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Just dropped · Trial Balloon · Ep. 194

What Just Happened?

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Trial Balloon · Ep. 194: What Just Happened?

Inside the New Fast Track to a Presidential Pardon

December 23, 2025 · 10:24 pm ET · Leave a Comment

Wall Street Journal: “In the first year of his first term, Trump granted a single pardon and commuted one sentence. He waited until his final day in office to issue around 140 additional acts of clemency. This term, he pardoned more than 1,500 people on his first day alone, and has since granted clemency to a further 87 people and companies.”

“The new approach—driven in part by Trump’s own experience as a criminal defendant, people close to him say—has spawned a pardon-shopping industry where lobbyists say their going rate is $1 million. Pardon-seekers have offered some lobbyists close to the president success fees of as much as $6 million if they can close the deal, according to people familiar with the offers.”

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Taegan Goddard

Taegan Goddard

Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.

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