Editor’s note: “Behind the News” is the product of Sun staff assisted by the Sun’s AI lab, which includes a variety of tools such as Anthropic’s Claude, Perplexity AI, Google Gemini and ChatGPT.

President Donald Trump has issued an unusually large number of pardons and commutations in his second term, moving much faster than most modern presidents.[1]

Public trackers and Justice Department data indicate that in his second term, Trump has granted clemency to roughly 1,600 people, the vast majority via pardons rather than commutations, largely driven by a blanket pardon to rioters facing charges for their role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol as his first term was winding down.[4]

Independent counts put his formal second-term pardons at 142 with several dozen commutations,

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