#43AMERICANS
We followed the rules.
Two hundred fifty pardons were discussed for America's 250th birthday. Seventeen were granted on the eve of it — six of them to companies.
Most of our files went to 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, in the ordinary way, with every document attached. Eleven of us are not asking for a pardon at all — and cannot.
Eleven of us are not asking for a pardon
A pardon forgives a conviction. Eleven people on this site do not have one. Some were acquitted. Some had every charge dismissed. Some were pardoned already. The prosecution still took the job, the license, the business, the savings, the years — and gave none of it back.
For that, there is no petition. The Office of the Pardon Attorney has no form for a person the government cleared. There is nothing to forgive and nothing to commute. The loss is simply permanent.
The Justice Department recognized this. On 18 May 2026 the Attorney General established the Anti-Weaponization Fund — $1.776 billion, with the power to issue formal apologies and monetary relief, no partisan requirement to file, and claims processing set to run through December 2028. In announcing it, the Department said the machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and that it intended to make right the wrongs previously done.
On 2 August 2026 the order was rescinded. The rescission states that the establishing order shall have no force or effect, and that there is no fund. Eleven weeks, start to finish.
This page takes no position on that decision. We note only that the problem the Department described did not end with the Fund, and that eleven people on this site are still carrying it.
What was proposed, and what was granted
In May 2026 the Wall Street Journal reported that White House officials were considering 250 pardons to mark the semiquincentennial. The Atlantic followed in June with more than a dozen sources. Advisers were reported to be divided on whether it would help or hurt.
On 3 July 2026, the eve of the anniversary, the President granted seventeen pardons. The Department of Justice publishes the list.
| Recipient | District | Offense | Sentence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jonathan Dean Achtemeier | W.D. Wash. | Conspiracy to violate the Clean Air Act | 4 months |
| Timothy Curtis Clancy, II | D. Or. | Clean Air Act tampering | 3 yrs probation |
| Clancy Logistics Inc. | D. Or. | Clean Air Act tampering | 3 yrs probation |
| Joshua L. Davis | W.D.N.C. | Conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and violate the Clean Air Act | 3 yrs probation |
| Matthew Sidney Geouge | W.D.N.C. | Conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and violate the Clean Air Act; tax evasion | 12 mo + 1 day |
| Jack Charles Harvard | E.D. Tex. | False statement to a federally insured bank, and aiding and abetting | 2 years |
| Adam R. Kidan | S.D. Fla. | Conspiracy to commit wire fraud and mail fraud; wire fraud | 70 months |
| Ryan Reginald LaLone | W.D. Mich. | Violation of Clean Air Act | 1 yr probation |
| Wade James LaLone | W.D. Mich. | Violation of Clean Air Act | 1 yr probation |
| Accurate Truck Service LLC | W.D. Mich. | Conspiracy to violate the Clean Air Act | 1 yr probation |
| Diesel Freak LLC | W.D. Mich. | Conspiracy to violate the Clean Air Act | 5 yrs probation |
| Griffin Transportation Inc. | W.D. Mich. | Conspiracy to violate the Clean Air Act | 1 yr probation |
| Barry Kendal Pierce | D. Idaho | Clean Air Act | 4 months |
| Custom Auto of Rexburg LLC | D. Idaho | Tampering with a monitoring device required by the Clean Air Act | 5 yrs probation |
| GDP Tuning LLC | D. Idaho | Conspiracy to violate the Clean Air Act | 5 yrs probation |
| Aaron Lucas Roskin Rudolf | D.D.C. | Conspiracy to violate the Clean Air Act | 36 mo probation |
| Mackenzie Scott Spurlock | D. Alaska | Tampering with Clean Air Act monitoring device | 5 yrs probation |
Eleven individuals and six companies. Every figure above is from the Department's own published record. This page takes no position on whether any of these grants was correct.
Eleven days later, on 14 July 2026, the Pardon Attorney notified U.S. Attorneys that 5,607 commutation applications and 300 pardon applications had been denied.
