Other presidents have let white-collar criminals dodge financial penalties – but not like Trump

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President Donald Trump holds up a signed executive order in the Oval Office in August 2026. AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

President Donald Trump loves a good pardon. His generosity is so well known, in fact, that an industry of lobbyists, lawyers and other insiders has reportedly sprung up to facilitate clemency for wealthy criminals. Clemency, meaning mercy or leniency, lets the president reduce the punishment for, or even forgive, federal crimes.

For defendants hoping to avoid jail and walk away from millions of dollars in financial sanctions, paying, say, US$600,000 to a lobbying firm to influence the president may seem like a good investment.

House Democrats recently reported that Trump’s second-term clemency – which includes both pardons, which wipe away every part of a conviction, and commutations, which typically leave convictions intact but shorten a person’s sentence – has saved convicted defendants nearly $1.7 billion in forgiven financial obligations.

Some of that amount – about $700 million – had not yet been officially imposed by courts because the clemency came through so quickly. Much of the remaining $1 billion had been ordered as restitution, meant to repay victims’ losses.

As a legal scholar researching the evolution of modern presidential clemency, I have reviewed every individual pardon and commutation granted by U.S. presidents since 1989, spanning seven administrations, from George H.W. Bush to Trump’s second term. I have found that while other presidents have canceled tens of millions of dollars’ worth of restitution and fines, none of them have come anywhere near the billion-dollar mark – until now.

What is restitution?

The main financial penalties faced by federal defendants are fines, forfeiture – where a defendant has to give up, say, the Ferrari they bought with the profits from their drug business – and restitution.

Restitution is an order to pay back the criminal’s gains to the victims of the crime. For example, if the CEO of a company tricks people into investing $600 million into a hydrogen-powered truck that was never operational, the court may order that, if convicted, he pay back the people he defrauded.

Restitution is rarely able to return all of someone’s lost money, but it is supposed to prevent the fraudster from enjoying the fruits of their crime.

Trump pardoned Nikola Corp. founder and former Executive Chairman Trevor Milton, center, in March 2025. AP Photo/Brittainy Newman

Getting away with it

Since January 2025, Trump has granted clemency to a lengthy list of big-ticket fraudsters, including a cryptocurrency billionaire whose exchange pleaded guilty to anti–money laundering violations and CEOs convicted of payroll tax fraud.

Many of these pardons and commutations have coincided with the use of lobbying firms or generous donations to causes close to Trump’s heart: his inaugural committee, his reelection campaign or MAGA Inc. One successful pardon-seeker’s mother attended a $1 million fundraising dinner.

Clemency seekers use a variety of ways to catch the president’s attention. The end result is that victims of crime – and taxpayers, who have to pay for these huge white-collar investigations and trials – are often left with nothing.

Unfettered power

The U.S. Constitution grants the president nearly unbounded power to pardon whomever he likes, whenever he likes and for whatever reason he likes. This is why, since 1894, the Office of the Pardon Attorney has tried to impose some guidelines on the process and decide which cases should be eligible for clemency at all.

These guidelines generally require that a clemency seeker have been released from prison for five years before they are eligible to request a pardon. If they never went to prison, the five years is calculated from the date of sentencing. Many presidents adhere to this norm: My study shows that between 94% and 100% of people pardoned by George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Barack Obama met this criteria. Because he gave so many preemptive pardons, Joe Biden’s percentage was lower, at around 68%, but still well over half.

In contrast, out of the 216 individual pardons granted by Trump in his second term so far, only 34 – about 15% – have gone to people who waited that long.

The money ladder

A look back at recent past administrations shows an erratic but increasing amount of financial obligations canceled. While some presidents have been frugal with their financial forgiveness – George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush remained under the million-dollar mark, while Joe Biden was just over it – others have been less so.

Bill Clinton erased nearly $10 million in fines and restitution through pardons, most notoriously pardoning Marc Rich, a fugitive financier whose ex-wife contributed more than a million dollars to various Democratic causes and the Clinton Presidential Library.

Obama more than doubled Clinton’s record, forgiving $23 million in financial sanctions.

But Trump surpassed them both in his first term, canceling nearly $195 million in financial obligations. The amount of money saved by convicted defendants during his second term is exponentially higher. One could even say that, as Trump likes to put it, “We’ve never seen anything like it.”

In 2020, President Donald Trump pardoned Charles Kushner, center, the father of his son-in-law Jared Kushner. AP Photo/Marko Georgiev, File

A new role for commutations

Since the main function of commutations is to let people out of prison sooner, commutations usually leave financial obligations in place. During his first term, Trump primarily granted commutations that left “intact and in effect” all conditions of a person’s sentence except for imprisonment. This let numerous defendants out of jail but kept them on the hook for nearly $3 billion in fines and restitution.

That has changed during Trump’s second term. Today, his commutations routinely cancel a recipient’s prison sentence “with no further fines, restitution, probation or other conditions.”

This is how, through commutations alone, Trump has canceled more than $300 million in penalties and restitution since he returned to office.

A word of caution

One figure that is unavailable in public records is whether any given defendant has started to pay, or has fully…