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President Donald Trump granted clemency this year to a range of figures he viewed as victims of an unfair justice system. Some were tied to his newfound interest in cryptocurrency or shared in his 2020 election grievances, while another was simply brought up during a round of golf.
While presidents of both parties have long used their pardon power in controversial ways, Trump’s clemency activity in 2025 stood out for its volume and for the deal-making style that has been a defining feature of his approach to power.
What follows is a list of some of the president’s most controversial pardons in 2025.
Jan. 6 defendants
The day Trump took office, he issued mass clemency to nearly all his supporters who had been convicted of federal offenses related to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
Trump said at the time they had been “treated very unfair” by prosecutors and the courts.
Roughly 1,600 people faced charges over the Capitol attack, and the Department of Justice secured guilty pleas or convictions for more than 1,200 of them, according to federal data. About 200 pleaded guilty to felonies that included assaulting officers, and more than 200 others were convicted in trials of offenses that included attacking law enforcement.
Trump singled out 14 of the defendants, some of whom received prison sentences that stretched beyond a decade, and commuted their sentences instead of pardoning them. They included numerous Oath Keepers and Proud Boys leaders.
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The president also directed the DOJ to drop pending cases for all the remaining defendants. The grand act of clemency wiped out one of the DOJ’s largest and most resource-intensive law enforcement operations in history. Cases were brought throughout all four years of the Biden administration.
Changpeng Zhao
The founder and former CEO of Binance, the largest cryptocurrency platform, was convicted of anti-money laundering violations and received a full pardon in October 2025.
The pardon came one week after Donald Trump Jr. introduced a lobbyist for Zhao to Trump while on stage at Charlie Kirk’s memorial.
Critics observed that Binance has boosted the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company, but a lawyer denied any business reasons for the pardon, instead telling the Wall Street Journal Zhao was “pardoned for justice.”
George Santos
The former U.S. representative who was found to be a serial fabulist after his congressional run had his seven-year prison sentence commuted in October 2025.
Santos pleaded guilty to federal fraud and identity-theft charges, admitting to using campaign funds to buy luxury products and pay off his credit card debt.
Fellow Long Island Republicans who had previously called for his resignation reacted angrily to the commutation, with Rep. Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., calling it “not justice” and unfair to the people Santos defrauded.
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Trump said Santos, who became an outspoken supporter of the president prior to receiving the pardon, was mistreated in jail. Santos “has been in solitary confinement for long stretches of time and, by all accounts, has been horribly mistreated,” Trump said.
Tim Leiweke
Leiweke, a sports executive, was charged by the Trump DOJ’s Antitrust Division with rigging a bid to build an arena at the University of Texas.
The DOJ accused Leiweke of violating the Sherman Act by gypping the university and taxpayers out of a fair bidding process to benefit his own company.
Former Rep. Trey Gowdy, who represented Leiweke, persuaded Trump to grant his client the pardon after a round of golf at Mar-a-Lago, the Wall Street Journal first reported.
Juan Orlando Hernandez
Trump issued a heavily criticized pardon to Hernandez, the former president of Honduras, who had been convicted in a U.S. federal court on drug-trafficking and firearms charges and sentenced to 45 years in prison for helping cocaine traffickers move hundreds of tons of narcotics into the U.S.
Trump’s pardon, granted in December, freed Hernandez from prison in West Virginia just days before Honduras’s presidential election. Honduras responded by issuing a warrant for Hernandez’s arrest.
Trump claimed Hernandez had been unfairly prosecuted by the Biden administration. Critics observed that Trump has pushed legal boundaries to carry out one of his top agenda items, cracking down on drug trafficking, and that Hernandez’s release was counterproductive to that mission.
The Chrisleys
Todd and Julie Chrisley, reality TV stars from “Chrisley Knows Best,” were convicted in 2022 of bank fraud and tax evasion and both serving prison sentences when Trump pardoned them in May. Trump cited “pretty harsh treatment” as his reason for the clemency.
Their daughter, Savannah, endorsed Trump during the Republican National Committee convention ahead of the 2024 election. The daughter revealed in December she is stepping into a cohost role on “The View.” Incidentally, Savannah Chrisley’s future cohosts had slammed her parents’ pardon as unethical.
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“If you are a reality star with a lot of money, and a tax cheat, and you commit fraud, then that’s good. We’re going to give you a pardon,” anti-Trump host Joy Behar had said.
Devon Archer
Trump granted a full pardon to Archer, who was convicted in a federal fraud case, in March 2025. Archer was a longtime business partner of Hunter Biden but became an ally to House Republicans as they investigated the Bidens for what they said were corrupt foreign business dealings.
Henry Cuellar and his wife
The Democratic congressman from Texas and his wife were pardoned after the Biden DOJ brought federal bribery charges against them.
Trump claimed they were unfairly targeted because Henry Cuellar, a moderate who represented a battleground district in South Texas, supported more border security than many of his Democratic colleagues. However, when Cuellar filed for reelection as a Democrat after Trump’s pardon, the president said he was displeased.
“Such a lack of LOYALTY,” Trump wrote on social media. “Oh well, next time, no more Mr. Nice guy!”
Tina Peters
Trump announced in December that he pardoned Tina Peters, the former Mesa County, Colorado, elections clerk who was serving a 9-year state prison sentence for orchestrating a data-breach scheme to advance fraud claims related to the 2020 election.
Trump framed the pardon as support for her efforts to “expose voter fraud,” but because her convictions were in Colorado state court, legal experts and state officials say the president has no authority to pardon state-level convictions, and her sentence has not been automatically erased or resulted in her release.
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