President Trump Issues Batch of Pardons and Commutations Benefiting Donors, Allies, and Repeat Offenders

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On January 15-16, 2026, President Donald Trump issued 13 pardons and 8 commutations. The batch included clemency for a convicted fraudster he had previously freed from prison, a banker whose daughter donated $3.5 million to President Trump's super PAC, a former Puerto Rico governor who pleaded guilty to corruption charges, and the son of a Republican congressman convicted of methamphetamine distribution.

The pattern the batch exemplified has continued since. On July 3, 2026, ahead of the nation's 250th-birthday celebrations, President Trump pardoned 11 more people. That batch included a Republican megadonor who was once Jack Abramoff's business partner and nine people convicted of violating the Clean Air Act, detailed in a later section of this entry.

The Office of the Pardon Attorney published the official list of clemency grants, which continue a pattern in which President Trump has used presidential clemency powers to benefit political allies and those with financial connections to his political operation.

President Trump's recipients fall into recognizable groups by offense: fraud and financial crimes, public corruption and bribery, election-related offenses, drug offenses, and—as of July 2026—environmental crimes. Two recurring threads cut across those categories, flagged within the entries below. One is pardons that rewarded donors and political allies. The other is grants that tested the legal limits of the power itself, including the first pardons ever extended to corporations and an attempt to pardon a state conviction. The common feature is process: clemency arranged directly with White House officials rather than earned through the Justice Department's customary review.

A Pattern of Erasing His Own Prosecutions

According to The New York Times, President Trump's clemency grants "continue a trend in which Mr. Trump has used the unfettered presidential clemency power to reward allies and those who have paid his associates or donated to his political operation."

According to ProPublica, at least a dozen criminal cases that were investigated or prosecuted during President Trump's first term have been undone through clemency in his second term. Legal experts say no president since Bill Clinton has used clemency to erase his own administration's prosecutions on such a scale.

"It's not that he's correcting another administration's mistakes," Doug Berman, an Ohio State University law professor who studies clemency, told ProPublica. "He's rejecting his own — or more accurately, (he's rejecting) the work of people he appointed but didn't fully control."

Frank O. Bowman III, a professor emeritus of law at the University of Missouri and former special counsel to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, told ProPublica that during President Trump's first term, the Justice Department functioned as an independent law enforcement agency. That changed in the second. "You have to read all of these pardons in connection with the systematic destruction of the Justice Department as an objective agency that seeks to uphold the law and fight crime," Bowman said.

The Cato Institute noted that President Trump's pardons are also undermining the work of his own second-term Justice Department, with multiple recipients having been prosecuted by Trump-appointed officials in 2025.

ProPublica reported that President Trump's actions broke with a basic expectation legal experts and clemency scholars hold of presidents: that they stand behind their own prosecutors and law enforcement officers rather than erase or undermine their work. Clemency, in their view, should be earned rather than granted to allies and public figures with political influence.

Andrew Calamari, a former director of the SEC's New York office who oversaw the investigation into Devon Archer, told ProPublica that when President Trump began his flurry of clemency grants, he didn't worry Archer would be among those pardoned. The case was simply too serious, he thought. A pardon in a case like that, he said, "undermines any faith in the law."

Many of President Trump's pardon recipients did not meet Department of Justice guidelines, which require applicants to wait at least five years after their conviction or release from custody, accept responsibility for their crimes, show evidence of rehabilitation, and submit a formal petition for review. Instead, their pardons were arranged directly with White House officials.

The pardons stand in contrast to Department of Justice guidelines that traditionally prioritize clemency applications from people who have completed their sentences or demonstrated remorse and rehabilitation.

According to ProPublica, White House Counsel David Warrington—a longtime Republican legal strategist who held various legal roles during President Trump's 2016 campaign—is central to advancing pardon requests to the president. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt described Warrington's office as key to the pardon process. Many of the recipients had been prosecuted by President Trump's own first-term appointees, and several are detailed by crime in the sections that follow.

Two threads run across those offense categories. One is access. According to the Cato Institute, several pardons went to people with financial ties to President Trump's operation. Among them: Paul Walczak, whose mother paid $1 million to dine with the president, and Changpeng Zhao, whose company brokered a $2 billion investment in the Trump family's cryptocurrency venture. By contrast, Representative Henry Cuellar drew President Trump's public anger only after refusing to switch parties. The other thread is the testing of legal boundaries. President Trump issued the first pardons ever granted to corporations and purported to pardon a state conviction, a power the Constitution does not give the president. Both threads are detailed by case below.

