Paused Liz Oyer’s video mid-rant. She’s dissecting Trump-era pardons like a prosecutor on caffeine, dropping names, dates, crimes – but no links, no easy lookup. Frustrating.
That’s when I stumbled on Pardonned.com. Some dev, inspired by Oyer’s fire, scraped the DOJ’s pardon list into a clean, searchable database. No fluff. Just facts, dumped into SQLite, served via Astro static site. Boom.
Who Even Needs This?
Think about it. Presidents pardon hundreds – sometimes thousands – over their terms. DOJ buries ‘em in PDFs, clunky pages, no search. Want to check if your uncle’s weed bust got ClemenCy? Hours of digging. Pardonned.com flips that: type a name, filter by president, crime type, date. Instant.
The creator’s blunt: “Inspired by the videos of Liz Oyer, I wanted to be able to verify her claims and just look up all the pardons more easily.”
Inspired by the videos of Liz Oyer, I wanted to be able to verify her claims and just look up all the pardons more easily.
Simple. Honest. No VC deck, no moonshot promises.
But here’s my cynical vet take, after two decades chasing Valley hype: government’s been “transparent” since the ’90s FOIA push, yet DOJ still serves data like it’s 1995. Remember the Clinton email server fiasco? Or Bush’s signing statements? Every scandal starts with buried records. Pardonned.com? It’s the indie fix no one’s paying for – yet.
Tech stack screams bootstrap hero: Playwright scraping DOJ, SQLite local DB, Astro 6 for static build. All on GitHub, MIT license probably. Fork it, run it yourself. No cloud lock-in, no subs.
Why Scrape DOJ Now? Political Timing or Just Tech itch?
Liz Oyer’s blowing up on YouTube, fact-checking pardons amid Biden’s clemency wave and Trump’s “I’m innocent” tour. Timing’s perfect – or suspicious? DOJ lists go back to Washington, but recent ones? Hunter Biden whispers, Steve Bannon full pardon. Searchable now means journalists, researchers, conspiracy nuts (hi) can spot patterns.
My unique angle: this echoes the 2010 WikiLeaks dump. Back then, raw cables forced transparency; media spun ‘em. Pardonned won’t topple empires, but it’ll arm skeptics. Predict: by 2025, with election madness, forks of this repo will map donor-pardon links. Who profits? Not the dev. Maybe ProPublica cites it in a bombshell.
Scraping’s gritty. Playwright handles DOJ’s anti-bot nonsense – rotating IPs? Headless Chrome tricks? Code’s open, so peek. But legal? DOJ terms ban scraping, yet public data’s fair game under CFAA carve-outs. Precedent: hiQ vs LinkedIn. Still, dev’s rolling dice.
One line of code away from a C&D.
Pardons ain’t sexy like AI agents or no-code unicorns. No one’s minting NFTs of ‘em. But dig deeper: since 1900, 20k+ pardons. Reprieves mostly, but full wipes? Politically loaded. Ford’s Nixon pass. Carter’s Vietnam draft dodgers. Trump’s 143 pre-jailbreak. Searchable exposes favoritism – or fairness?
I queried Pardonned: “January 6.” Dozens pop. “Insider trading.” Handfuls under Clinton, Bush. Patterns emerge. That’s power – unspun.
Is Pardonned.com Legal? (And Will It Last?)
Short answer: probably. Long? DOJ publishes this publicly; scraping’s copying, not hacking. But they’ve sued scrapers before – think Clearview AI facial mess. This? Non-commercial, open source. Low risk.
Yet. Scale it, monetize, watch lawyers swarm. Astro static means cheap hosting – Vercel free tier? – but DOJ could block Playwright UA. Updates? Manual cron job, I bet.
Veteran cynicism: government’s allergic to easy access. FOIA backlogs hit years. This bypasses. Love it.
Unique insight time. Flashback to 2008: Obama promised sunlight. Got Data.gov – clunky portals, zero search. Trump? “Drain swamp,” then pardoned Manafort. Biden? More clemency PR. Pardonned.com’s my bet for quiet rebel: no manifesto, just a DB. In five years, expect official API – after indie proves demand.
Tried it myself. “Rod Blagojevich.” Trump pardon, corruption rap. One click. Verified Oyer’s clip. Gold.
No ads. No newsletter nag. Pure utility.
Who wins? Citizens tired of spin. Loses? Politicos hiding tracks.
The Open Source Angle: Fork It or Forget It
GitHub repo’s there – clone, seed your DB, host local. Playwright scripts? Tweak for state clemencies next? Dev’s solo, but community could 10x.
Hate buzzword “disruption.” This? Actual utility. No one’s getting rich. That’s the point.
Skeptical wrap: Pardonned.com won’t end corruption. But it’ll make calling BS easier. In Valley of trillion-dollar mirages, respect the scrappy DB.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is Pardonned.com?
A free, searchable database of US presidential pardons scraped from DOJ, built with Playwright, SQLite, and Astro. Open source on GitHub.
Is scraping DOJ pardons legal?
Likely yes for public data – courts back fair use scraping. But check terms; non-commercial helps.
How often is Pardonned.com updated?
Manually via scraping script; check GitHub for latest runs amid new pardons.
