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CLEMENCY BAZAAR
Trevor Milton knew how to do it. The founder of the electric-truck maker Nikola Corp. was convicted of wire fraud in 2022 for a promotional video that purported to show its electric semi rig hauling a trailer but was really a prototype without any electroc motors that Nikola had recorded rolling downhill.
Trevor applied for a presidential pardon, arguing that his trial was flawed by a biased juror, lousy jury instructions, and prosecutors bringing charges in the wrong venue.
Complaining about an unfair prosecution hardly separated Trevor from thousands of other federal prisoners unhappy about their convictions. But Trevor had more: he pointed out that the prosecutors were the same people who had previously investigated some of President Trump’s allies. And he prepared for seeking a pardon by donating almost $1.7 million to support Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and hired two lawyers well-known in conservative circles to push for his pardon.
“All the effort appeared to pay off,” Bloomberg Law reported this week, when Trevor got a phone call. “[A]fter 30 seconds on hold, President Donald Trump got on the line and told Milton that he was going to grant him a full pardon.” A week later, Trump called him again to report “’[i]t’s signed. You’re cleaner than a baby’s bottom, you’re cleaner than I am, Trevor,’ Milton recalled” to Bloomberg.
The president “is effectively and responsibly using his constitutional authority,” White House spokesman Harrison Fields explained. “Over the past four years, we have witnessed the weaponization of the justice system against the president’s allies. The president is committed to righting those wrongs and ending lawfare.”
Some critics suggest that Trump is not righting wrongs as much as running a pardon bazaar. Gregg Nunziata, former general counsel for Marco Rubio when he was a senator and now executive director for the Society for the Rule of Law, told Roll Call that Trump’s actions are “deeply un-American.”
“From the first days in office, there has been a pattern in pardons, in personnel, in the policies of using the powers of government to reward the president’s friends and allies and punish his perceived enemies,” Nunziata said. “That is the rule of a man out for his own interest and that is an assault on the full protection of the law and notions of fair play that our society, our country, depend on.”
As for its role, the Dept of Justice – which is without a Pardon Attorney since the firing of Elizabeth Oyer over the Mel Gibson gun flap two months ago – is “committed to timely and carefully reviewing” all clemency applications and making unbiased, consistent recommendations to the president, according to a DOJ statement.
Milton said he filed for clemency with the DOJ Pardon Attorney in January. Bloomberg reported, however, that the pardon didn’t follow the normal DOJ review process.
President Joe Biden set a record for granting clemency during his term, handing out over 4,000 commutations but only about 80 pardons. The commutations went overwhelmingly to federal prisoners and people who fell within classes of convictions – primarily for marijuana possession – or for CARES Act home confinees. Biden received widespread and bipartisan criticism for preemptively pardoning his family and allies to prevent Trump from going after them criminally.
Trump, on the other hand, has set a presidential record for granting pardons – 1,590 and counting – starting with the January 6th Capitol rioters and then expanding to include white-collar defendants, cryptocurrency entrepreneurs, and anti-abortion activists. Pardon recipients include “numerous others who praised him or served as a witness against political rivals, including former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich… He also pardoned Devon Archer and commuted the sentence of Jason Galanis, former business partners of Hunter Biden who served as witnesses in the House probe against the former president,” Roll Call reported yesterday.
Trump has even extended his pardon efforts beyond the limits of presidential authority (which does not extend to pardons for state offenses). He posted on TruthSocial Monday night that has directed DOJ “to take all necessary action to help secure the release” of Tina Peters, a former Colorado local election clerk in Colorado who was sentenced to nine years in state prison last fall for her role in a voting system data breach, a failed attempt to find voter fraud from the 2020 election.
Last March, DOJ filed a statement of interest in Peters’ pending 28 USC § 2254 habeas corpus case pending in US District Court for the District of Colorado. The post-conviction action seeks federal review of the constitutionality of her state conviction. The DOJ claims that it is concerned about Peters’ health and allege that “[r]easonable concerns have been raised about various aspects of Ms. Peters’ case.”
The pace of Trump’s pardons eclipses the president in second place, Bill Clinton (396 pardons in eight years) and in the process has fostered a “breakdown in the traditional vetting process for deciding who gets relief and supercharged a pardon economy unlike anything seen before,” as Bloomberg put it.
As a result, people who can afford it are spending big to get their applications in front of Trump, devoting tens of thousands of dollars to fees for attorneys, lobbyists and consultants on the pardon process.
“There’s a huge level of interest,” said Margaret Colgate Love, who served as the US Pardon Attorney during the Clinton years and now represents clemency clients. “People think Trump is going to do something for them.”
Presidents from both parties have long used their authority to circumvent official process and dole out pardons to friends and supporters. The constitution puts almost no limits on the practice, though leaders typically wait until the end of their tenure to award clemency. Trump has announced clemency grants on a dozen occasions since he took office three months ago.
All of this is not good news for the ordinary federal defendant, let alone a prisoner who can afford a donation of several Honeybuns and a couple of soups to the Trump campaign. “It seems like ordinary people who don’t have the resources to hire a lobbyist or well-connected lawyer and don’t have political connections and access to the White House front door are not being considered for clemency at all,” Oyer told Bloomberg.
A White House spokesman said Trump would work with the administration’s pardon czar, Alice Marie Johnson, to “continue to provide justice and redemption to countless deserving Americans.” Those with fat wallets and MAGA hats, that is.
Bloomberg Law, Lawyers Are Quoting $1 Million Fees to Get Pardons to Trump (May 7, 2025)
Roll Call, Pardons for friends, retribution for foes (May 7, 2025)
Democracy Docket, Trump Orders DOJ to ‘Secure the Release’ of Convicted Election Denier Tina Peters (May 6, 2025)
– Thomas L. Root