Pardons

There are very few issues where President Trump is quite as out of step with Americans as with his pardons. He issues pardons liberally to his allies and to people who have been convicted of very serious white collar crimes and when Americans hear about them, their reaction is one of unmitigated disgust.

Unfortunately, with all of the other headlines his Administration is making, these pardons are not getting enough attention from ordinary Americans. That, of course, makes it our job to publicize these pardons so that voters can very clearly see just how far out of line with American values President Trump is.

Here’s a list of notable pardons issued by President Trump. Each will have a description of the crimes that the President pardoned as well as a number of links that you can share so that others can look the information up for themselves.

Get out there and spread these far and wide!

Jonathan Braun (sentence commuted on the last day of Trump’s first term 1/20/21)

Mr. Braun, long involved with drug dealing and predatory lending, was sentenced to prison for 10 years for running a marijuana smuggling ring. He was one of a number of people who received last minute clemency from President Trump on the last day of his first term. Typically, people who receive this treatment have been thoroughly vetted so that they are at low risk for re-offending upon release but not Mr. Braun.

“Since then, Mr. Braun returned to predatory lending only to be banned from operating in that business by a New York State judge and a federal judge for engaging in deceptive practices. And he has been accused of a number of crimes: punching his wife and father-in-law in the head; grabbing a nanny’s breast while touching himself; trying to assault a female nurse with poles used to hold intravenous bags; and threatening a synagogue congregant who asked him to be quiet during services.

“Do you know who I am or what I can do to you?” Mr. Braun told the congregant, according to an affidavit the man signed.”

Most recently, he punched an acquaintance in the face and shoved his 3 year old child to the ground. Fortunately, the judge sent him back to jail for that so the rest of us are safer… until Trump uses his pardon authority once again!

Here’s a list of all of the other folks President Trump pardoned on the way out of office on his first term…

Rod Blagojevich (sentence commuted during Trump’s first term and fully pardoned 2/10/25)

Governor Blagojevich was the former Democratic Governor of Illinois when then Senator Barack Obama was elected to the Presidency. Because Obama would be vacating his Senate seat, Blagojevich was responsible for naming his replacement. Unfortunately, he decided to sell it to the highest bidder (and was caught doing so on tape!) which left the Illinois General Assembly no choice but to impeach him on a vote of 114-1 (with 3 abstentions) and the Illinois State Senate to convict him on an unanimous vote after a trial that lasted just four days.

Perhaps Blagojevich’s case was undermined by his decision to skip the first three days of his trial to go to New York to try his case before the media (The New York Times,Wikipedia).

After the Illinois State Senate removed him from office, he was then convicted in a court of law and sentenced to 14 years in prison.

In 2020, Trump commuted his sentence after he had served just 8 years (and, at the same time, he also pardoned Michael Milken, the junk bond king, who was at that time serving two years in prison).

On 2/10/25, Trump went all the way and pardoned him completely stating, “It’s my honor to do it.” (The New York Times,Wikipedia)

A good summary of the case in all of its sordidness (and with details on a few additional crimes Blagojevich threw in there while he was at it!) is at https://www.washingtonpost.com/…/trump-pardon-rod…/

The January 6th 2021 US Capitol Rioters (granted blanket clemency 1/20/25; the day Trump took office for his second term)

On the first day of his second term, President Trump granted clemency to nearly 1600 people who had been convicted of or were awaiting trial or sentencing for illegal acts during the riot at the US Capitol on January 6th, 2021. Most received full pardons while some had their sentences commuted. Everyone received some form of clemency including the ones who assaulted police officers during the riot. As was noted at the time, dozens of the people who had had clemency were no strangers to the legal system having had prior convictions for rape, sexual abuse of a minor, domestic violence, manslaughter, drug charges, child pornography charges, etc. Despite this criminal history, these rioters received the same clemency as others who had previously had no record and have gone on to reoffend (https://www.npr.org/2025/01/30/nx-s1-5276336/donald-trump-jan-6-rape-assault-pardons-rioters).

