How do pardon totals for Trump compare to Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton?
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Executive summary
Donald J. Trump’s raw number of pardons rose sharply after a large, early-2025 round that included roughly 1,500 Jan. 6 defendants, pushing his lifetime count into the thousands and placing him among presidents with high pardon totals by simple pardon count [1] [2]. Comparisons depend on a key distinction: “pardons” (full forgiveness) versus “clemency actions” or “acts of clemency” (which include commutations and remissions), and on timing—Trump’s first term featured relatively few clemency grants compared with some predecessors, while his second-term mass pardons changed that arithmetic [3] [4] [1].
1. How different presidents measure: pardons versus clemency actions
Official Justice Department accounting separates pardons, commutations and other clemency categories, and the Office of the Pardon Attorney warns that some grants (class proclamations, actions not processed through the office) are excluded from its tally, so apples-to-apples totals require care [5]. Many contemporary reports therefore use “clemency actions” to capture pardons plus commutations; Barack Obama, for example, is often discussed by his total clemency actions—1,927—including a record 1,715 commutations [3] [6].
2. Barack Obama: few pardons but unprecedented commutations
Barack H. Obama issued comparatively few traditional pardons but used commutations aggressively, granting about 1,927 clemency actions in his eight years, including roughly 1,715 commutations—by far the largest use of commutation power in modern history and largely focused on drug-sentencing cases [3] [6]. That pattern makes Obama the leader in total acts of clemency in the recent era even though his number of full pardons is modest compared with some other presidents [3].
3. George W. Bush and Bill Clinton: mid-range pardons by style and count
George W. Bush’s clemency record was relatively small by modern standards; various compilations put his total pardons and commutations near 200 overall, making him one of the less-frequent users of clemency in recent decades [7] [3]. Bill Clinton granted roughly 456–459 clemency actions during his presidency, a larger total than Bush’s but far smaller than Obama’s commutation-heavy span [7] [3]. Both Clinton and Bush drew controversy for specific, high-profile grants (Marc Rich for Clinton; Scooter Libby’s commutation by Bush) rather than for volume alone [7] [3].
4. Donald Trump: low clemency use in first term, then a dramatic jump in 2025
Through his first term Trump’s total clemency actions were modest—several sources count roughly 238 clemency grants in that period—placing him well below Obama’s total [3]. That dynamic shifted sharply in 2025 when Trump issued a sweeping series of pardons that reportedly covered roughly 1,500 Jan. 6 defendants and other high-profile figures, producing headline totals that pushed his cumulative pardons to about 1,737 in some counts [1] [2]. As a result, Trump’s standing versus other modern presidents depends on whether comparisons use pre-2025 totals or include the 2025 mass pardons [1] [3].
5. Putting the numbers together: direct comparisons and caveats
If measured by total acts of clemency across terms (pardons + commutations), Obama remains the outlier for commutations with ~1,927 actions dominated by commutations, whereas Clinton (~456–459) and George W. Bush (~200) issued far fewer [3] [7]. Trump’s total pardons—after the 2025 rounds—are reported in some outlets at roughly 1,737 pardons, a figure that would make him one of the presidents with high raw pardon counts but one whose clemency profile differs from Obama’s because Trump’s post-2025 spike was concentrated in full pardons rather than mass commutations [1] [2] [3]. Careful comparison requires attention to definitions (pardons vs commutations vs total clemency), timing (first term vs cumulative), and inclusion rules used by data sources (DOJ caveats about unprocessed or class grants) [5].
6. Context, controversy and interpretation
Beyond tabulating numbers, debates about these records center on intent and politics: Obama framed many commutations as criminal‑justice reform for drug sentences [3], whereas critics of Trump point to politically connected, fundraising-linked, or symbolic pardons—especially the January 6 series—as evidence of partisan or transactional uses of clemency [8] [1]. Reporting and government tallies agree that raw numbers alone don’t capture those qualitative differences; analysts must therefore inspect the mix of pardons versus commutations and the circumstances surrounding major batches to understand each president’s clemency footprint [5] [8].