Your case is closed. Your record is not.
The pardon ended the case. It did not take your name off a federal docket that anyone with a search bar can find. Project Seal asks the court to close that file — and the Foundation pays for it.
Four years on, the thing still doing damage to a lot of our families is not the conviction. It is the paperwork.
Every case filed in federal court leaves a permanent public docket. It sits on PACER with your name on it, and it does not care that you were pardoned. Employers run background checks and find it. Landlords find it. Licensing boards find it. State agencies pull it when you apply for anything. People who have never met you read a charge and stop reading there.
You cannot get a job you are qualified for. You cannot rent the apartment. You explain it in every interview for the rest of your life. That is the injury that is still compounding, and it is the one nobody addressed.
There are two different things people mean when they say they want their record cleared. Only one of them is actually available in federal court, and we would rather tell you that now than take your hope and your time.
Erasing the case as though it never existed. There is no general federal expungement statute, and the appeals courts have spent the last decade closing off the argument that judges can do it anyway. We will not file for expungement, and you should be skeptical of anyone who tells you they can get it. It is not a question of effort or a better lawyer. The authority is not there.
Asking the court to restrict public access to the file. The case still exists for the court and the parties, but it stops being something a stranger can pull up and read. Every federal court has authority over its own records, which makes this a real request a judge can actually grant — and it is strongest where your case never reached a final judgment.
The law treats a case that never finished differently from one that ran all the way through. If any of these describes what happened to you, we have something to work with.
You were indicted or charged, and the case ended before you entered a plea or a jury returned a verdict — usually because the government dismissed it after the pardons.
You pleaded guilty or were found guilty, and the case ended before the judge imposed a sentence.
You were convicted and sentenced, and you had an appeal pending, had just filed one, or were still inside the window to file when the case ended.
If you were sentenced, let the appeal deadline pass without filing, or had your conviction affirmed on appeal, your judgment is final in every sense the law uses the word — and the argument above does not do any work for you. We are not going to tell you otherwise to keep you on the list. Apply anyway if you want us to look; we will read your docket and give you a straight answer either way, and we will tell you if we think the odds are poor.
One short form. If you do not know your case number or how your case ended, say so — that is fine.
We pull the actual court record, not a summary, and determine which group you fall into.
An attorney from our panel prepares and files the motion in the court that handled your case.
We tell you what happened either way, and what options remain if the answer is no.
No application fee, no retainer, no hourly billing, and no bill at the end regardless of how the motion turns out. You are never charged for representation and you never owe the Foundation money. If someone tells you otherwise, they are not us.
We pay panel counsel a flat $750 for each petition filed, no matter how many hours it takes. That is the entire unit — seven hundred and fifty dollars puts one motion in front of a federal judge on behalf of one family. Fund a filing and we will tell you when it goes out.
FUND A FILINGNo, and be careful of anyone who promises that. Sealing restricts access to the court's file. It does not reach news articles, private background-check databases that already copied the record, or anything a journalist wrote. It removes the official source, which over time is what most of those other sources point back to.
Not on this argument, not yet. No federal court has held that a judgment never becoming final is by itself enough to seal a case. We think it is a strong argument built out of settled law, and we are filing it in good faith — but we are not going to dress up a developing argument as a sure thing.
You owe nothing, and nothing about your situation gets worse. We will tell you why it was denied and whether an appeal or a later refiling makes sense. A denial in one district does not bind another.
No. The motion is filed in the court that handled your case, and our panel attorneys are admitted where they need to be. You can be anywhere.
Yes, and honestly most people are unsure. Whether you were formally sentenced or whether an appeal was pending are exactly the sort of things that get lost in four years of chaos. That is why we read the docket ourselves rather than asking you to remember.
That is a separate effort called Project Refund, and it turns on many of the same facts. Mention it on your application and we will look at both at once.
It takes a few minutes, it costs nothing, and you will get an honest answer from someone who read your actual record.
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