Jorge Costa Oliveira
Under Presidents Obama and Biden, commutations of sentence far outnumbered pardons – 1,715 to 212 under Obama, 4,165 to 80 under Biden – and both administrations followed formal guidelines laid out in a Justice Department manual. Traditionally, presidents only commuted the prison portion of a sentence, leaving untouched any restitution owed to victims.
But in this new “golden era” of the transactional – and legally unaccountable – president, everything has changed.
It began with a wave of politically motivated pardons: more than 1,500 for crimes committed by participants in the January 6 Capitol insurrection, followed by over 20 pardons granted to anti-abortion activists who had blocked access to reproductive health clinics.
Under Trump, pardons – not commutations – are the rule. He has issued more 58 pardons and 12 commutations (that we know of), disregarding the existing procedures and manuals. In many of these cases, beneficiaries have been released from any obligation to compensate their victims. The guiding principle now appears to be: “What’s in it for Trump?”
Take white-collar crime, for example.
One of the most blatant cases is that of Trevor Milton, founder and former CEO of Nikola Motor Co., who was sentenced to four years in prison for fraud. Prosecutors had sought $675 million in restitution. Milton and his wife had donated $1.8 million to Trump’s campaign – and he walked away with a full pardon.
Carlos Watson, convicted and sentenced to nearly 10 years for defrauding investors at his company Ozy Media Inc., received a commutation that expressly wiped out over $36 million owed by both him and Ozy Media to their victims.
Then there’s Paul Walczak, sentenced to 18 months for tax evasion and fraud after stealing over $10 million from his employees to fund luxury purchases, including a yacht. He was granted a full pardon after his mother, Elizabeth Fago, attended a $1 million-per-person dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Walczak’s attorney – with close ties to the White House – reportedly charged the same amount: $1 million.
Trump even broke new ground by granting, for the first time in U.S. history, a pardon to a corporation: HDR Global Trading Ltd. The move spared the company – which operates BitMEX, a crypto derivatives and exchange platform – from paying a $100 million fine, just hours before it was due. HDR is part of the crypto sector that has funneled major donations to Trump’s re-election bid, a sector in which the Trump Organization reportedly holds significant interests.
And then there’s Ross Ulbricht, sentenced to life in prison for founding and operating Silk Road, an online black market for buying and selling illegal drugs, and held responsible for the deaths of several people. When granting his pardon, Trump thanked Ross’s mother “and the Libertarian movement, which supported me so strongly.”
According to Liz Oyer, the former U.S. Pardon Attorney, these white-collar clemency deals have already erased more than $1 billion in restitution or fines owed to victims or the U.S. government.
In today’s America, presidential clemency and justice for victims are no longer seen as fundamental principles in a civilized society – they have been put at the service of the interests of a businessman-president.
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