One such man, Edward Kelley, has even been sentenced to life in prison after plotting to kill the law enforcement officers that investigated his crimes during the Capitol riot (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/03/us/politics/jan6-assassination-plot-sentence.html). He showed no remorse – “I’m here unjustly, man. I’m a patriot, and I’m never ever going to apologize for trying to keep your family safe. Sometimes there’s casualties. I’m one of them.” Perhaps he hopes for a second pardon from President Trump.

Ross Ulbrict (pardoned 1/21/25; the day after Trump took office for his second term)

Ross Ulbrict is a man who had been convicted of running the infamous dark website The Silk Road which facilitated the sale of over $200 million of drugs. The website had just under a million registered users and he was sentenced to life in prison. Although the judge said that he was “no better a person than any other drug dealer,” Trump elected to give him a full and unconditional pardon, saying “The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponisation of government against me.”

Devon Archer (pardoned 3/25/25)

Devon Archer was convicted of a scheme to cheat pension funds and an Indian tribe of tens of millions of dollars. He was sentenced to a year and a day in prison and ordered to pay nearly 60 million dollars in restitution. Now that he has been pardoned, he does not have to serve any time in jail and does not have to pay any of the restitution either.

The reason for his pardon appears to be that he was a former business partner of Hunter Biden and testified before Congress about Biden’s businesses, earning him fans in the pro-Trump camp. As is commonly the case with Trump’s pardons, his case bypassed the usual route where a request for pardon/clemency must go through the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney for investigation before being brought before the President.

Trevor Milton (pardoned 3/28/25)

Trevor Milton was sentenced to four years in prison for lying to investors about the progress that his company was making in electric vehicles. At one point he rolled a non-functioning prototype down a hill and represented it as functioning prototype driving through the desert. In addition, one of his prototype vehicles was said to be a General Motors vehicle with the GM logo simply replaced by the logo of his company.

He was ordered to make restitution to his investors but will no longer have to do so. Trump explained that the case had come to his attention because it was “highly recommended by many people”. Milton was a large money donor to Trump’s presidential campaign which also appears to have figured in his thinking – “They say the thing that he did wrong was he was one of the first people that supported a gentleman named Donald Trump for president.”

Carlos Watson (sentence commuted 3/28/25)

And then we have Carlos Watson who founded Ozy Media and was sentenced to nearly 10 years in prison, $60 million in forfeiture, and $36 million in restitution for having lied to investors about his company’s finances and future prospects. At one point, his co-founder pretended to be a YouTube executive on a call with Goldman Saches (which was considering an investment) and lied about how the company was doing. He was just about to have to report to jail when word that Trump had interceded came through.

Paul Walczak (clemency granted 4/23/25)

Paul Walczak was a Florida health care executive who was sentenced to 18 months in prison and ordered to pay almost $4.4 million in restitution for withholding $10.9 million in Social Security, Medicare, federal income, and payroll taxes. He used this money to buy himself a $2 million yacht, buy high end luxury goods, and to supplement his usual salary of $360,000 per year.

Interestingly, his mother, Elizabeth Fago, who has had her own legal troubles related to underpayment of taxes, once arranged for Project Veritas to pay $40,000 for Ashley Biden’s (Joe Biden’s daughter) stolen diary; a diary she kept while recovering from drug addiction. The plan was to make it public to help Trump’s chances of winning the election. Although there’s no suggestion that Mr. Walczak was involved in that plan, two others (not Ms. Fago) were convicted in the scheme. Perhaps this had something to do with President Trump’s desire to extend him clemency less than two weeks after his conviction?

Michele Fiore (pardoned 4/23/25)

Alyn Beck was a Las Vegas police officer who, along with his partner, was shot and killed at a pizzeria in June 2014. Former Las Vegas city councilmember Michele Fiore raised tens of thousands of dollars for a statue to commemorate him and then turned around and spent them on her own rent, plastic surgery, and daughter’s wedding.

For some reason, Trump elected to give her a “full and unconditional pardon” for this behavior. Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford summed it up nicely when he said, “Donald Trump’s blatant disregard for law enforcement is sickening, and pardoning someone who stole from a police memorial fund is a disgrace”.

