President Donald Trump’s expanded use of presidential pardons has created a lucrative business for lobbyists, with wealthy clients paying millions of dollars to advocate for clemency, according to multiple reports and legal experts.
Lobbyists have charged clients as much as $5 million to help secure pardons from Trump, NBC News reported in May. In one documented case, lobbyists Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl received $960,000 to advocate for Joseph Schwartz, who was convicted of nursing home fraud. Trump pardoned Schwartz on November 14.
Trump granted clemency to more than 1,600 individuals through July, including approximately 1,500 people connected to the January 6 Capitol attack. He has continued issuing pardons on a rolling basis since then.
The president has largely abandoned the standard Justice Department clemency process, which typically requires applicants to wait five years after release from incarceration and demonstrate remorse through the Office of the Pardon Attorney.
Trump fired the office’s career attorney, Liz Oyer, on March 7 and installed political loyalist Ed Martin. Oyer later testified to the Senate in April that “the leadership of the Department of Justice appears to value political loyalty above the fair and responsible administration of justice.”
The pardons have eliminated more than $1.3 billion in restitution and fines owed to fraud victims and the public, according to a House Judiciary Committee report. The Securities and Exchange Commission also dropped civil cases in November that could have forced several pardoned defendants to return hundreds of millions more to victims.
Read: Fraudsters All Around: Trump Issues Pardons to Executives Convicted of Financial Crimes
Trevor Milton, founder of electric vehicle company Nikola, received a pardon on March 27 despite a 2023 fraud conviction. Federal prosecutors had requested approximately $676 million in restitution payments, which the pardon eliminated.
Ross Ulbricht, founder of the Silk Road dark web marketplace, received a full pardon on January 21. He had been serving a life sentence on narcotics distribution and money laundering charges.
Several cryptocurrency executives who received pardons had business relationships with Trump family ventures. Changpeng Zhao, billionaire founder of Binance, received a pardon in October after serving four months for enabling money laundering.
Read: Trump Pardons Binance Founder Changpeng Zhao
Binance hired lobbyists who paid $450,000 to a firm linked to Donald Trump Jr. and $290,000 to lawyer Teresa Goody Guillén, who also represented Trump’s World Liberty Financial crypto project. The Trump family’s crypto firm is hosted on Binance, and an Emirati investment fund used World Liberty’s stablecoin for a $2 billion investment in Binance.
Trump also pardoned the four founders of BitMEX cryptocurrency exchange on March 27 after they pleaded guilty to Bank Secrecy Act violations.
The president has pardoned multiple elected officials from both parties, including former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was convicted of trying to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat. Trump pardoned Blagojevich on February 10 after commuting his sentence during his first term.
On November 9, Trump issued pardons to 77 people connected to efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and former chief of staff Mark Meadows. On December 3, he pardoned Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas and his wife, who faced federal bribery charges.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in November that “a whole team of qualified lawyers” reviews every pardon request before Trump makes final decisions. She said Trump prioritizes cases of individuals “who were abused and used by the Biden Department of Justice.”
More than 10,000 people filed formal petitions for pardons or commutations through the Justice Department system in Trump’s first nine months in office — about two-thirds the total submitted during Biden’s entire presidency. Those who followed the standard protocol continue to wait as Trump grants clemency to people who never entered the official system.
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