"Call Bobby": Reuters Maps the Brokered-Access Model

A Reuters investigation published June 11, 2026—headlined "How to get a Trump pardon: Forget the DOJ, call 'Bobby' and other influencers"—provided the most detailed accounting to date of the clemency process. It found that access to the president and his circle, not the Justice Department's formal review, now drives who gets pardoned. Reuters documented 290 influencers who shaped 624 influential actions affecting 197 pardon recipients, mapping some 650 connections between recipients, their lawyers, and administration insiders.

The headline's "Bobby" is Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Reuters reported that President Trump phoned Nikola founder Trevor Milton—convicted of defrauding investors of more than $660 million—days before his March 2025 pardon. He told Milton the consequences he faced "were unfair," cited Kennedy's support for clemency, and told Milton to "call Bobby and thank him." Milton and his wife had donated more than $1.8 million to President Trump's campaign, according to The Washington Post.

Named intermediaries in the Reuters investigation include Roger Stone and Angela Stanton King—both themselves first-term pardon recipients—and former U.S. attorney Brett Tolman. Stone denied receiving payment for pardon advocacy; Stanton King declined to disclose amounts; Tolman did not comment. Reuters' data underscored how thoroughly the informal market has displaced registered lobbying: only two pardon recipients used registered lobbyists (who were paid a combined roughly $2.7 million), while 26 other convicts spent about $1.9 million on registered lobbyists without obtaining clemency. Ty Cobb, a former President Trump White House lawyer, told Reuters: "In this new reality the only important factor is access."

The formal DOJ Office of the Pardon Attorney has been sidelined; its former head, Liz Oyer, was fired in 2025 after refusing to recommend restoring actor Mel Gibson's gun rights. Reuters noted that Sam Bankman-Fried, the FTX founder serving a 25-year sentence, has a pending petition.

The investigation prompted congressional action: Democrats on congressional committees launched an inquiry into what they called "pay-to-play" pardons, pressing the administration and specific pardon recipients for records in mid-June 2026. The broader market in paid pardon advocacy is covered in full in the pardon-economy entry.

Fraud and Financial Crimes

Fraud and financial crimes are the single largest category among President Trump's second-term grants. The pattern is not new. It extends one established during his first term, when he pardoned or commuted the sentences of the "junk bond king" Michael Milken, media magnate Conrad Black, and the operators of some of the largest health care frauds in U.S. history. The table below summarizes the second-term fraud and financial-crime grants; the narrative sections that follow give the detail on each.

Recipient	Clemency (type / date)	Crime	Amount involved	What they did
Adriana Camberos	Full pardon · Jan 15, 2026	Wire fraud	$48.8M restitution (joint)	Repeat offender; committed a new grocery-resale fraud 42 days after President Trump's 2021 commutation of her counterfeit-goods sentence.
Andres Camberos	Full pardon · Jan 15, 2026	Wire fraud	$48.8M restitution (joint)	Ran the wholesale-grocery resale fraud alongside his sister Adriana.
Terren Peizer	Pardon · Jan 16, 2026	Securities fraud, insider trading	Avoided >$12.5M in losses; $5.25M fine	Ontrak CEO who sold shares on inside knowledge; was serving 42 months.
David Levy	Pardon · 2026	Securities fraud	—	Hedge-fund co-CIO convicted in 2019 of defrauding bondholders.
Trevor Milton	Pardon · Mar 2025	Securities & wire fraud	>$660M investor fraud; donated $1.8M	Nikola founder who lied about his trucks' capabilities; President Trump phoned him before the pardon.
Devon Archer	Pardon · Mar 2025	Securities fraud	$15M forfeiture + $43M restitution	Tribal-bond fraud; pardoned after testifying for House Republicans on Hunter Biden.
Todd & Julie Chrisley	Pardon · May 2025	Bank fraud, tax evasion	$17M+ restitution	Reality-TV couple prosecuted by President Trump's own first-term DOJ.
George Santos	Commutation · 2025	Wire fraud, identity theft, embezzlement	—	Ex-congressman who defrauded donors and collected fraudulent unemployment benefits.
Michele Fiore	Pardon · 2025	Wire/charity fraud	~$70,000 embezzled	Ex-Las Vegas councilwoman who spent a slain-officers fund on personal costs.
Jacob Deutsch	Commutation · Jan 15, 2026	Mortgage fraud	62-month sentence	Clemency backed by an influential Jewish clemency group.
Paul Walczak	Pardon · 2025	Tax crimes	$10.9M unpaid; $4.4M restitution	Donor access: his mother paid $1M to dine with President Trump weeks before the pardon.
Changpeng Zhao	Pardon · 2025	Bank Secrecy Act violation	—	Binance founder whose firm brokered $2B into the Trump family crypto venture.
Jason Galanis	Commutation · Mar 2025	Securities fraud	$80M+ scheme	Defrauded union pensions and the Oglala Sioux Nation; a Hunter Biden ex-partner.
Lawrence Duran	Commutation · May 2025	Health care fraud	$205M claims; $87.5M restitution	American Therapeutic Corp. scheme; co-owner Judith Negron was commuted in the first term.
Carlos Watson	Commutation · 2025	Securities & wire fraud	~$37M restitution	Ozy Media founder; his company's sentence was also commuted.
Joseph Schwartz	Pardon · 2025	Tax fraud	$38M scheme	Prosecuted by President Trump's own U.S. attorney, then pardoned seven months later.
Michael Grimm	Pardon · May 28, 2025	Tax fraud	~$900K concealed	Ex-congressman and former FBI agent who hid restaurant receipts and payroll from tax authorities.
HDR Global Trading Ltd.	Pardon (corporate) · 2025	Bank Secrecy Act violation	$100M fine	The first pardon ever granted to a corporation.
Ozy Media Inc.	Commutation (corporate) · 2025	Securities & wire fraud	—	The first corporate sentence commuted by a president.
Adam Kidan	Pardon · Jul 3, 2026	Wire & mail fraud	$21.7M restitution erased	Abramoff partner and GOP megadonor (SunCruz Casinos fraud).

