The Form and the Phone Call
Somewhere in America, a family is sitting at a kitchen table with a federal inmate number written on a legal pad. Court records are stacked beside an envelope, along with letters from relatives and employers and a printed set of instructions on how to ask the president of the United States for mercy. Someone has highlighted the important parts. Someone else has double-checked the mailing address. They will fill out the forms, gather the documents, explain why the sentence should be reconsidered, and send it away. After that, there is mostly waiting.
Presidential clemency has always contained an unusual kind of hope. One person, exercising one of the broadest powers granted by the Constitution, can shorten a sentence or extend mercy after a federal conviction.
However, another part of the process does not appear on the application: who knows whom, who can make a call, who can get a case noticed, and who can make sure a request does not simply disappear into a stack of thousands.
When presidential mercy has more than one doorway, the most important question may not be who gets pardoned. It may be who gets close enough to ask.
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Presidents Are Supposed to Pardon People
The pardon power exists for a reason. Article II gives the president authority to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, a power that includes commutations. It allows one person to reach into the federal criminal justice system and reduce or forgive punishment.
Sometimes that is exactly the point. Courts can impose lawful sentences that later seem excessive. People can change. Families can buckle under incarceration. New evidence can emerge. Mercy is not a defect in the system. It is part of the system.
That is why the mere fact that a president grants clemency to someone convicted of a serious crime tells us little on its own. Some people receiving clemency from President Donald Trump may have compelling cases. Their circumstances may have changed, their sentences may have been too long, or their families may need them. A fair examination has to leave room for that possibility.
The problem begins when the question is no longer simply whether a person deserves mercy, but whether some people have a better way of getting their case in front of the person who can grant it.
Johnny Doc Got a Second Look
John Dougherty, the former Philadelphia labor leader widely known as “Johnny Doc,” had already asked for mercy. He was serving a six-year federal prison sentence after convictions in separate trials, one for bribing former Philadelphia City Councilmember Bobby Henon, and another arising from the embezzlement of nearly $600,000 from the union Dougherty once led.
His wife, Cecilia, has long suffered from a debilitating brain injury that has left her paralyzed and largely unable to speak. Dougherty sought compassionate release so he could help care for her, but U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Schmehl repeatedly rejected his efforts to leave prison early.
Dougherty also sought mercy from the president. On July 10th, Donald Trump denied his commutation application along with about 5,600 others. Less than two months later, on September 3rd, Trump commuted the remainder of Dougherty’s sentence. Dougherty walked out of federal prison the following afternoon after serving less than two years of a six-year term.
A serious humanitarian explanation drove the reversal. Dougherty’s attorney, George Bochetto, said he had been in regular communication with White House staff while arguing that Cecilia Dougherty’s deteriorating condition required her husband’s care. A White House official also said her circumstances figured into the president’s decision.
However, the reversal leaves an important question sitting on the table. Thousands of people received denials in July. Dougherty got another look. What caused his case to come back before the White House? Who could keep making the argument after the formal process produced a no? And if another prisoner had an equally compelling story but no attorney communicating with White House staff, would that family have found the same second door?
The remarkable part of Dougherty’s story may not be that Donald Trump eventually said yes. It is that after the government said no, someone could still ask again.
There Is an Economy Around Being Heard
Dougherty’s case points to something larger than one commutation: an economy has developed around access to presidential clemency.
Reuters identified 290 advocates who helped 197 successful clemency applicants during Trump’s second term. Some were lawyers, political allies, celebrities, lobbyists, or people with relationships inside Trump’s political world. Six people familiar with recent clemency efforts told Reuters that intermediaries with proven access to Trump’s circle can charge as much as $2 million, although Reuters could not establish what each adviser was paid in individual cases.
CBS News found that Mo Strategies, a lobbying firm founded by former Trump campaign and administration officials, received $500,000 from a law firm for work that included immigration and pardon-related discussions. In another case, political operatives disclosed $960,000 in lobbying income on behalf of Joseph Schwartz, a nursing home operator who later received a presidential pardon.
The evidence stops short of proving something much more serious. No public evidence shows that Donald Trump personally received those payments in exchange for pardons. Hiring a lobbyist is not bribing a president, paying an advocate does not guarantee clemency, and a fee does not establish corruption.
The evidence does establish that there is money to be made helping people cross the distance between an ordinary clemency application and presidential attention. A well-connected advocate may know which argument will resonate, which person should hear it, or how to keep a case alive after the ordinary process has stalled. None of that guarantees the president will say yes, but it can help make sure somebody asks him.
You may not be able to buy a pardon, but you can apparently buy a much better chance to be heard. The rich cannot necessarily buy mercy. They can buy proximity to the people who dispense it.
Once proximity to public power becomes something people can purchase, the question is what happens to everyone who cannot afford to get that close.
At the Kitchen Table, There Is No One to Call
For most families, there is no political intermediary, celebrity willing to make a call, or lobbyist whose business is knowing which office to reach.
There is an application, along with supporting letters, court records, medical documents, employment offers, and whatever else might explain why somebody deserves another chance. Families put the case together as carefully as they can and send it into a system they do not control. Most Americans cannot hire access. They have to stand in line.
That does not mean every clemency applicant deserves the same answer. Equal citizenship does not require a president to grant mercy evenly or mechanically. It requires something more basic: the quality of a person’s case should matter more than the quality of that person’s connections.
One family may have a compelling story about rehabilitation, illness, an excessive sentence, or children growing up without a parent. Another may have a similarly compelling story and the resources to hire someone who can make sure the right people hear it. The difference should not be who can afford the better doorway.
