On the morning of January 6, 2021, the White House top official assured Republican lobbyists that his client’s permit application would be placed in the pipeline for consideration by President Trump before he took office.
Hours later, the administration was torn apart by Trump supporters’ attacks on the Capitol. The lobbyist never heard a reply about the pardon, and his client remained in jail for his role in an insurance bribery scandal that shook North Carolina Republican politics and in which thousands of retirees were unable to gain access to their pensions for years.
Four years later, the lobbyist is back and seeks the pardon of the same client, the president of insurance mogul Greg E. Lindbergh.
But this time it’s different. The new administration has a team of appointees that focused on the process early in Trump’s term, particularly on generous grants that highlight the president’s own complaints about what he sees as a political weaponization of the judicial system.
Lawyers and lobbyists with ties to Trump scrambled to make use of it. They collected large fees from generous job seekers who were not entitled to a second chance under non-political standards, aimed at leading the Justice Department system to encourage mercy to those who served time and those with low regret.
Instead, the tolerant petitioners have largely circumvented the system, adjusting their pitch to the President by highlighting their loyalty to him and reflecting claims of political persecution.
Among them are rappers who have been convicted in connection with the Malaysian embezzlement scheme. A reality TV star couple found guilty of fraudsters and avoiding taxes.
Trump’s first term of office was “to help his friends and his political advisors,” said Rachel E. Berkow, a professor at Law at New York University who studied the use of presidential tolerance. This time, “there is a higher chance of corruption,” she said. “They start early, so we realised how they wanted to set it up, like people have a pipeline to get to them.”
“Like the other sequels,” she said, “it’s going to get worse.”
An unorthodox approach
Trump and former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. have been criticized for ignoring screenings and guidelines from the Department of Justice’s generous law firm. Clementy experts opposed the widespread pardon of Biden’s son Hunter and other families, as well as the assistance of Trump’s generous tolerance to all nearly 1,600 people accused of in connection with the January 6 attack on Capitol.
The process by which Pardon Attorny’s Office identifies and recommends applicants for tolerance is aimed at supporting those who are less likely to accept crime liability and reattack.
The President is not obligated to act on the recommendations of the office in extending a second chance through a dispute that wipes out convictions and reduces prison sentences.
According to those familiar with the issue, Trump’s White House alienated the pardoning law firm and changed control of many of his operations generously in White House law firms.
On Friday evening, Elizabeth G. Oyer, a US amnesty lawyer since her appointment in 2022 in the Biden administration, said on social media that she was fired from the post by newly confirmed deputy attorney general Todd Blanche.
Even before her firing, a senior White House official said in an interview that “the White House lawyer’s office handles all generous petitions.”
Among the White House officials involved are Sean Hayes, who worked for the Ohio Republican leader Jim Jordan, and Gary Lowkowski, who served as Trump’s deputy advisor for the 2024 campaign.
Additionally, last month, Trump was responsible for naming Alice Johnson “Ampulse Czar” and recommending generosity grants. It formalized the role she filled in as an outside adviser during Trump’s first term. In 2018, Trump sentenced life in prison for non-violent drug-related crimes and gave him a full pardon in 2020.
Clemency supporters expressed optimism that Johnson would promote pardons and commutes for those who lack people of color, wealth or political ties and whose petitions could suffer in the office of pardon lawyers. Before Trump, her own application had been denied by the office. This has attracted criticism for moving too slowly and giving the prosecutor’s views heavily weighted.
Shared complaints
Former federal prosecutor Alex Little represents three people seeking leniency in a complaint that reflects Trump’s complaints.
“The Trump administration has major players who have front row seats for prosecutor misconduct,” he said in an interview. “We’re changing your perspective on these issues and it’s difficult to ignore them when we return to government.”
Little prepared a thick binder with summary of court documents, testimony and narratives to present to the White House and certain Department of Justice officials, but not in the office of a lawyer – insisting on the mercy of his clients.