Repeat Offender: Adriana Camberos

According to The New York Times, President Trump pardoned Adriana Camberos, marking the second time he has granted her clemency. President Trump commuted her sentence in January 2021 while she was serving 26 months in federal prison for her role in a scheme to sell counterfeit 5-Hour Energy drinks.

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, prosecutors found that Camberos committed wire fraud just 42 days after President Trump's 2021 commutation. She and her brother Andres Camberos operated a new scheme in which they purchased wholesale groceries at steep discounts by falsely claiming the products would be sold in Mexico, then resold them in the United States at higher prices.

The siblings were convicted in October 2024. Adriana Camberos was sentenced to over one year in prison and both siblings were ordered to pay $48.8 million in restitution to defrauded companies. According to the official pardon warrant, both siblings received full pardons on January 15, 2026.

The New York Times reported that the pardons were supported by Stefan C. Passantino, a former deputy White House counsel in the first President Trump administration, and Adam Katz, who represented Rudolph Giuliani in a defamation case related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

A White House official told reporters that the Camberos family was "unfairly targeted" and subject to political prosecution because of President Trump's earlier clemency grant.

Bloomberg noted that besides Adriana Camberos, other people granted clemency by President Trump in his first term have committed new crimes. Eliyahu "Eli" Weinstein, a convicted Ponzi schemer whose 24-year prison term was commuted by President Trump in 2021, was sentenced to 37 years behind bars in November 2025 for stealing $44 million from investors after his release.

Insider Trading Pardon: Terren Peizer

On January 16, 2026, President Trump pardoned Terren Peizer, the former head of healthcare company Ontrak who was convicted in 2024 of securities fraud and insider trading. According to the Associated Press, Peizer had been sentenced to 42 months in prison and fined $5.25 million for an insider trading scheme to avoid losses exceeding $12.5 million.

In a statement, Peizer's attorney David Willingham called the case "a massive overreach by the government." Peizer himself thanked President Trump as "the most accomplished President of my lifetime."

The White House official said Peizer had properly disclosed his trades and the case represented excessive prosecution.

Hedge Fund Fraud Pardon: David Levy

President Trump pardoned David Levy, who was convicted by a jury in 2019 for his role in a scheme to defraud bondholders while serving as co-chief investment officer of a New York hedge fund. At the time of his conviction, a federal official called the verdict "a warning for all the fraudsters out there."

Corporate Clemency: HDR Global and Ozy Media — a Legal First

The Cato Institute noted that President Trump made history by granting the nation's first pardon to a corporation—HDR Global Trading Ltd., which owed a $100 million fine for Bank Secrecy Act violations. He also became the first president to commute a corporate sentence, ending the one-year probationary term imposed on Ozy Media, the defunct media company convicted of securities and wire fraud alongside its founder Carlos Watson. Together, The New Yorker noted, the two actions made President Trump the first president to grant clemency to corporations—pardoning one company and commuting another's sentence.

