Getting a presidential pardon is genuinely hard. Across the Obama administration, more than 36,000 clemency petitions came in and only about 5% were granted.1Department of Justice. Past Clemency Action and Statistics So when people ask how hard it is to get a presidential pardon, the honest answer has three parts: the eligibility rules keep you out for years, the application is exhaustive, and even a well-built petition faces a grant rate in the single digits with no deadline for a decision and no right to appeal.
You Have to Wait Years Before You Can Even Apply
Federal regulations require at least five years to pass after your release from prison, or five years from the date of conviction if no prison sentence was imposed. If you’re still on probation, parole, or supervised release, your petition will generally not be accepted.2eCFR. 28 CFR 1.2 – Eligibility for Filing Petition for Pardon Waivers of the waiting period exist on paper but are reserved for truly exceptional circumstances and are rarely granted. In practice, successful petitioners often apply a decade or more after finishing their sentence.
Two boundaries also matter before you invest any effort. The President can only pardon federal offenses. State convictions are outside the pardon power entirely, and in those cases you have to look to the governor or pardon board in the state where you were convicted. The pardon power also does not reach cases of impeachment.3Constitution Annotated. Overview of Pardon Power
The Application Demands Full Transparency
The petition itself is long, notarized, and unforgiving of gaps. The Department of Justice’s Office of the Pardon Attorney publishes specific instructions on what has to be submitted, and false statements carry their own penalties.4Department of Justice. Pardon Information and Instructions You have to disclose every arrest or charge by any authority — federal, state, local, or military — including traffic matters that led to an arrest or criminal charge. You have to disclose delinquent credit obligations, civil lawsuits you were a party to, bankruptcies, and unpaid tax obligations at any level of government. You have to provide your full residential, employment, and military service history.
You also need at least three notarized character affidavits from people not related to you by blood or marriage, and each of those references has to demonstrate knowledge of the offense you’re seeking the pardon for. On top of that, the petition needs a clear statement of why you want the pardon, along with documentation of any concrete barrier a pardon would remove, such as a professional licensing restriction. If you have more than one federal conviction, you complete the main petition for the most recent one and attach separate information for each earlier conviction.
The Review Runs Through Several Layers
Once the Office of the Pardon Attorney receives a completed petition, the office opens what the DOJ instructions describe as “a detailed inquiry into your personal background and current activities.”4Department of Justice. Pardon Information and Instructions That includes an FBI background check, possible interviews with people in your community, and often a direct interview with you.
After the investigation, the Pardon Attorney writes a formal recommendation. That recommendation goes to the Deputy Attorney General, who adds a separate assessment. The full file then moves to the White House Counsel’s Office, which presents the petition and the accumulated recommendations to the President. The President decides alone. There is no appeal from a denial.
One point in that pipeline quietly kills a lot of petitions. Input from the original prosecutor and sentencing judge carries real weight when it’s available, because those officials had direct familiarity with the case. A lukewarm or negative recommendation from a prosecutor who remembers the file can effectively end the application before it ever reaches the White House.
How Long the Process Takes
There is no statutory deadline for resolving a pardon petition. The initial review by the Office of the Pardon Attorney can take months before a case is even assigned to a specific staff attorney. From submission to final decision, the process commonly runs anywhere from 18 months to several years. Add the five-year waiting period on the front end and the realistic timeline from conviction to pardon grant stretches well beyond a decade.
What Reviewers Are Actually Looking For
Rehabilitation is the centerpiece. The DOJ instructions describe a pardon as being “granted in recognition of the applicant’s acceptance of responsibility for the crime and established good conduct for a significant period of time after conviction or release from confinement.”4Department of Justice. Pardon Information and Instructions The same instructions warn that a pardon “is not a sign of vindication and does not connote or establish innocence.” Petitioners who frame the application as a claim of wrongful conviction are working against themselves.
Beyond rehabilitation, pardon officials weigh:
- The nature and seriousness of the offense, and how recently it occurred.
- Your overall criminal record — a single conviction followed by decades of clean living reads very differently from a pattern of repeated offenses.
- Specific hardship the conviction still causes, such as blocking a professional license, career advancement, or the ability to care for your family.
- Community involvement, volunteer work, and evidence you’ve become a positive contributor.
- Genuine remorse and acceptance of responsibility. Minimizing what happened or shifting blame hurts the petition.
What the Recent Numbers Look Like
The Obama-era 5% figure covered all clemency petitions — pardons and commutations together — and was heavily influenced by the volume of commutation petitions filed under a special clemency initiative launched in 2014.1Department of Justice. Past Clemency Action and Statistics Looking at pardons specifically through the DOJ’s formal process, the totals are small. During Trump’s first term, the Office of the Pardon Attorney processed 144 pardon grants. During the Biden administration, 80 pardons were granted through the office.5Department of Justice. Clemency Statistics
For an ordinary applicant going through the standard channel, the practical reality is this: your petition will sit in a queue with thousands of others, move through a bureaucracy that has no obligation to act on any timeline, and face a grant rate in the single digits. Most petitions are never formally decided at all — they simply never get acted on.
Why High-Profile Pardons Aren’t the Norm
Nothing in the Constitution requires the President to use the DOJ’s review process. The pardon power belongs to the President alone and can be exercised at any point, even before charges are filed. The Supreme Court confirmed in Ex parte Garland that the power extends to “every offence known to the law” and can be used “either before legal proceedings are taken, or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment.”3Constitution Annotated. Overview of Pardon Power That breadth is what allowed President Ford to pardon Richard Nixon before any criminal charges were filed.
Every modern president has granted at least some pardons that skipped the Office of the Pardon Attorney. Those tend to be politically prominent cases that draw heavy press coverage, and they can create a misleading sense of how accessible the process is. For almost everyone else, the formal DOJ channel is the only realistic path, and the numbers from that channel are the ones to plan around: years of waiting, a demanding petition, an investigation that touches everyone around you, and odds that stay in the single digits even when you do everything right.