That could've been cleared up if somebody posted another vid of a powerful politician responding to a question about pardoning a convicted child sex trafficker with a similar response right? That's how this tangent started. Still can be cleared up. If ya got one post it.
Edit: that direct too, the question explicitly mentioning "will you pardon this convicted child trafficker?", not some billionaire chink who had cp or whatever getting a pardon.
My magic phone has Google. You should check to see if yours does too.
I’m sorry you’re angry. Hope your night gets better.
The Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney reports clemency totals by grant type and president, but does not publish a historical, offense‑level breakdown that isolates child‑sex crimes across all grants since 1789. See DOJ’s overview of clemency statistics for context (DOJ OPA) and pardon process info (DOJ OPA).
Documented examples often cited
Peter Yarrow (folk group Peter, Paul and Mary)
Conviction: 1970, taking indecent liberties with a 14‑year‑old in Washington, D.C.
Clemency: Full presidential pardon by Jimmy Carter on Jan. 19, 1981.
Sources: NPR’s coverage notes the conviction and later pardon, and Yarrow’s own public apology; Yarrow’s biography also documents the Carter pardon (NPR, Wikipedia summary).
Mel Reynolds (former U.S. Representative)
Conviction history: In 1995, convicted in Illinois for sexual misconduct with a 16‑year‑old; later convicted on federal bank‑fraud charges.
Clemency: In 2001, President Bill Clinton commuted Reynolds’s federal sentence for bank fraud. The clemency did not apply to his earlier state sex‑offense conviction, which presidents cannot pardon. Whether to “count” Reynolds depends on your definition (i.e., any clemency for a person who has a child‑sex conviction vs. clemency for the child‑sex offense itself).
Sources: Contemporary reporting on Clinton’s final clemency list and Reynolds’s cases (New York Times overview, Jan. 21, 2001; background summary in Wikipedia).
There may be other isolated instances (particularly in older D.C. or military cases), but they are not compiled in an official, searchable way, and many pre‑digital grants are only documented in scattered archives.
