The Pardon Market.
Twenty documented cases across the second term. The money, the lobbying fees, the loyalty transactions, and the rebuilt infrastructure that routes around the Justice Department.
Trump's second-term clemency reached roughly 1,700 grants as of July 2026. Those grants wiped out at least $1.56 billion in criminal penalties, and the clients seeking them disclosed nearly $5.2 million in lobbying in 2025. The Campaign Legal Center sorts the pattern into three categories: reward, corruption, and brokered. This page documents twenty cases against that framework, with every date, dollar figure, and named subject drawn from the Justice Department's clemency register, FEC filings, lobbying disclosures, and sentencing records.
Primary sources: the DOJ clemency register, the Campaign Legal Center analysis, and Reuters, June 11, 2026.
What this page is about
Across roughly 1,700 second-term clemency grants, this page documents twenty cases in which pardons erased criminal penalties for people who paid, lobbied, or committed crimes on Trump's behalf, sorted into the reward, corruption, and brokered categories the Campaign Legal Center uses. Every date, dollar figure, and named subject is drawn from the Justice Department's clemency register, FEC filings, lobbying disclosures, and sentencing records.
The named pardons, the dollar figures, and the parties who benefited.
The vetting office was rebuilt
The office that vets clemency was rebuilt. In March 2025 the career pardon attorney was fired and replaced by political appointee Ed Martin, the first political appointee ever installed in the role. In February 2025 the White House created a new ‘pardon czar’ position and gave it to Alice Marie Johnson, herself a recipient of a Trump first-term commutation. That office routes clemency recommendations directly to the president, around the Justice Department entirely.
96 percent bypassed DOJ guidelines
A Reuters investigation published June 11, 2026 found that 96 percent of second-term clemency grants failed to meet the Justice Department’s longstanding guidelines, including the five-year post-conviction wait and a demonstrated showing of remorse. The same standards were failed by under 1 percent of Biden-era grants and by 14 percent of grants during Trump’s first term. The guidelines were not changed. The share of grants that ignored them rose.
$1.56 billion in wiped penalties
The financial figures come from two independent counts. Liz Oyer, the Justice Department’s former lead pardon attorney, calculated that second-term clemency wiped out at least $1.56 billion in criminal penalties, a figure cited by the Campaign Legal Center. A separate analysis by House Judiciary Committee Democrats found the grants deprived crime victims of more than $1.3 billion in restitution and fines. In 2025, disclosed lobbying by clemency seekers reached nearly $5.2 million, about eight times the Biden-era total the year before.
Three categories, twenty cases
The Campaign Legal Center sorts the cases into three categories. Reward pardons went to people who paid Trump’s political or business operations, or who committed crimes on his behalf. Corruption pardons excused public officials who abused their office. Brokered pardons were pursued through paid lobbyists. This page follows that structure across three clusters, adds one open-question reading, and documents twenty cases in total.
Reward Pardons
Convictions erased for those who paid, donated, or committed crimes on Trump’s behalf.
This cluster documents individuals who paid into Trump's political or business operations, or who committed crimes on his behalf, and were then granted clemency. The six money cases and the loyalty cases rest on the same sourcing standard: the Justice Department's clemency register for every grant date and sentence, FEC filings for donations, Lobbying Disclosure Act filings for lobbying fees, and sentencing court records for the underlying convictions. Each entry records what is on the paper. The pattern-read across the cases sits under Questions We Should Be Asking.
Trevor Milton — Founder, Nikola Corporation
FACTConvicted October 2022 of securities fraud and two counts of wire fraud for lying to investors about Nikola’s zero-emission truck technology. Sentenced December 18, 2023 to 48 months’ imprisonment. Prosecutors and Nikola’s civil claims sought approximately $676 million in restitution, an exposure the pardon erased before any restitution order was finalized. During the 2024 campaign, Milton donated nearly $2 million to pro-Trump committees, including $920,000 to the Trump 47 Committee on October 10, 2024, and $750,000 to the Make America Healthy Again Alliance on September 18, 2024. Pardoned March 27, 2025.
