In May, Department of Justice pardon attorney Ed Martin declared “no MAGA left behind.”
Within the first year of his second term in office, after campaigning on ending what he called the “politicization” of the Justice Department under his predecessor, Donald Trump has issued a historic number of pardons for white-collar criminals and political allies accused of fraud, bribery and corruption.
In more than a dozen cases, Trump even issued pardons for people who were prosecuted or convicted within his first and second terms, only to unravel those cases entirely this year. An entertainment executive accused of public corruption was pardoned this week only four months after he was indicted for conspiracy.
Trump’s pardon of former president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández, who the Justice Department once said was at the center of the “largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world,” has not only raised questions about what’s fueling Trump’s lethal campaign against alleged drug traffickers but has also erased the work of Emil Bove, Trump’s former criminal defense attorney who was once a federal prosecutor leading the case against Hernández.
“We all know that Trump does a lot of hypocritical things — almost every day there is hypocrisy oozing from the White House — but pardoning one of the world’s biggest drug traffickers is egregious, shameful and dangerous, even for Donald Trump,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a floor speech Tuesday.
“You can’t talk a big game about hunting down drug traffickers and getting drugs off our streets and then turn around and free a dangerous, convicted drug lord,” he said.
Trump’s wave of pardons — largely targeting charges that he has similarly faced — have relied on the sweeping powers of the executive branch to effectively redefine what is criminal, from bailing out dozens of people who support his agenda to “normalizing public corruption” and downplaying the crimes of convicted fraudsters who stripped millions of dollars from victims, according to former Pardon Attorney Liz Oyer.
Crimes involving public corruption — especially among elected officials, like Texas congressman Henry Cuellar, who was pardoned this week after he was federally charged last year with bribery, money laundering and conspiracy — are rarely considered for pardons.
But Trump is now “liberally pardoning corrupt public officials who are charged with offenses that involve abusing their political offices to enrich themselves,” Oyer told PBS.
Oyer, who was fired by the Trump administration in March, has called the president’s pardon streak a “crisis” that imperils democracy by using his vast pardoning power to potentially enrich himself and his allies.
“Whether it’s political allies, business associates, or deep-pocketed donors, Trump abuses his pardon power and interferes with DOJ matters to make his friends’ legal problems disappear,” according to Not Above The Law, a coalition of more than 150 legal advocacy groups lobbying against the Trump administration’s alleged abuses of power.
“Trump has declared open season for corrupt politicians to use their offices for personal gain,” the group said this week.
During his first term, Trump issued 237 acts of clemency. Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has issued more than 1,600.
Critics warn that his latest pardon streak recalls a corrupt era of political patronage in the United States, where the “spoils system” of election outcomes welcomed rampant cronyism and government abuse.
“The president views the justice system as a spoils system,” she told The Washington Post. “He is encouraging the prosecution of his enemies and special treatment to his friends.”
The vast majority of Trump’s pardons thus far — apart from hundreds he issued on his first day in office in connection with the January 6, 2021 attack — have been related to public fraud and white-collar crimes.
While he accuses elected officials of committing crimes and demands the imprisonment of his political enemies, so far this year he has let at least 11 former members of Congress off the hook for their own alleged crimes and preemptively pardoned nearly 80 people involved in his efforts to overturn election results.
DOJ’s Office of the Pardon Attorney is tasked with reviewing pardon applications and then sending recommendations to the White House. Guidelines stress that pardons should only be granted at least five years after a conviction or release from custody, as long as the applicants accept responsibility for their crimes. Those guidelines now appear to have been abandoned.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters last month that “a whole team of qualified lawyers” reviews “every single” request on Trump’s desk.
“President Trump has exercised his constitutional authority to issue pardons and commutations for a variety of individuals,” according to White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson.
But Trump has also suggested that he isn’t closely involved with the process even if he stands to benefit from the recipients of his clemency. “I don’t know who he is,” Trump said after pardoning billionaire Changpeng Zhao, who pleaded guilty in 2023 to what prosecutors called “willful violations of anti-money laundering” laws with his leadership at Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.
The president said that he was told by officials in his administration that Zhao was a victim of a “witch hunt” under former President Joe Biden. Zhao, meanwhile, has maintained a stake with Binance, which has done business with World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency company owned by Trump’s family.
Hernández, the former president of Honduras, was sentenced last year to 45 years in prison after he was convicted of accepting millions of dollars in bribes and importing 500 tons of cocaine into the United States.
Controversial Republican operative Roger Stone said he sent a letter recommending a pardon for Hernández three hours before it was granted. Earlier this year, Stone argued that a “well-timed pardon” would “crush socialism and save a freedom city in Honduras,” a reference to a special economic zone in the country promoted by tech moguls including Trump allies Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen.
Tim Leiweke, who was indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly rigging the public bidding process for building a sports arena in Texas, was reportedly represented by Trey Gowdy, a former congressman and Fox News personality who represented Trump during his impeachment.
The president’s pardons have also let convicted fraudsters off the hook from restitution owed to their victims. Just before Thanksgiving, Trump commuted the sentence of David Gentile, a former private equity executive who was 12 days into a seven-year sentence after he was convicted of defrauding more than $1.6 billion from investors as part of a Ponzi scheme.
It was not immediately clear if Gentile has connections to the president, but Leavitt called the case “another example that has been brought to the president’s attention of the weaponization of justice from the previous administration and therefore he signed this commutation.”
In court filings, more than 1,000 people submitted statements about the losses they experienced. “I lost my whole life savings,” one person wrote. “I am living from check to check.”
He no longer has to pay $15.5 million in restitution.