Other Major Fraud-Related Pardons of 2025

The January 2026 batch is part of a broader pattern of President Trump pardoning fraud convicts throughout his second term. According to ABC News, House Judiciary Democrats, and the California Governor's Office tracker, other notable fraud-related pardons from President Trump's second term include:

• Paul Walczak — donor access: a Florida nursing-home executive pardoned for tax crimes. According to The New York Times, prosecutors found he failed to pay more than $10.9 million in taxes—money withheld from his employees' paychecks for Social Security, Medicare, and federal income tax—which he used to fund a lavish lifestyle, including a $2 million yacht. He was sentenced in April 2025 to 18 months in prison and ordered to pay $4.4 million in restitution. His mother, Republican donor Elizabeth Fago, attended a $1-million-per-person MAGA Inc. fundraising dinner at Mar-a-Lago at which President Trump spoke; the Times reported President Trump signed the pardon roughly three weeks later, sparing Walczak both the prison term and the restitution. The Cato Institute noted Fago had raised millions for MAGA candidates.

• Changpeng Zhao — donor and self-dealing: the Binance founder, pardoned for Bank Secrecy Act violations, had brokered a $2 billion investment in Eric and Donald Trump Jr.'s cryptocurrency business, World Liberty Financial, before receiving clemency, per the Cato Institute. When asked about Zhao in a subsequent 60 Minutes interview, President Trump said he had "no idea who he is" and that he "was told that he was a victim." The lobbying campaign that secured the pardon—and the broader market in paid pardon advocacy—is covered in full in the pardon-economy entry.

• Jason Galanis: Sentence commuted in March 2025. According to KOTA-TV, Galanis—a former business partner of Hunter Biden who cooperated with House Republican investigators—was serving a 189-month sentence for an $80 million-plus fraud scheme involving union pension funds and the Oglala Sioux Nation. His commutation eliminated all remaining restitution.

• Todd and Julie Chrisley: Pardoned in May 2025. According to House Judiciary Democrats, the reality TV stars were convicted in 2022 of bank fraud and tax evasion charges originally brought by President Trump's first-term Justice Department in 2019. They jointly owed more than $17 million in restitution, which the pardon erased.

• Carlos Watson: The Ozy Media founder pleaded guilty to fraud charges and owed nearly $37 million in restitution at the time of his pardon, according to ABC News.

• George Santos: The former U.S. Representative expelled from Congress was pardoned for multiple fraud schemes including campaign fraud, identity theft, wire fraud, and embezzlement.

• Michele Fiore: According to the Cato Institute, the former Las Vegas councilwoman was pardoned for embezzling approximately $70,000 from a fund for slain police officers, which she spent on personal expenses including rent and cosmetic surgery.

• Scott Jenkins: According to the Cato Institute, the former Virginia sheriff was pardoned after being convicted of accepting $75,000 in bribes in exchange for granting badges to untrained businessmen.

• Joseph Schwartz: Sentenced to three years in April 2025 for a $38 million tax fraud scheme—prosecuted by President Trump's own U.S. attorney Alina Habba—then pardoned seven months later, according to the Cato Institute.

• Lawrence Duran: The former co-owner of American Therapeutic Corp. had his 50-year sentence commuted in May 2025. According to the California Governor's Office, his Medicare fraud scheme generated about $205 million in false claims and approximately $87 million in payouts. The commutation eliminated his $87.5 million restitution obligation.

• Trevor Milton: The Nikola founder pardoned in March 2025 after being convicted of securities fraud. According to House Judiciary Democrats, Milton donated $1.8 million to President Trump's campaign before receiving his pardon. Prosecutors said Milton claimed his vehicle prototype "fully functions" when it was missing motors and a control system; a video purportedly showing the truck driving was actually filmed by towing it to the top of a hill and rolling it down. The June 2026 Reuters investigation later reported that President Trump personally phoned Milton days before the pardon, told him his treatment "was unfair," credited Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s advocacy, and instructed Milton to "call Bobby and thank him."

• Devon Archer: According to ProPublica, Archer was charged in 2016 and convicted by a jury in 2018 during President Trump's first term. President Trump's Justice Department appealed when a judge set aside the conviction, and an appeals court reinstated it in 2020. Archer was ordered to forfeit over $15 million and repay more than $43 million to victims of the bond fraud scheme. President Trump pardoned him in March 2025 after Archer testified before House Republicans investigating Hunter Biden.

