Overview
- Oliver devoted a roughly 30-minute Last Week Tonight segment, which aired Monday, to a detailed critique of the president's recent pardons.
- He said pardons have surged in the second term, citing a claim of nearly 2,000 pardons versus 238 in the first term while reporting notes limited independent verification of those figures.
- The segment highlighted pardons for many Jan. 6 defendants and described cases where some of those people were later accused of new crimes, including an allegation about Andrew Paul Johnson.
- Oliver also pointed to the pardon of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao and reported links between Binance and the Trump family crypto venture World Liberty Financial.
- The coverage stresses that presidential pardons are unilateral and hard to check, that the reporting relies mainly on Oliver's compilation of examples, and that no legal or congressional remedies were reported in response.