ pages list multiple specific grant dates for pardons and commutations through January 19, 2025; contemporary reporting highlights large late-term actions (including pardons for 39 nonviolent offenders and mass commutations for thousands of drug offenders) that drove Biden’s totals higher [2] [3] [4].
1. What the official record shows: dates and categories
The Department of Justice’s Office of the Pardon Attorney maintains separate pages cataloging pardons and commutations granted by President Biden with entries dated across his term, including final actions through January 19, 2025 [2] [3]. Those DOJ lists are the baseline source for counting individual clemency acts; they show a pattern of periodic, sometimes large, grant packages rather than only isolated one-off pardons [2] [3].
2. The headline number: 4,245 acts of clemency
Multiple outlets summarize Biden’s overall clemency output as 4,245 acts — commonly broken down as about 80 pardons plus roughly 4,165 commutations — and call that the most of any U.S. president on record for a single term [1] [5]. Reporting from Pew Research and local outlets reiterates that commutations made up the overwhelming majority of the total [1] [5].
3. Why commutations dominate the tally
Biden’s record stands out because he used commutations at scale, especially for non‑violent drug offenses; analysts note his commutations exceed those of prior presidents by large margins [1] [6]. News accounts point to late-term packages — for example, mass commutations for nearly 2,500 people with nonviolent drug convictions and earlier sets of nearly 1,500 commutations reported in December 2024 — as the major drivers of his total [6] [4].
4. Pardons versus proclamations: what’s included
Counting differences matter. Some high-profile actions were proclamations that granted pardons to classes of people — e.g., proclamations forgiving past federal simple‑possession marijuana convictions and military convictions tied to a repealed ban on consensual gay sex — and those were explicitly tallied by outlets as part of Biden’s pardon count [1] [4]. Other reporting breaks out specific individual pardons (for example, a December package of 39 nonviolent offenders and the widely covered pardon of Hunter Biden) that also feed into the overall total [4] [7].
5. Discrepancies in counts and reporting caution
Different outlets at various times reported differing subtotal figures — some lists cite 39 pardons in a December 2024 package, others report totals of 65 or 80 pardons depending on inclusion rules — because journalists and databases may include or exclude class proclamations, citizens status exclusions, or later additions to the DOJ lists [4] [8] [5]. The most widely cited consolidated breakdown — 80 pardons and 4,165 commutations for 4,245 total — appears in Pew’s summary and is consistent with rounded tallies in other reporting [1].
6. Political fallout and legal questions raised after the term
Late-term, high-profile pardons and use of batch commutations provoked political backlash and legal scrutiny from opponents; for example, coverage documents criticism over the pardon of Hunter Biden and Republicans later suggested procedural irregularities such as autopen use, though major legal observers and outlets note that overturning pardons would require court findings and that federal law lacks a straightforward mechanism to void prior presidential clemency [9] [10] [11]. Reporting notes legal experts doubted that administrative claims alone — such as alleging autopen signatures — would by themselves invalidate clemency without judicial proof [10] [11].
7. How to interpret the legacy in context
Journalists and researchers present two competing frames: one emphasizes corrective justice — using commutations to address overly harsh sentences and racial sentencing disparities — and the other stresses political optics and alleged favoritism tied to individual high-profile pardons [9] [4]. The DOJ’s chronological grant lists show the mechanics and scope; independent analyses highlight the policy intent behind mass commutations, while critics focus on select individual pardons and potential legal and ethical questions [3] [6] [9].
Limitations: available sources do not mention a definitive, line‑by‑line DOJ total spreadsheet in this dataset beyond the published pages and public summaries; counts vary by outlet depending on inclusion rules and timing, so any single number should be understood as a contemporaneous tally drawn from the cited reporting and DOJ pages [2] [1] [3].