Paul Walczak — Nursing home executive
FACTPleaded guilty to willful failure to pay trust fund taxes and failure to file. Prosecutors said he withheld more than $10 million from employees’ payroll taxes and used the funds on personal luxuries including a yacht. Sentenced April 11, 2025 in the Southern District of Florida to 18 months’ imprisonment and $4,381,265.76 in restitution. His mother, Elizabeth Fago, donated $1 million to the MAGA Inc. super PAC on April 3, 2025, her largest political donation on record. Pardoned April 23, 2025, twelve days after sentencing. Reporting states the clemency application filed on his behalf explicitly cited his mother’s donation.
Changpeng Zhao (CZ) — Founder, Binance
PROBABLY TRUEPleaded guilty to failure to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering program in violation of the Bank Secrecy Act. Sentenced April 30, 2024 in the Western District of Washington to four months’ imprisonment and a personal $50 million fine. Binance itself paid a separate $4.3 billion corporate penalty. Between the sentence and the pardon, Binance became the largest holder of the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial stablecoin USD1, and Abu Dhabi-based MGX used USD1 for a $2 billion investment in Binance announced in May 2025. Trump disclosed $57 million in World Liberty Financial-related earnings on his federal financial disclosure. CZ and Binance also paid more than $1 million to lobbyists on matters including ‘executive relief.’ Pardoned October 21, 2025.
Timothy Leiweke — Co-founder and former CEO, Oak View Group
PROBABLY TRUENever convicted. Charged with conspiracy to restrain trade under the Sherman Act in connection with bid-rigging for the Moody Center arena contract at the University of Texas at Austin. Indicted July 9, 2025. Oak View Group itself paid a $15 million fine and Legends paid $1.5 million under related non-prosecution agreements. Oak View Group donated $250,000 to Trump’s inaugural committee while the company was under DOJ antitrust scrutiny. Leiweke’s attorney, former South Carolina Republican congressman Trey Gowdy, golfed with Trump at Mar-a-Lago and raised the case directly. Pardoned pre-trial on December 2, 2025, less than five months after indictment, before any trial or plea.
Julio Herrera Velutini — Venezuelan-Italian banker, Bancrédito International Bank & Trust
PROBABLY TRUECharged with conspiracy, two counts of federal program bribery, and two counts of honest services wire fraud in a scheme to bribe then-Puerto Rico Governor Wanda Vázquez Garced with roughly $300,000 in campaign contributions in exchange for the firing of a bank regulator. Negotiated a plea to a reduced misdemeanor charge of ‘contribution by a foreign national.’ His daughter, Isabela Herrera, donated $2.5 million to the MAGA Inc. super PAC on December 31, 2024 and a further $1 million on July 22, 2025, a combined $3.5 million, after her only prior recorded political donation was $20 to Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign. Herrera’s lawyer Christopher Kise, a former Trump personal attorney, hired Ballard Partners ‘on behalf of Bancredito Holding Corporation’ and paid the firm $600,000 to lobby the White House in Q4 2025. Pardoned January 15, 2026 (amended January 20, 2026). The Campaign Legal Center has filed a formal FEC complaint alleging a straw-donor scheme.
David Gentile — Founder and CEO, GPB Capital Holdings
SOME SMOKEConvicted August 6, 2024 by an Eastern District of New York jury of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, securities fraud, and two counts of wire fraud in a scheme that defrauded roughly 10,000 to 17,000 investors of an estimated $1 to $1.6 billion. Sentenced May 9, 2025 to 7 years’ imprisonment. Prosecutors had sought forfeiture of approximately $15.5 million. Gentile began serving his sentence around November 14, 2025 and was commuted November 26, 2025, only 12 days into a seven-year term. Senator Richard Blumenthal’s June 29, 2026 letter states that Gentile told fellow inmates he made payments of ‘$2.5 million or more’ to facilitate his commutation, naming Reverend Frank Mann as a reported recipient who leveraged access to Trump. The letter states federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York opened an investigation into these payments, which was reportedly closed after Associate Deputy Attorney General Aakash Singh raised concerns with U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr.