• Michael Grimm: The former U.S. Representative from Staten Island—and a former FBI agent—was pardoned on May 28, 2025. Grimm had pleaded guilty in 2014 to aiding in the filing of a false tax return, having concealed well over $900,000 in receipts and payroll at his Manhattan health-food restaurant to evade taxes; he resigned his House seat and served eight months in prison.

Public Corruption and Bribery

Puerto Rico Corruption Case: Vázquez, Herrera, and Rossini

President Trump pardoned former Puerto Rico Governor Wanda Vázquez Garced along with Venezuelan-Italian banker Julio Herrera Velutini and former FBI agent Mark Rossini. All three had pleaded guilty in August 2025 to campaign finance violations after originally facing charges of conspiracy, federal program bribery, and honest services wire fraud.

According to the original indictment, federal prosecutors alleged that from December 2019 through June 2020, Herrera and Rossini promised to fund Vázquez's 2020 gubernatorial campaign in exchange for her replacing Puerto Rico's top bank regulator with someone of their choosing. Herrera's bank was under examination by the regulatory agency at the time. Prosecutors said Vázquez demanded the commissioner's resignation in February 2020 and appointed a former consultant for Herrera's bank as the replacement in May 2020.

NBC News reported that Herrera's daughter, Isabela Herrera, donated $2.5 million to MAGA Inc. on December 31, 2024, while her father faced felony charges. After prosecutors dropped the most serious charges against Herrera in a May 2025 plea deal negotiated by President Trump's former defense attorney Christopher Kise, she donated another $1 million to the super PAC in July 2025.

A White House official denied that the donations played any role in the pardons, claiming the prosecution was politically motivated because the investigation began shortly after Vázquez endorsed President Trump in 2020.

Other Public Corruption and Bribery Pardons

• P.G. Sittenfeld: The former Cincinnati City Council member was indicted in 2020, convicted in 2022, and pardoned in May 2025. According to ProPublica, the U.S. attorney who oversaw his case, David DeVillers, was a Trump appointee. Sittenfeld's lawyers at Jones Day had deep ties to President Trump's world, including James Burnham, who served in President Trump's first-term White House Counsel's Office before briefly serving as general counsel for the Department of Government Efficiency in 2025.

• Henry Cuellar — political retaliation: the Cato Institute noted President Trump's public anger after pardoning the Texas Democrat on bribery charges. When Cuellar declined to switch parties to the GOP, President Trump released a statement criticizing him for "Such a lack of LOYALTY" and warning "next time, no more Mr. Nice guy!"

Election-Related Offenses

State Conviction: Tina Peters — a Legal Overreach

President Trump also purported to pardon Tina Peters, a former Mesa County, Colorado, clerk—an action most legal authorities say falls outside the president's constitutional power, because Peters was convicted of state, not federal, crimes. The same episode appears in the tracker's coverage of President Trump's draft national-emergency order on elections.

Peters was convicted by a state jury in August 2024 on seven counts, including felonies, for orchestrating a 2021 breach of her county's voting systems while seeking to substantiate claims of fraud in the 2020 election. She was sentenced in October 2024 to nine years in prison. Pardon attorney Ed Martin had earlier signaled the administration's intent, posting on X: "Tina, we are coming for you, M'am."

President Trump signed a pardon dated December 5, 2025, that purported to cover offenses related to election integrity during 2020 and 2021. But the president's clemency authority under Article II of the Constitution reaches only "Offences against the United States," which has almost universally been understood to exclude state crimes. Colorado officials across the political spectrum rejected the pardon's validity. According to Colorado Newsline, Governor Jared Polis said no president has jurisdiction over state law or the power to pardon state convictions, while Attorney General Phil Weiser said the idea had no precedent in American law and would not hold up.

In April 2026, the Colorado Court of Appeals upheld Peters's conviction and rejected the argument that President Trump could pardon a state crime, writing that it found no instance in which the presidential pardon power had been stretched to invade a state's sovereignty. The court did order Peters resentenced, finding that the trial judge had improperly punished her for her speech about the 2020 election.

Campaign Finance: Kelsey, Casada, and Cothren

Two campaign-finance cases, both originating with Trump-appointed prosecutors during his first term, were undone in his second:

• Brian Kelsey: White House Counsel David Warrington previously represented the former Republican Tennessee state senator, who was pardoned in March 2025 after being convicted of campaign finance felonies. According to ProPublica, the investigation into Kelsey began under Don Cochran, a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney, and the October 2021 indictment was signed by career federal prosecutor Mary Jane Stewart. The White House told ProPublica that Warrington "was fully recused from the entire process" regarding Kelsey's pardon.

