Appendix Methodology

How we count

The jokes are optional. The math isn’t. Here’s where every number comes from, so you can check it.

Sources

The backbone is the Justice Department’s own list, “Clemency Grants by President Donald J. Trump (2025–Present)”, and the pardon and commutation warrants it links to. We read it through Internet Archive snapshots so the record can’t change under us. For each grant we added details from court records, the warrants themselves, and reporting from outlets including CBS News, NBC News, CNN, Bloomberg, Reuters, AP, the Washington Post, ProPublica and local papers. The ledger currently holds 171 records covering 1,746 people and cites 321 distinct sources.

Each row in the ledger links its sources. Each case file has numbered footnotes. The whole dataset downloads as CSV or JSON.

Definitions

Grant: One pardon or commutation of one person, or one mass proclamation. People pardoned together each get their own row.
People covered: Individually named recipients, plus the reported head count of mass proclamations. Most of the total comes from the January 6 proclamation.
Pre-trial: Pardoned while charged but before any conviction.
Years of prison sentences: The sum of prison terms as the courts imposed them, for individually named recipients. It is not the time the grants actually saved, since some people had already served part or all of their sentence. Life sentences are counted separately, never converted to years. Grants with no custodial sentence count as zero.
Court-ordered money: Restitution, fines and forfeiture ordered by a court or documented in the case, taken from court records or reporting. Whether a grant actually wipes out a given obligation depends on its warrant. Some warrants remit fines and restitution explicitly, others don’t, and money already paid is generally not refunded. We say which applies on each case file when it’s known. Blank means unverified, not zero.
$1.7 billion: The headline figure comes from a House Judiciary Committee Democrats staff report and is attributed to them wherever it appears. It is their estimate, not ours.
Money on the table: Reported money spent by a recipient, their family or their company, in the President’s political or business orbit: campaign and super PAC donations, fundraiser tickets, club memberships, payments to lobbyists and intermediaries, and business deals with Trump-family ventures. We report amounts and dates. We do not claim any payment caused any grant.

The “coincidence ROI”

On some receipts and in the spread chart we compute (money wiped off − money on the table) ÷ money on the table. It’s a joke metric built from real numbers. We only compute it when both amounts are documented in dollars. It says nothing about cause.

Limits

Money figures are only as complete as the public record. Plenty of grants have no documented money connection, and we don’t invent one. Those people are in the ledger with a blank.
Some reports disagree on dates or amounts. When they do, we use the primary document (the warrant, the court order) if we can, and otherwise the most specific reputable report. Case files note the disagreement.
Profiles cover public figures only. Private people who received clemency, including the rank-and-file January 6 defendants, appear as counts.
Aggregate statistics from other organizations (Reuters, CBS, YouGov, House Judiciary Democrats) are theirs, cited to them.

The missing list

Internet Archive snapshots of the Justice Department page show a full version at September 20, 2026 (28,338 bytes), a stripped version with the page shell but no list at September 21, 2026 (12,493 bytes), and a restored version by September 22, 2026 (28,337 bytes). Before · During · After. the Justice Department’s Rapid Response account said it “was due to a technical issue and it was promptly fixed. The page has been restored.” (Raw Story). Lead Stories’ fact-check found the list was off the site for hours, not deleted.

Outside statistics we cite

nearly $1.7 billion: Restitution, fines and forfeiture erased by Trump’s second-term clemency. House Judiciary Committee Democrats, “Pardons, Inc.” staff report , August 21, 2026. Up from the committee’s June 2025 estimate of $1.3 billion. This is a report from the minority party.
290 influencers, 624 acts of advocacy, 197 successful cases: Influencers who pushed successful clemency bids. House Judiciary Committee Democrats, citing Reuters , August 21, 2026.
110: Known Trump allies among those influencers. House Judiciary Committee Democrats, citing Reuters , August 21, 2026.
up to $2 million: Top reported fee charged by an intermediary, per engagement. House Judiciary Committee Democrats, citing Reuters , August 21, 2026.
about 14,000: Regular clemency applications waiting at the Justice Department. House Judiciary Committee Democrats , August 21, 2026.
about 70% (92% counting January 6): Second-term clemency actions that went around the Justice Department’s review. CBS News, 60 Minutes , September 13, 2026.
58%, versus 4% who say too few: Americans who say Trump gives out too many pardons. Economist/YouGov poll, Dec. 5–8, 2025 , December 8, 2025.
56%: Americans who want a constitutional amendment limiting the pardon power. Economist/YouGov poll, Dec. 5–8, 2025 , December 8, 2025.
more than half: Share of Trump’s 88 individual pardons (as of Jan. 2026) that went to white-collar offenders. NBC News , January 20, 2026. The same analysis found those recipients had been ordered to pay more than $298 million in fines and restitution.

Corrections

If we got something wrong, we want to know and we’ll fix it quickly. Every correction gets noted on the page it affects, with the date. Please send the specific claim, what’s wrong with it, and a source. Material errors come first; jokes can wait.

Data last updated September 25, 2026.