Scott Jenkins (pardoned 5/26/25)

On 3/21/25, Scott Jenkins, the former sheriff of Culpeper County (Virginia), was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison after having been convicted of all 12 conspiracy, fraud, and bribery charges issued against him. It seems he accepted at least $75,000 from wealthy businessmen in exchange for issuing them badges that made them unpaid auxiliary sheriff’s deputies. The badges came with enhanced gun rights and were also used to drive in highway emergency lanes and to get around a TSA line. One of the pieces of evidence was a video of him accepting a $5,000 check and responding with “Thank you so much. I’m gonna make it official with a badge.

At his sentencing, the judge commented “The jury decided you are in fact a criminal. Understand this situation was created by actions you took yourself.”

Trump disagreed, saying on social media that Jenkins was a victim of the “Biden Department of Justice, and doesn’t deserve to spend a single day in jail.”

The Department of Justice on the other hand, feels otherwise, having quoted the US Attorney at the time of conviction as saying, “Scott Jenkins violated his oath of office and the faith the citizens of Culpeper County placed in him when he engaged in a cash-for-badges scheme. We hold our elected law enforcement officials to a higher standard of conduct and this case proves that when those officials use their authority for unjust personal enrichment, the Department of Justice will hold them accountable. I am grateful to the FBI for their tireless work on this investigation.”

Todd and Julie Chrisley (pardoned 5/28/25)

A screenshot of Todd Chrisley quoted as saying, "Ya'll, it's been a hell of a day, but I'm back. The feds got fucked."
Above – Mr. Chrisley expresses contrition for his crimes.

Todd and Julie Chrisley, the reality TV couple who starred in the USA Network’s “Chrisley Knows Best” were sentenced in 2022 to 12 and 7 years in prison for $30 million in fraud and years of tax evasion. At their sentencing, the judge noted their apparent lack of remorse, commenting, “I cannot ignore the greed and flamboyance in this case.”

Their daughter, Savannah, however, is a Trump supporter who spoke at the Republican National Convention in 2024, hosts a podcast, and visited the White House in February to lobby for a pardon for her parents. These connections paid off as Trump called Savannah personally to give her the news.

Naturally, there will be a Lifetime TV series about the pardon campaign debuting later in 2025.

John Rowland (pardoned 5/28/25)

John Rowland was the Republican Governor of Connecticut from 1995 to 2004 when he was forced to step down for accepting illegal gifts from state contractors. He was later convicted and served 10 months in a federal prison camp. After that, he had some success as an AM radio commentator but, in 2014, was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison. He had claimed that he was volunteering for the campaign of Lisa Wilson-Foley when, in fact, he was paid $35,000 under the table. He was pardoned by President Trump along with a number of other people (only some of whom are discussed here!) on 5/28/25.

Michael Grimm (pardoned 5/28/25)

Mr. Grimm, a Republican member of the House of Representatives representing Staten Island and part of Brooklyn ran into legal trouble in 2014 and went on to resign from the House in 2015. He had been indicted “after he failed to report nearly $1 million in gross receipts and hundreds of thousands of dollars in employee wages from a Manhattan restaurant he had owned” and pled guilty to a single count of felony tax fraud, serving seven out of eight months of a prison sentence. Since then he has an an avid Trump supporter and worked for Newsmax, a right-wing news organization, factors that undoubtedly contributed to his pardon.

Larry Hoover (sentence commuted 5/28/25)

In 1973, Mr. Hoover, a known street gang leader, was convicted in Illinois State Court for having ordered the murder of a man who was suspected of stealing money and drugs from the gang. He was sentenced to 150-200 years in prison. While in prison, however, he continued to operate his gang and after a 17 year investigation which included wiretaps, he was convicted in federal court of “conspiracy, extortion, money laundering, drug-related offenses, and continuing to engage in a criminal enterprise” and received three more life sentences. Perhaps the fact that his gang had grown to 30,000 members and was earning $100 million per year in drug trafficking had something to do with the severity of the sentence.

On 5/28/25, Donald Trump commuted the federal convictions, perhaps at the urging of his supporter, Kanye West, who has been campaigning for Hoover’s release for a decade. The state conviction, however, remains, as the President of the United States can only wipe away federal convictions.

Other Commentators

Naturally, a number of people have responded to these pardons with concern and disgust. A (very!) partial list is below,