While overall job creation in 2025 saw a “sharp slowdown” when compared to the previous year, President Donald Trump did spark a boom in one industry: the pardon lobbying business, which law professor Kim Wehl wrote was “booming” thanks to the president having "converted a constitutional safeguard of mercy into a tawdry instrument of corruption and grift.”
Trump has drawn scrutiny over his use of his pardon authority. He pardoned 1,600 Americans involved with the Jan. 6 Capitol riot on his first day back in the White House, he pardoned a major drug trafficker amid his administration’s supposed war on drugs, and he pardoned a cryptocurrency billionaire who helped enrich his family by as much as $1 billion.
The authority to issue pardons is granted to the president by Article II of the Constitution, and has been used controversially by past presidents; former President Bill Clinton pardoned major Democratic Party donor Marc Rich on his last day in office, and former President Joe Biden pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, and after pledging not to.
However, Trump’s use of his pardon authority was a “far cry” from past uses, Wehl argued in an analysis published Sunday in Zeteo, and made possible by a conservative-controlled Supreme Court that has expanded the power of the executive since Trump took office in January.
“Thanks to an enabling Supreme Court majority and a supplicant Congress, the language of Article II has been recast as a transactional favor – priced in loyalty, extreme wealth, and proximity to power, not merit – like a cynical prop in a grotesque spectacle of impunity,” Wehl wrote.
“So far, the damage is mostly legal. Not for long. When clemency is wielded as a commodity for personal self-enrichment and power, it sends a clear message: compliance with the rule of law and reciprocal justice are optional. Trump is the ‘law’ now. It’s disgusting.”