When public power is difficult to reach, access itself becomes valuable, and people with money will always have more ways to buy it. The ordinary citizen is left with the form. The connected citizen may have the phone call. A republic should be very careful when those two things begin to produce different chances of being heard.
Mercy Is Public Power
The president’s pardon power is personal in the sense that the Constitution places the decision in one office. It is not personal in the sense that the power belongs to the person occupying that office.
The Square New Deal begins from a simple premise: government authority is held in trust. Whether the power involves spending public money, enforcing the law, regulating a market, or granting clemency, the person exercising it must remember where that authority came from and to whom it ultimately belongs.
Different cases can deserve different outcomes. A person who has served decades, demonstrated rehabilitation, or faced extraordinary family circumstances may present a stronger case than someone else asking for relief. A case's strength should not depend on whether someone can afford proximity.
If two Americans are asking the same government to hear them, one should not begin several steps closer simply because money can purchase a lobbyist, a political intermediary, or access to people around the president. That is not an argument for weakening the pardon power. It is an argument for treating the power with the seriousness its breadth demands.
The more discretion one person holds, the more important transparency becomes around how people reach that discretion. Equal citizenship does not mean everyone receives the pardon. It means wealth should not determine who gets close enough to ask for one.
Congress Cannot Pardon. It Can Turn On the Lights.
Congress cannot decide whom the president pardons, and the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that Congress cannot legislatively diminish the pardon power. Oversight therefore has to stop short of controlling the clemency decision itself.
That does not require Congress to ignore everything surrounding clemency. Congress has historically overseen presidential pardons, including hearings after Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon. Lawmakers can examine the money and influence surrounding requests for mercy while respecting the constitutional boundary around the president’s final decision.
On July 22nd, Representatives Dave Min and Suhas Subramanyam introduced the Pardon Transparency and Accountability Act of 2026. The bill would require the president to publish a written explanation for grants of executive clemency and would extend federal lobbying-disclosure requirements to clemency-related lobbying. It was referred to the House Judiciary Committee. Whether every provision would survive constitutional scrutiny is a separate question.
The proposal points toward a useful division of responsibility. The president can retain the constitutional power to say yes or no while the public gains a clearer view of how a request reached presidential attention.
Congress should investigate whether paid influence is distorting access to the clemency process, examine whether lobbying rules adequately capture that activity, and pursue disclosure requirements that respect the constitutional boundary around the pardon itself.
Sunlight does not weaken mercy. It helps distinguish mercy from favoritism. The president may have the final word on whom he forgives, but the people’s branch should make sure Americans can see who had a voice before that word was spoken.
Mercy Should Not Have a VIP Line
Back at the kitchen table, the paperwork is still there: the inmate number, the court records, and the letters from people trying to explain why someone they love deserves another chance.
Most families will never know whether anyone close to the president sees those pages, whether their case reached the right desk, or whether someone with more money and better connections moved through a different channel entirely.
That does not mean every pardon is corrupt, every politically connected applicant is undeserving, or Donald Trump lacks the constitutional authority to grant clemency. It means a republic should not be comfortable with a system in which proximity to presidential mercy can become a luxury good.
The pardon power exists because justice sometimes requires grace. But grace exercised through public power should not depend on whether a family can afford the people who know whom to call. An ordinary American should not need a celebrity, a prisoner should not need a lobbyist, and a family should not need political connections just to make sure its case is heard.
The president may decide whom to forgive, but mercy should not have a VIP line.
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Sources:
Kaminsky, Gabe. “A Trump-Linked Firm Is Lobbying for Pardons. Its First Client Already Paid $500,000.” CBS News. Updated June 24, 2026.
Palmer, Chris. “Johnny Doc Is a Free Man After President Donald Trump Cut His Six-Year Prison Term Short.” The Philadelphia Inquirer. September 4, 2026.
Palmer, Chris. “President Donald Trump Denied Johnny Doc’s Request to Be Let Out of Prison Early.” The Philadelphia Inquirer. July 21, 2026.
Reuters. “Trump Grants Clemency to 30 People, White House Pardon Czar Says.” September 5, 2026.
Taylor, Marisa, Chris Prentice, Kaylee Kang, and Allison Martell. “How to Get a Trump Pardon: Forget the DOJ, Call ‘Bobby’ and Other Influencers.” Reuters. June 11, 2026. Updated July 17, 2026.
U.S. Congress. House. “Pardon Transparency and Accountability Act of 2026.” H.R. 9860, 119th Cong., 2nd sess. Introduced July 22, 2026.
U.S. Congress. Library of Congress. “Congress’s Role in Pardons.” Constitution Annotated: Analysis and Interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. Accessed September 6, 2026.
U.S. Congress. Library of Congress. “Overview of Pardon Power.” Constitution Annotated: Analysis and Interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. Accessed September 6, 2026.
U.S. Department of Justice. Office of the Pardon Attorney. “Commutation Applications Denied by President Donald J. Trump on July 10, 2026.” Updated July 15, 2026.
U.S. Department of Justice. U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. “Former Local 98 Business Manager John Dougherty Sentenced to Six Years in Prison for Public Corruption, Embezzlement Convictions.” July 11, 2024.
The Fapweasel (Trump) looks at everything, including pardons with the consideration of, ”what’s in it for me?” The “what” part is almost always financial.
This is leading up to presidential pardons for corporations adjudicating as causing harm to the public. Like the Facebook problems with his big tech donors.