Why the process tightened
In October 2025, NBC News reported that clemency actions had stopped after May of that year. Four people familiar with the discussions said senior White House officials had become concerned about outsiders attempting to profit from the process.
The reported figures: a plan floated to secure a pardon for $30 million. Lobbyists receiving proposals as high as $5 million. A $1 million payment to a Washington lobbyist, disclosed in lobbying filings as being for executive relief.
Two senior officials told NBC that the Chief of Staff pushed back against these efforts and tightened the process specifically to distance it from people attempting to broker influence. Clemency resumed that month.
What merits examination is the process being used right now — an informal, closed and opaque process to evaluate petitioners, while ignoring the thousands of people who followed the rules and submitted a clemency petition through the pardon attorney.
He adds that the old evaluation system needed to be demolished, but now needs to be remade into something accessible, fair, transparent and lasting.
Marc Osler, Professor of Law, University of St. Thomas School of Law, a national expert on clemency — NBC News, 24 October 2025
The White House press secretary has said that each clemency request is intensely vetted and reviewed, and that the President makes every decision personally. We take that at face value. Ours were filed through the pardon attorney, and we are waiting.
We are the forty-three who had nothing to offer. No lobbyist. No intermediary. No one paid anybody anything.
If the process was tightened to protect this power from people trying to buy it, we are what it was protecting it for.
Clemency used to work. Then it stopped.
For most of the twentieth century, presidential clemency was an ordinary function of government. Petitions were filed, reviewed, and granted at rates between a fifth and two-fifths. Beginning in the 1990s the pipeline closed — under presidents of both parties.
In the eight years before the current term, the Office of the Pardon Attorney received 12,078 clemency requests. Two hundred thirty-eight were granted. The largest volume any president received was 36,544. Five per cent were granted.
Share of clemency requests granted, by president
The pipeline closes
Figures are for completed terms, compiled by Pew Research Center from Office of the Pardon Attorney data. The 2017–21 term is shown; the current term is ongoing and not included. Biden's 29% is almost entirely categorical commutations — 4,165 commutations against 80 individual pardons. Whether that counts as the pardon power working as intended is a fair question. What is not in dispute is the volume: 4,245 clemency acts in one term against 238 in the term before it. The "other" category includes remissions, which reduce financial penalties, and respites, which are temporary reprieves often granted for medical reasons. McKinley totals cover fiscal years 1900 and 1901 only.
What the power is for
Nobody believes President Truman found 41% of petitioners innocent. Clemency has never been a finding of innocence. It is a constitutional power to correct a sentence disproportionate to what a person actually did, or a process that went wrong in a way the courts will not fix.
When commentary treats every pardon as excusing a guilty person, it describes something that has never been how the power worked, in any administration, for over a century.
A power used a quarter of the time for ninety years is now used two per cent of the time. The people it stopped reaching are the ones who were never going to have a lobbyist.
Clemency coverage follows recognizable names. The forty-three people on this site have documented federal cases, complete records, and no publicist.
We are not asking anyone to take a position on our cases. We are asking that someone read one.
Sources
- U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Pardon Attorney, Clemency Grants by President Donald J. Trump (2025–Present). Updated 6 July 2026. All grant data on this page.
- U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Pardon Attorney, Clemency Statistics.
- Pew Research Center, Biden granted more acts of clemency than any prior president, 7 February 2025. Compiled from Office of the Pardon Attorney data. All historical rates and totals on this page.
- Katherine Doyle and Matt Dixon, White House tightens the clemency process as Trump resumes pardons, NBC News, 24 October 2025.
- U.S. Department of Justice, Justice Department Announces Anti-Weaponization Fund, 18 May 2026.
- Kelly O'Donnell, Michael Kosnar and Raquel Coronell Uribe, Acting AG Todd Blanche reaches deal with holdout senators to end $1.8B anti-weaponization fund, NBC News, 2 August 2026.
- Letter from the U.S. Pardon Attorney to U.S. Attorneys, 14 July 2026, recording the denial of 5,607 commutation applications and 300 pardon applications.
- Wall Street Journal, May 2026, and The Atlantic, June 2026, on the proposed 250-pardon initiative.