The January 6, 2025 Capitol Riot Blanket Clemency
FACTOn his first day in office, Trump issued a proclamation granting ‘full, complete, and unconditional’ pardons to nearly all defendants charged in connection with the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot, and commuted the sentences of 14 named Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders (including Stewart Rhodes, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl, Ethan Nordean, and Dominic Pezzola) to time served. DOJ separately moved to dismiss roughly 450 pending cases. Total J6-related clemency grants reached nearly 1,600.
The November 2025 ‘2020 Election’ Allies Batch
FACTOn November 7, 2025, DOJ’s clemency register listed seven pardons for offenses grouped under a ‘2020 Presidential Election’ heading, including Tennessee corruption defendants Glen Casada (36 months, conspiracy/honest services fraud/money laundering) and Cade Cothren. On November 10, 2025, Ed Martin (DOJ Pardon Attorney) announced on X the pardons of Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Mark Meadows, John Eastman, Boris Epshteyn, Jenna Ellis, and 71 others (77 total) tied to the 2020 ‘fake electors’ scheme. Because none of the 77 faced federal charges, the pardons are largely symbolic at the federal level and do not reach the Georgia state RICO case.
Tina Peters — Former Mesa County, Colorado Clerk
FACTConvicted in Colorado state court in August 2024 on seven counts, four of them felonies, for unauthorized access to Dominion voting machines; sentenced to nine years in state prison. Pardoned by Trump on December 5, 2025, covering ‘offenses she has or may have committed or taken part in related to election integrity and security during the period from January 1, 2020 through December 31, 2021.’ A presidential pardon cannot reach a state conviction, so the grant carried no legal effect on her actual sentence. The signal to future election-subversion actors was the point.
Corruption Pardons
Public officials who abused their office, excused for political loyalty.
This cluster documents public officials who abused their office and were then pardoned for loyalty. It also captures two corruption erasures that were not pardons, the closed investigation into border czar Tom Homan and the dismissed prosecution of former New York City mayor Eric Adams, because the mechanism is the same: a criminal exposure removed for a politically useful ally. In one case, the loyalty transaction was named by Trump himself. Days after pardoning Representative Henry Cuellar, Trump publicly faulted him for a “lack of LOYALTY” when Cuellar declined to switch parties.
Michele Fiore — Former Nevada state legislator
FACTConvicted October 2024 of six counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud for misappropriating roughly $70,000 raised for a memorial to a slain police officer, spending it instead on cosmetic surgery, rent, and a family wedding. Pardoned April 23, 2025 before sentencing, after a judge had denied her motion for a new trial. The White House’s stated rationale was her ‘outspoken conservative views.’
George Santos — Expelled U.S. Representative (NY-3)
FACTPleaded guilty in 2024 to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. Sentenced April 25, 2025 in the Eastern District of New York to 87 months’ imprisonment and $373,749.97 in restitution. Commuted October 17, 2025, 175 days after sentencing. Trump publicly praised Santos’s ‘Courage, Conviction, and Intelligence to ALWAYS VOTE REPUBLICAN’ as the stated rationale.
Henry Cuellar (D-TX) and Imelda Cuellar
FACTIndicted May 2024 on roughly 14 counts including conspiracy, bribery, honest services wire fraud, and money laundering, for allegedly accepting approximately $600,000 in bribes from an Azerbaijani state-linked oil and gas company and a Mexican bank. Pardoned December 2, 2025, roughly 19 months after indictment and four months before the scheduled April 2026 trial. Days after the pardon, Trump publicly criticized Cuellar for a ‘lack of LOYALTY’ after Cuellar declined to switch parties and filed for reelection as a Democrat, confirming the transactional loyalty framing directly from Trump’s own public statements.
Wanda Vázquez Garced — Former Governor of Puerto Rico
FACTCharged in 2022 with conspiracy, federal program bribery, and honest services wire fraud in connection with her 2020 campaign, alleging she accepted bribes from Julio Herrera Velutini in exchange for firing a bank regulator. Pleaded guilty in 2025 to a reduced misdemeanor campaign-finance violation. Pardoned January 15, 2026 (amended January 20, 2026), alongside Herrera Velutini and former FBI agent Mark Rossini. The White House cited her endorsement of Trump as the stated rationale without addressing the underlying bribery charges. The Kise and Ballard Partners lobbying chain documented in Herrera’s case is the linked money trail here.
