type: timeline_event NBC News and Bloomberg reported in May and June 2025 that a lucrative new industry had emerged around obtaining presidential pardons from Trump, with Trump-aligned lobbying firms, lawyers, and political consultants offering their services to clients seeking pardons or commutations in exchange for fees of up to $5 million. Bloomberg profiled "Inside the Trump Pardon Economy," describing defendants spending $1 million or more in legal fees simply to get access to the White House pardon pipeline. The pardon-seeking industry had emerged because Trump had issued pardons at an unprecedented rate — starting with the mass pardons of January 6th defendants on his first day in office and continuing through individual pardons for convicted cryptocurrency executives, corporate entities, and politically connected individuals.
The Louisiana Illuminator reported in July 2025 that Trump's pardon practices had cost victims and the public more than $1 billion in losses from crimes for which perpetrators received pardons without restitution requirements. The Marshall Project documented that Trump was "flouting government rules on pardons" by bypassing the Department of Justice's formal pardon process — which involves a Pardon Attorney's office review and formal recommendation — instead relying on personal lobbying access. This bypassing of the formal process meant pardons were effectively available through payment for political access, creating what critics described as a commercial market for presidential clemency.
The emergence of a pardon economy represented a fundamental corruption of the constitutional clemency power, which was designed as a safety valve for injustice, not as a commercial product purchasable through political connections. Legal commentators noted that the requirement to pay substantial fees to connected insiders simply to gain pardon consideration created a two-tier justice system in which wealthy defendants with political connections could purchase clemency unavailable to ordinary Americans without such connections. The CNBC and NBC News reporting confirmed that the pardon industry was openly operating — with lobbying firms explicitly advertising pardon-seeking services — representing an institutionalization of what critics characterized as the monetization of presidential power.