Open-Source Tool Makes US Presidential Pardons Searchable

A developer built Pardonned.com, a searchable database of US presidential pardons, after wanting to fact-check claims made in videos by Liz Oyer. The site scrapes pardon data from the Department of Justice website using Playwright, stores it in SQLite, and renders a static site with Astro 6. The full source code is available on GitHub.

The project highlights a recurring gap in government transparency: records that are technically public but practically inaccessible without significant effort. The DOJ website lacks any native search or filtering for pardon records, making independent verification of pardon claims unnecessarily difficult.

The Hacker News discussion veered heavily into the politics of presidential pardon power - particularly preemptive pardons that cover uncharged conduct. Commenters debated examples ranging from the Nixon pardon to the Biden family pardon, the broad scope of blanket pardon language, and the unchecked nature of Article II pardon authority. Several users argued for constitutional reform requiring legislative confirmation for pardons, while others noted the structural incentives that make such reform unlikely.