Among them are conservative reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley. They were sentenced in 2022 in federal prisons for bank fraud and tax evasion, and prosecutors said it was done to fund a gorgeous lifestyle. Little wrote that their beliefs “exemplify the weaponization of justice for conservatives and public figures, and erode basic constitutional protections.”
A summary read aloud by Chrisley’s daughter Savannah Chrisley on a podcast last month points out that her parents are “supporters of President Trump’s voice.”
Little’s summary linked the prosecutors in the Chrisleys case to Fanny T. Willis, a Georgia prosecutor who indicted Trump in 2023 in relation to efforts to gain power after the 2020 election.
Little has also worked on the Lindbergh case, comparing him to Trump in a packet of pardons, writing that Lindbergh “has been the target of DOJ and the eager career prosecutors of the FBI who twisted a legitimate business dispute into criminal charges.” His summary points to Lindbergh previously represented by Blanche, suggesting that the assistant attorney general, who is expected to oversee the Justice Department’s portfolio of generosity, considers the case to be flawed.
The Justice Department did not answer any questions about whether Blanche would reject himself from the issue.
Also working for Lindbergh are two well-connected lawyers who sought pardons at the end of the last Trump administration. Veteran Republican lobbyist Alex Vogel and prominent defense attorney Alan M. Delsitz fed Trump’s defense of his first blunder each trial and defending his tribute towards the end of his administration.
In an interview, Dershowitz cast his generous work as a continuation of his legal representative, adding, “I just take cases I think are worthy.”
Vogel was the one who was lobbying Top White House officials hours before the Capitol riots, according to people familiar with the episode.
High priced protection
Congress filed suggests $100,000 will be paid to one of Lindbergh’s companies at the time for lobbying for less than three months, suggesting favorable fees available to those offering to help secure a pardon from Trump. Another Lindbergh company re-bred Vogel’s company after Trump’s victory in the 2024 election, paying $100,000 in December.
Another Trump-related lawyer from the law firm where Vogel’s partner Jonathan Fahey represents a police officer in Washington, D.C., was pardoned by Trump in January. The officer was sentenced to four years in prison for conspiring to cover up the police pursuit of killing a 20-year-old black man. This episode brought days of racial justice protests and clashes in the country’s capital.
Fahey, who has complained about the Justice Department’s politicization against Trump, in a social media post called “the victim of politically motivated prosecutors.”
Similarly, Sam Bankman Fried’s allies are consulting with former Trump campaign lawyers to place an imprisoned cryptocurrency mogul for pardon by claiming that Trump’s team was unfairly treated by prosecutors and judges in conflict.
Margaret Love, who served as a US amnesty counsel in the 1990s and now works at a private clinic advising petitioners, warned that Trump’s approach to generosity risks supporting wealthy or connected people who claim abuse by the judicial system.
“Normal people who express their regret and seek forgiveness should have access to Clemency’s interests without the intervention of high-priced lawyers and lobbyists,” she said in an email.
Other lawyers with ties to Trump, who successfully secured generosity during his first term, have returned to more clients.
Adam Katz previously helped Southern California businessman Adriana Camberos secure a commute. Adriana Camberos has been sentenced to prison for planning to sell millions of counterfeit bottles of five hours of caffeinated drinks. She was convicted in October in a new fraud case involving consumer goods, becoming one of at least seven people charged with new crimes, including domestic violence, according to an analysis by the New York Times.
Katz, who once represented Rudolf W. Giuliani in an honor-loss case related to his efforts to overturn Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election, pursues the pardon of rapper Plakazrel Michel, known as Plus, who was convicted in 2023 for foreign lobbing violations and other articles related to Marias’ embedding raming.
Michelle’s allies, who are black, have insisted to Trump administration officials that they were treated more harshly by the Biden Department of Justice than their white peers involved in the incident.
A spokesman for Michelle suggested that the debate resonated with Johnson, claiming that he “understands more than anyone else the serious injustice embedded in our criminal justice system.”
Johnson did not respond to a request for comment.
Erica L. Green reported.