Tom Homan — Border Czar (non-pardon corruption erasure)
PROBABLY TRUENo charge was ever filed. Homan was recorded in September 2024 accepting a bag containing $50,000 in cash from undercover FBI agents posing as businessmen offering future government contracts. DOJ closed the investigation citing ‘no credible evidence,’ a decision reported in September 2025. Senate Democrats have publicly questioned Attorney General Bondi on the closure. Included here because the mechanism, a criminal exposure removed for a politically useful ally, is the same pattern that runs through the pardon roster.
Eric Adams — Former Mayor of New York City (non-pardon corruption erasure)
FACTIndicted September 2024 on conspiracy, wire fraud, soliciting foreign contributions, and bribery charges involving roughly $100,000 in gifts and flights from Turkish nationals. DOJ ordered dismissal without prejudice in February 2025 in a manner a federal judge said ‘smacks of a bargain’ tied to immigration enforcement cooperation. The case was dismissed with prejudice on April 2, 2025. Several SDNY prosecutors resigned in protest, including Danielle Sassoon.
Brokered Pardons
The lobbyist pipeline. Where clemency is a purchasable service.
This cluster documents deep-pocketed defendants who hired lobbyists, sometimes with published fees, to pursue clemency. The clearest documented instance is Joseph Schwartz, who paid roughly $1.1 million to two lobbying firms whose Lobbying Disclosure Act filings described the scope of work as “seeking a federal pardon.” Reporting has since surfaced an emerging industry, including the firms Mo Strategies and Blessinger Legal, first detailed by CBS News on June 24, 2026. Both the paid pipeline and the individual cases route through two institutional positions: Ed Martin's reconstituted Pardon Attorney's office and Alice Marie Johnson's White House pardon czar office.
Joseph Schwartz — Owner, Skyline Healthcare nursing home chain
FACTPleaded guilty to willful failure to pay over employment taxes and failure to file the Annual 5500 Report in a payroll tax fraud scheme prosecutors described as nearly $39 million. Sentenced April 10, 2025 in the District of New Jersey to 36 months’ imprisonment, a $100,000 fine, and $5,000,000 in restitution. Paid political operatives Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl (JM Burkman & Associates) $960,000 in Q2 2025 for work described in federal filings as ‘seeking a federal pardon,’ and paid Merkava Strategies (Josh Nass) an additional $100,000 in Q4 2025, registered the day before the pardon was signed, for a combined total of roughly $1.1 million disclosed to two lobbying firms. Pardoned November 14, 2025, after serving only about three months of a three-year sentence. Nass was later arrested and indicted in March/April 2026 for allegedly extorting Schwartz for a further $500,000, a separate criminal matter from the lobbying disclosure.
Ed Martin — DOJ Pardon Attorney
FACTFirst political appointee ever installed as DOJ Pardon Attorney, replacing the career official who previously held the role. Appointed in the early months of the second term. Publicly associated with the November 2025 ‘2020 election allies’ batch of pardons. Later stripped of the separate ‘Weaponization Working Group’ title around February 2026 and faced DC Bar ethics scrutiny in March 2026 over unrelated conduct. As Pardon Attorney, Martin is the institutional chokepoint through which the lobbyist pipeline routes.
Alice Marie Johnson — White House ‘Pardon Czar’
FACTJohnson, herself a 2018 Trump commutation recipient, was appointed by Trump on February 20, 2025 to a new White House role as ‘pardon czar,’ making clemency recommendations directly to the president outside the traditional DOJ pardon-attorney channel. Functions as a parallel, non-DOJ decision channel. The position reportedly carries a government salary estimated at $100,000-plus.
Mo Strategies / Blessinger Legal — Emerging pardon-lobbying firm
FACTFederal disclosures filed in late May 2026 showed Mo Strategies had signed Blessinger Legal, a Northern Virginia immigration law firm, for ‘immigration and pardon-related discussions.’ The $500,000 lobbying-income disclosure was described by CBS News as one of the largest pardon-related disclosures in the Senate LDA database. Mo Strategies was founded by former Trump 2016/2020 campaign official Marty Obst and former Trump White House aide Robert Goad. Blessinger Legal founder Eileen Blessinger contacted Obst for guidance on new clemency policies and to review ‘dozens of her clients’ cases’ for pardon viability, some involving green-card holders with criminal convictions.
