How do George W. Bush's pardons compare in volume and controversy to Trump's?
Executive summary
George W. Bush issued very few clemency acts: he is one of the presidents since 1900 who granted the fewest acts of clemency, joining George H.W. Bush [1]. By contrast, Donald Trump’s second presidency has produced an unusually large and contentious set of pardons — including roughly 1,500 January 6 defendants early in his term and more than 1,800 clemencies reported by December 2025 — provoking sustained critiques that Trump bypassed normal review processes and favored political allies [2] [3] [4] [5].
1. Numbers: Bush’s scarcity vs. Trump’s volume
George W. Bush is grouped among the presidents who granted the fewest acts of clemency since 1900; Pew’s analysis lists only George W. and George H.W. Bush as having especially low totals of pardons and commutations, while Trump’s second term has produced an extraordinary number — more than 1,800 clemencies reported in late 2025, including mass actions for January 6 defendants [1] [2] [3]. Available sources do not give a single consolidated count for all of Bush’s pardons in this dataset beyond Pew’s comparative statement [1].
2. Process and norms: standard review vs. shortcutting
Pardons historically move through the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney and its review standards; reporting on Trump’s recent actions emphasizes that many of his clemencies did not follow the usual review process, a fact critics say increased the risk of poor vetting and repeat offending among beneficiaries [2] [6]. By contrast, the sources portray Bush as part of an era of limited clemency use — implying more restraint and less controversy over process simply because fewer acts were issued [1]. Available sources do not detail Bush’s internal pardon-review process in this collection [1].
3. Controversy: types of clemency that drew fire
Trump’s pardons drew controversy for several reasons documented in reporting: mass pardons of January 6 defendants, clemencies for political allies, donors and high-profile foreigners (including a full pardon for Honduras’s Juan Orlando Hernández and pardons for financial- and white-collar defendants such as Changpeng Zhao), and cases where recipients were later arrested again [2] [7] [3] [8]. Bush-era controversies are not detailed in these sources beyond the general low volume; the reporting here focuses controversy on later presidencies and specific high-profile pre-2025 examples like Clinton’s Marc Rich and George H.W. Bush’s Weinberger, not on George W. Bush’s pardons [5] [4].
4. Political motive and optics: loyalty versus restraint
Multiple outlets characterize Trump’s approach as openly political — using clemency as a reward for loyalty or ideological alignment and as a tool to protect allies — and say that this marks a departure from recent norms [8] [9] [5]. The Marshall Project and Axios frame Trump’s pattern as flouting DOJ standards and embracing clemency as partisan power [5] [8]. Sources show Bush’s low clemency totals but do not present Bush as employing clemency in the partisan, large-scale manner attributed to Trump [1]. Available sources do not offer a direct comparison quoting Bush’s rationale or explicit political intent.
5. Legal questions and limits: autopen and undoing pardons
A separate controversy in December 2025 involves President Trump’s attempt to “terminate” documents he says were signed by Joe Biden using an autopen, including pardons; legal scholars cited in reporting doubt that such unilateral revocations would stand up in court, and the autopen claim itself is described as legally flimsy and factually unclear [10] [11] [12]. Those disputes are distinct from the Bush/Trump volume comparison but illustrate that modern pardon fights now involve novel legal and political maneuvers beyond traditional clemency debates [10] [11].
6. What the numbers and controversies mean for institutions
The contrast is stark: Bush-era restraint left fewer institutional flashpoints, while Trump’s expansive and politicized use of clemency has strained norms, prompted litigation and congressional scrutiny, and produced practical consequences — including claims of undermining rule of law when pardoned individuals are re-arrested or when review processes are bypassed [2] [5] [8]. Sources report critics’ view that Trump’s pattern favors the wealthy and politically connected; defenders portray some pardons as correcting injustices — both frames appear across the coverage [4] [13] [9].
Limitations: this analysis uses only the supplied reporting. It relies on comparative counts and characterizations reported by Pew, Reuters, The Guardian, The Marshall Project, Axios, Newsweek, PBS and DOJ materials in the dataset; the sources do not provide a single definitive tally of all George W. Bush pardons here, nor exhaustive internal DOJ files for each administration [1] [6].