• Casada and Cothren: The case, pardoned in November 2025, also originated during President Trump's first term. According to ProPublica, the FBI raid in that case occurred on January 8, 2021—during President Trump's last weeks in office—though the White House blamed the Biden Justice Department for "significantly over-prosecuting" the pair. The judge who sentenced them, Eli Richardson, was a Trump appointee.

Drug Offenses

Congressman's Son: James Phillip Womack

Among the eight commutations issued January 15, 2026, was one for James Phillip Womack, the son of Representative Steve Womack (R-AR). According to the Arkansas Times, the younger Womack was sentenced in May 2024 to eight years in federal prison after pleading guilty to distributing methamphetamine.

The conviction was part of a lengthy history of drug-related arrests and convictions. According to Fox News, Womack was sentenced to 10 years in 2010 for methamphetamine charges but attended a boot camp program instead. He was subsequently arrested for parole violations in 2012, drug charges in 2018, and again in 2022.

Representative Womack, who serves on the House Appropriations Committee, thanked President Trump in a statement "for this gracious and thoughtful action," noting the commutation "has allowed my son to be with his family during a profoundly difficult time."

Drug Trafficking Pardon: Juan Orlando Hernández

In December 2025, President Trump pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was serving a 45-year federal sentence for drug trafficking. According to NPR, U.S. officials had described Hernández as a central figure in one of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world.

Hernández, who led Honduras from 2014 to 2022, was convicted by a federal jury in the Southern District of New York in March 2024 and sentenced on June 26, 2024 by Judge P. Kevin Castel for conspiring to import more than 400 tons of cocaine into the United States and related firearms offenses. Prosecutors said he accepted millions of dollars in bribes from traffickers—including a roughly $1 million payment connected to Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán—and used Honduran security forces to protect cocaine shipments in exchange for political support. Then-Attorney General Merrick Garland said Hernández had abused his presidency to run the country as a narco-state where violent traffickers operated with near-total impunity.

President Trump announced the pardon on Truth Social on November 28, 2025—two days before a Honduran general election in which he endorsed Nasry "Tito" Asfura, a political ally from Hernández's National Party—and signed it formally on December 1. Hernández was released that day from the high-security U.S. Penitentiary Hazelton after serving less than four years. President Trump described the conviction as a "Biden setup" and said Hernández had been treated unfairly. FactCheck.org reported that the White House offered no evidence when asked to support its claim that the prosecution was a setup or an over-prosecution. Hernández has long maintained his innocence, and his attorney told ProPublica that the government's case relied heavily on the testimony of cooperating traffickers.

According to The New Yorker, the campaign for the pardon was promoted by former Representative Matt Gaetz, who used his program on One America News Network to press President Trump to act. The magazine reported that the Hernández pardon blindsided White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, who attempted to pause pardons late in 2025 out of concern about the haphazard nature of the process and the large sums being paid to lobbyists and attorneys. The pace did slow afterward: the magazine counted eight commutations and twenty pardons in early 2026, with none granted between February and late April.

Critics noted the contradiction with the administration's broader anti-trafficking posture, including a military campaign against alleged drug-trafficking vessels in the Caribbean and Pacific. The Congressional Research Service reported that some Honduran legal analysts characterized the pardon as a "mockery" of the country's victims and warned it could signal that high-level corruption remains beyond the reach of justice.

Other Commutations

The official clemency list shows seven other commutations issued January 15, 2026, primarily for individuals convicted of drug offenses:

• Jacob Deutsch: Sentenced to 62 months for mortgage fraud. His clemency was supported by the Tzedek Association, a Jewish group influential in President Trump's first-term clemency decisions.
• Jimmy Ray Barnett: Serving 480 months for methamphetamine conspiracy
• Zechariah Benjamin: Serving life for cocaine distribution
• Angela Wannette Cupit: Serving 360 months for drug conspiracy
• Juan Mercado III: Serving 240 months for marijuana conspiracy
• Angela Reynolds: Serving 275 months for drug conspiracy
• Andre Donnell Routt: Serving life for cocaine conspiracy

The July 4, 2026 Batch: A Megadonor and Clean Air Act Violators

"250 Pardons for 250 Years": The Mass Pardon That Wasn't

In the weeks before the July 4 holiday, The Atlantic reported on June 29, 2026, that the White House was discussing presidential pardons as a centerpiece of the nation's semiquincentennial celebrations. Fourteen people familiar with the conversations described it as "250 pardons for 250 years." The Wall Street Journal had first reported the outline of the plan. The initiative was supported in part by "pardon czar" Alice Johnson and DOJ pardon attorney Edward R. Martin Jr. Advocates framed it as linking the July 4 theme of freedom to correcting overly punitive sentences and the "weaponization" of the justice system, reinforcing an image of "Trump the merciful." Advisers were split. One cited polling suggesting a mass pardon could benefit the president; others warned of backlash amid low approval ratings ahead of the midterms.