“Anyone who tries to profit off pardons is detestable.”
The July 3, 2026 Batch — Pattern data point
FACTOn July 3, 2026, Trump issued 17 pardons, 15 of which involved Clean Air Act emissions-tampering violations by individuals and trucking/diesel-tuning companies. Two outliers stood out: Jack Harvard (a 1997 bank-fraud conviction) and Adam Kidan, a former business partner of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, convicted in 2006 of conspiracy and wire fraud tied to the SunCruz Casinos fraud, sentenced to 70 months and $21,701,015.45 in restitution. Trump defended the emissions-tampering pardons on Truth Social as ‘fixing their car.’ Included here as a pattern data point (environmental-enforcement rollback bundled with a politically connected fraud pardon) rather than as an individual monetization case, since no donor or lobbyist trail has been surfaced for the recipients as of this writing.
On the record: roughly 1,700 clemency grants, at least $1.56 billion in wiped penalties, nearly $5.2 million in disclosed lobbying in 2025, 96 percent noncompliance with the Justice Department's own guidelines, and a rebuilt clemency infrastructure that routes around the department. The mechanism, whether it is direct quid pro quo in individual cases or convergent self-interest across a donor class, is not a matter of the receipts documented in these three clusters. It is the reading that follows.
Questions We Should Be Asking
Reading the pattern. Not a finding. Speculation, labeled.
Cluster 01 documents pardons that followed money or loyalty. Cluster 02 documents pardons that excused public corruption for allies. Cluster 03 documents the lobbying market that grew up around the process. None of the three clusters proves, in any individual case, that a specific dollar bought a specific pardon. The reading here asks what the shape of the record, taken together, suggests about what the clemency power has been converted into. It is a reading, not a finding. It carries the speculation grade for that reason.
Pardon as market
PURE SPECULATIONThe pattern the fact-checker record establishes is that during Trump's second term the federal clemency power has developed the observable features of a working market. It has published prices, with industry sources describing $1 million as a standard lobbying fee and up to $6 million for success fees. It has a broker class, including Ballard Partners, JM Burkman & Associates, Merkava Strategies, Mo Strategies, and Blessinger Legal. It has institutional intermediaries who function as decision-makers outside the traditional Justice Department vetting process, in the reconstituted Pardon Attorney's office under Ed Martin and the new White House pardon czar office under Alice Marie Johnson. It has repeat customers and a documented volume of nearly $5.2 million in disclosed lobbying in 2025 alone, up eightfold from the year prior. The speculative reading of that pattern is that the clemency power is no longer functioning as a mercy instrument. It is functioning as an economic instrument whose supply is controlled by one man, whose price is set through political donation and lobbying fee, and whose consumer base is a class of wealthy defendants and their brokers. That reading does not require any specific pardon to have been a specific transaction. It requires only that the market has the features of a market: prices, brokers, intermediaries, customers, and volume. Every one of those features is documented in the three clusters here. The market is the finding. The specific transaction, in any individual case, remains a matter of what future evidence establishes.
What the record does not support
PURE SPECULATIONThe record does not support, in any single case documented here, a proven quid pro quo in the strict criminal sense, meaning a specific promise exchanged for a specific pardon. It does not support the claim that every recipient of a Trump second-term pardon paid for it. It does not support the claim that the straw-donor complaint the Campaign Legal Center filed over Julio Herrera Velutini has been resolved, since the FEC has not ruled. It does not support the claim that the alleged $2.5 million payment tied to David Gentile has been independently confirmed, since it rests on jailhouse statements cited in Senator Richard Blumenthal's letter. The market is the finding. Any specific criminal charge is not.
Questions worth taking seriously about the twenty pardons and the market around them
Is this page arguing that every one of the twenty pardons is corrupt?
How reliable are the dollar figures?
Is the pardon power constitutionally unreviewable?
How does this relate to the Blanche DOJ investigation?
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