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The president’s second term has brought a flood of clemency for allies and donors — as well as felons, like him, who were convicted of financial wrongdoing. |
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Takeaways from this investigation |
The beneficiaries of President Donald Trump’s mercy in his second term have mostly been people with access to the president or his inner circle. Those who have followed the rules set out by the Department of Justice, meanwhile, are still waiting. Here’s what to know: -
Under DOJ standards and requirements, people seeking pardons generally must wait five years after release, demonstrate good conduct and remorse, and file petitions through the Office of the Pardon Attorney. Trump has largely abandoned that process. During his second term, only 10 of the roughly 1,600 people granted pardons had filed such petitions.
- A huge chunk of the pardons, roughly 1,500, were people convicted for their roles in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. The rest have come largely through back channels.
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In some of the more striking cases, Trump’s pardons erased not only criminal convictions for defendants tied to large-scale corruption and financial crimes but the restitution judges had ordered or that defendants had agreed to pay.
- Trump could have reformed clemency by moving it out of the Justice Department and having an independent panel in charge of it. Instead, experts said he has exploited it.
The Justice Department did not respond to questions about why many recent pardons appear to have come outside the traditional review process or why the president has tended to use his clemency power to help political allies and people convicted of financial crimes or public corruption. A spokesperson for the department said in an email that the Office of the Pardon Attorney is processing clemency applications. “The Department,” the spokesperson said, “is committed to timely and carefully reviewing all applications and making recommendations to the President that are consistent, unbiased, and uphold the rule of law.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said last week that there was a “whole team of qualified lawyers who look at every single pardon request” and that Trump was the final decision-maker. The White House did not respond to ProPublica's request for comment. |
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“The system did her wrong. If the police department had did their job, and the probation office had did theirs — I think it could have been prevented.” |
— Karen Peebles, the mother of Temptress Peebles.
On Oct. 7, 2019, a 30-year-old beautician named Temptress Peebles called the Nashville probation office begging for help. Days earlier, her ex-boyfriend Brandon Horton had come up behind her, choked her and kicked her in the face, according to a court document. He had open warrants for his arrest. Peebles asked the probation manager if Horton could be arrested when he came in for a court date the next day.
Horton’s probation file shows the manager said she would try to help. But Horton never showed up to court, according to his probation file, and Nashville police didn’t arrest him until it was too late. Horton is now awaiting trial on charges of killing Peebles.
In Tennessee, a state with one of the highest rates of women killed by men, WPLN and ProPublica found a deadly blind spot in the probation supervision system that puts domestic violence victims at risk. If a suspect commits a new crime while on probation, face-to-face supervision of that person stops until a warrant can be served for their arrest.
Between 2019 and 2022, ProPublica and WPLN found that at least six young Black moms, including Peebles, were allegedly shot to death by probationers during the gap in oversight.
Horton and his lawyer declined to comment for this story. The case file is sealed, and the public defender’s office declined to comment further on whether Horton has entered a plea. The Tennessee Department of Correction declined to make any probation officers available for this story. The department says it works closely with law enforcement to aid with arrests, but it confirmed that all in-person supervision stops until the warrant is served. |
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