The Atlantic's reporting doubled as a portrait of the informal clemency market the prospect had inflamed. Attorneys and lobbyists described being inundated with requests—"a three-ring circus," one criminal-defense attorney said. Another prominent white-collar defense attorney told the magazine: "It is general knowledge in our practice that for $2 million, you can have a pardon." People approached to act as intermediaries said $1 million to $2 million was the going rate paid to White House intermediaries operating outside the formal DOJ process, with clients offering many times that for harder cases. Some established defense lawyers said they had stopped advising clients pursuing pardons in ways that could be viewed as a potential felony by a future Justice Department. Those in contact with the White House were told that convicts sentenced by Obama- or Biden-appointed judges were viewed more favorably than those sentenced by Trump appointees.

Among the names under consideration, per the magazine's sources, were Malaysian fugitive Low Taek Jho ("Jho Low") of the 1MDB scandal, Fugees member Pras Michel, and OneTaste co-founder Nicole Daedone. After publication, a White House official said those individuals were "not on the radar of the pardon team." Liz Oyer, the former pardon attorney, told the magazine that "Donald Trump has turned the pardon process into the Hunger Games." Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt countered that there is "a rigorous review process involving the Department of Justice and the White House Counsel's Office," and said the president "finds it detestable that anyone would even attempt to profit off pardons."

The mass batch did not materialize by the holiday. What arrived instead, on July 3, was a smaller, pointed set of grants.

Eleven Pre-Holiday Pardons

On July 3, 2026, in a pre-holiday Friday announcement, President Trump pardoned 11 people, according to a White House official—most of them convicted of violating the Clean Air Act, plus Republican megadonor Adam Kidan and a former Texas mayor convicted of bank fraud. President Trump announced on Truth Social that some of the recipients had been "persecuted by the Biden administration, and were in, or being sent to, prison, for 'fixing their car.'" Per Fortune, he declared: "I AM SETTING THEM ALL FREE, RIGHT NOW!" The batch drew coverage from the Associated Press, CNN, The Hill, and Bloomberg, among others.

Abramoff Partner and Megadonor: Adam Kidan

The most prominent recipient was Adam Kidan, a former business partner of Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist at the center of the 2000s Washington corruption scandal. According to The Washington Post, Kidan pleaded guilty in 2005 to federal wire fraud and mail fraud conspiracy charges related to his and Abramoff's purchase of the SunCruz Casinos fleet of offshore-gambling cruise ships. He was sentenced to nearly six years in prison in 2006 and released in 2009. Federal election records show Kidan, who now runs a staffing agency, has donated nearly $4 million to Republican Party campaigns and committees since 2017, including committees associated with President Trump.

The Florida Bulldog detailed the case's darker history. Kidan and Abramoff fraudulently purchased SunCruz in 2000 from Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis. Boulis was murdered by a Mafia hitman in Fort Lauderdale on February 6, 2001, and a mob associate of Kidan's later pleaded guilty in the killing. (Kidan himself was never charged in connection with the murder.) Kidan was convicted of fraud and conspiracy in March 2006 and sentenced to 70 months, serving less than half. The pardon erases both his felony status and his $21.7 million restitution obligation—plus two decades of accumulated interest—owed to Boulis's sons, Aristotle and Alexander Hren-Boulis. The Florida Bulldog also reported that Kidan's name does not appear in the DOJ Office of the Pardon Attorney's clemency database, suggesting the pardon came through a direct request to President Trump rather than the formal process.

The outlet documented the depth of Kidan's financial and social ties to President Trump's world. He and his wife Cristiani contributed over $1.13 million to President Trump's campaign and supporting committees in the 2024 cycle, and just under $1 million more in the 2025-26 cycle through June 30, plus $48,000 to Byron Donalds's Florida gubernatorial bid. Kidan is a Mar-a-Lago member—the club's initiation fee was about $700,000 in 2023—and held his roughly 250-guest February 2023 wedding there, attended by President Trump and Melania Trump, with Andrea Bocelli performing. He now runs Empire Workforce Solutions, a staffing firm with about $62.6 million in annual revenue.

