On Dec. 13, 2024, U.S. President Joe Biden announced one of the biggest acts of clemency in modern American history by pardoning 39 people and commuting the sentences of almost 1,500 others. On Jan. 17, 2025, he commuted the sentences of nearly 2,500 more people, making him the U.S. president to issue the most individual acts of clemency.
Biden's actions in December 2024 sparked discussion online over the power of the presidential pardon, and several conservative pundits on social media criticized Biden's actions as an overreach, claiming that he had pardoned more people than any other president in American history. The rumor was also shared by tech billionaire Elon Musk, the owner of the social media platform X.
(X account @ElonMusk)
The claim is not entirely true, because of the language of the presidential pardon.
There are four key words to understanding the power: clemency, commutation, reprieve and pardon. Clemency refers to any action that a president takes to reduce or eliminate the legal penalties for a crime, and a pardon, commutation and reprieve are all forms of clemency. According to the White House Historical Association, a reprieve delays a sentence or punishment, a commutation reduces a sentence or punishment and a pardon fully releases a person from punishment and restores all civil liberties.
Another element is an amnesty, which is similar to a pardon but applies to a whole class of individuals.
Before his second large act of clemency on Jan. 17, Biden had not issued the most individual acts of clemency of any president. As such, we previously rated this claim false (archived).
According to the Department of Justice's Office of the Pardon Attorney, Biden had issued pardons for 65 people and had commuted the sentences of 1,671 more as of Dec. 23, 2024. (A full list of those pardons is available elsewhere on OPA's website). His most recent action added nearly 2,500 more acts of clemency to his total, placing Biden far ahead of the previous record, Harry Truman's 2,044 acts.
However, because many of Biden's acts of clemency were sentence commutations, not pardons, it is incorrect to say Biden had issued more pardons than any U.S. president in history. Using the OPA statistics, most presidents have used the power more than Biden. While Biden issued 65 individual pardons, Donald Trump issued 144 during his four years in office and Barack Obama issued 212 across eight years.
However, this is still not the full story, because the figure of 65 does not include any blanket pardons, acts that pardon multiple people at once. In 2022 and 2023, Biden issued two blanket pardons addressing people convicted on certain marijuana charges. According to data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission, those pardons affected 6,577 people. Even with those blanket pardons, however, Biden had not pardoned 8,000 Americans.
Furthermore, even if Biden had pardoned 8,000 people, it would still not be the most individuals pardoned by a U.S. president. On his first day in office, President Jimmy Carter pardoned everyone who evaded the Vietnam War draft, albeit with some exemptions — 209,517 men were officially charged, according to Politico. Furthermore, President Andrew Johnson issued blanket pardons for most Confederate soldiers after the end of the Civil War (those acts of clemency did require an oath of allegiance, so some may wish not to count this).