First Environmental-Crime Pardons: The Clean Air Act Nine

The other defining feature of the batch was its target: federal environmental enforcement. According to The Washington Post, President Trump pardoned Joshua Davis, Matt Geouge, Jonathan Achtemeier, Tim Clancy, Ryan and Wade Lalone, Barry Pierce, Aaron Rudolf, and Mackenzie Spurlock, all convicted of violations related to the Clean Air Act, the landmark air-pollution law first passed in 1963. Many in the group were found to have tampered with vehicle emissions-control equipment or sold "defeat device" parts to bypass diesel-truck emissions controls.

Margo Oge, a former director of the EPA's Office of Transportation and Air Quality, told the Post: "These pardons don't just forgive a paperwork violation — they reward people who ran businesses stripping pollution controls off diesel trucks for profit." The disabled controls, she said, "released far more nitrogen oxides, which worsen asthma and drive up heart attacks and hospitalizations. ... That's the protection these individuals were undermining — clean air we breathe." The administration's framing was the opposite. President Trump characterized the recipients as people imprisoned "for 'fixing their car.'"

Within the tracker's records, this is the first batch of clemency specifically nullifying environmental-crime convictions. The UnPopulist headlined it as a major Republican donor pardoned alongside nine Clean Air Act violators, and it aligns with the administration's broader rollback of EPA enforcement. Democracy Now likewise led its coverage with the pairing of pollution-crime pardons and the Abramoff connection.

Rounding out the 11 was Jack Harvard, a former mayor of Plano, Texas, convicted of bank fraud charges in the 1990s. A White House official told the Post that Harvard had "turned his life around," "protecting and raising endangered animals on his ranch, and allowing the U.S. military and NATO troops to train on his land free of charge."

The Scale and the Cost

According to the Cato Institute, Joe Biden granted 80 pardons in his four-year term. In the first year of his second term alone, President Trump issued 166 individual pardons plus a mass pardon erasing the convictions of more than 1,500 January 6 Capitol rioters—a rate eight times higher than Biden's.

Counted differently, the picture shifts. The Washington Post noted that Biden's total acts of clemency—4,245 pardons and commutations, driven by categorical grants—were the most of any president, while President Trump issued 238 total acts of clemency in his first term. The Post also observed that the Justice Department typically vets tens of thousands of applications, recommending only people who have completed their sentences and shown contrition. President Trump has granted clemency without such vetting, sometimes to convicts who have not started their sentences or admitted wrongdoing.

President Trump's pardon attorney, Ed Martin, explained the administration's approach on social media: "No MAGA left behind."

According to the Cato Institute, Liz Oyer, the former lead pardon attorney of the United States, calculated that President Trump's second-term pardons have forgiven criminal debts of more than $1.5 billion—money owed to crime victims and government treasuries. By comparison, Biden's pardons over his entire four-year term eliminated approximately $680,000 in financial penalties.

The New York Times reported that the White House did not respond to questions about whether pardons would eliminate restitution obligations, but noted that pardons typically erase financial penalties. The Camberos siblings were ordered to pay $48.8 million in restitution to the companies they defrauded, and the July 2026 pardon of Adam Kidan alone erased a $21.7 million restitution debt owed to a murder victim's family, per the Florida Bulldog.

First-Term Pardons

The second-term pattern extends one established during President Trump's first term, when he directed clemency toward early political supporters and allies convicted of federal crimes—including a long line of fraudsters and financial criminals catalogued in the first-term clemency entry. Two of the earliest congressional endorsers of his 2016 campaign received pardons in December 2020.

Former Representative Chris Collins (R-NY), the first sitting member of Congress to endorse President Trump in 2016, pleaded guilty in October 2019 to conspiracy to commit securities fraud and lying to the FBI. Collins sat on the board of the biotech firm Innate Immunotherapeutics. According to the Department of Justice, he learned in 2017 that the company's experimental drug had failed a clinical trial and tipped off his son to sell shares before the news became public; the stock fell about 90% when the failure was announced. He was sentenced to 26 months in prison and had served roughly two months when President Trump pardoned him on December 22, 2020.

In the same batch, President Trump pardoned former Representative Duncan Hunter (R-CA), the second member of Congress to endorse him in 2016. According to Roll Call, Hunter pleaded guilty in December 2019 to spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign funds on personal expenses and never served prison time. The White House said both pardons were granted "at the request of many Members of Congress." A fuller account of President Trump's first-term clemency—and the fraud and financial-crime grants that established this pattern—is set out in the first-term pardons entry.