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us department of justice
Sensing Opportunity, White-Collar Criminals Vie for Trump Pardons
"Everybody that is in prison now is keenly aware of the environment, and it's become a very hot topic within the low- and minimum-security inmate communities," said a consultant who has advised white-collared convicts.
Mar 11, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump began his second term with a blitz of clemency actions, including issuing pardons and commutations for over 1,500 rioters convicted in connection to the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol and pardoning Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, and now the president's "moves to expand the use of pardons have white-collar defendants jolting to attention," according to Tuesday reporting from Politico.
Those reportedly angling for clemency include individuals like jailed crypto titan Sam Bankman-Fried, former Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) who earlier this year was sentenced to 11 years in prison for corruption and bribery, two reality TV stars guilty of defrauding banks and evading taxes, and a member of the music group the Fugees who was convicted for taking part in an embezzlement scheme.
Sam Mangel, a consultant to people convicted of white-collar crime who has advised individuals like Bankman-Fried, told Politico that "everybody that is in prison now is keenly aware of the environment, and it's become a very hot topic within the low- and minimum-security inmate communities."
According to The New York Times, "The new administration has a team of appointees focusing on the process early in Mr. Trump's term, with a particular focus on clemency grants that underscore the president's own grievances about what he sees as the political weaponization of the justice system."
Accordingly, clemency petitioners are "tailoring their pitches to the president by emphasizing their loyalty to him and echoing his claims of political persecution," per the Times.
For example, a lawyer representing conservative reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley wrote in a document prepared for the Trump administration that the couple's conviction for bank fraud and tax evasion "exemplifies the weaponization of justice against conservatives and public figures, eroding basic constitutional protections."
Some, like Menendez, have made themselves out to be the victims of the "corrupt" justice system.
"President Trump is right," wrote Menendez on X the day he was sentenced to 11 years in prison. "This process is political and has been corrupted to the core. I hope President Trump cleans up the cesspool and restores integrity to the system."
In Trump's first term, his use of clemency was "all about cronyism and partisanship and helping out his friends and his political advisers," Rachel Barkow, a professor at New York University School of Law, told the Times. This time around, "the potential for corruption is higher," she said, "because they're starting early, they have figured out how they want to set it up so that people have a pipeline to get to them."
This shift in Trump's second term includes disempowering the Justice Department's Office of the Pardon Attorney and instead shifting control of the clemency operations to the White House Counsel's Office, according to anonymous sources cited by the Times.
Elizabeth Oyer, who had been the U.S. pardon attorney since being appointed in 2022, was fired last week after she refused to recommend that actor Mel Gibson—who is a supporter of Trump—should have his gun rights restored, according Monday reporting from the Times. Gibson lost his gun rights following a 2011 domestic violence misdemeanor conviction.
In late February, Trump also appointed White House "pardon czar" Alice Johnson. Both the appointment of Johnson and the departure of Oyer, "signal that Trump is not done exercising his clemency powers," according to Politico.
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With Dropped Enforcement, Trump Accused of 'Inviting a Corporate Crime Spree'
"President Trump talks 'tough on crime,' but his administration is once again betraying a preference for going soft on corporations that break the law."
Mar 04, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump "is handing out 'get out of jail free' cards to corporate lawbreakers," declared Rick Claypool, author of a Tuesday report about the administration ending probes and enforcement actions against dozens of companies.
Claypool is a research director for the watchdog Public Citizen. His report "covers 429 separate investigations and cases against 361 corporations over alleged lawbreaking—including at least 25 involving allegations of criminal misconduct."
During the first six weeks since the inauguration, the researcher found, the Trump administration halted or moved to dismiss actions against 89 corporations—or 25% of the companies in Public Citizen's tracker of prominent cases.
"The consequences for the public when corporations face a diminished threat of enforcement are disastrous," Claypool warned in a statement. "Meanwhile, honest businesses that are not Trump administration insiders—or that refuse to play along with the ultra-MAGA ideological agenda—may face serious disadvantages from Trump's politicized approach to enforcement."
As his report, Corporate Clemency, details, the beneficiaries of the recent dismissals are:
- All 42 corporations facing Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) cases and investigations (seven dismissals have been sought so far);
- Twenty corporations facing Department of Justice (DOJ) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) cases and investigations into possible Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations;
- Eight corporations facing DOJ Civil Rights Division cases and investigations (one dismissal, a case against Elon Musk's SpaceX, has been sought so far);
- Seven corporations facing DOJ Environment and Natural Resources Division cases and investigations;
- Seven cryptocurrency corporations facing SEC cases and investigations, five of which the Trump administration has filed to dismiss; and
- Six employers facing Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) cases for discrimination against transgender and nonbinary workers, which the Trump administration has filed to dismiss.
"Additionally, firings of National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) members and EEOC commissioners mean these regulators lack the quorum needed for finalizing enforcement decisions, including NLRB cases against 100 corporations included in the tracker," the report explains. "There are nearly 27,000 open NLRB cases in total."
The corporations that began the Trump administration with the greatest number of probes or cases in the Public Citizen tracker are Musk's Tesla (eight) and SpaceX (four), billionaire Jeff Bezos' Amazon (seven), Big Pharma's Pfizer (five), banking giant Wells Fargo (four), and the insurance company UnitedHealthcare (four).
The report highlights that "of the 361 corporations facing federal enforcement actions, 56 have close ties with the Trump administration," 17 of which "are benefiting from the enforcement pauses that have halted investigations and cases."
The document also identifies 34 companies that collectively gave at least $34 million toward Trump inaugural festivities.
Amazon and Pfizer each gave $1 million, as did many others: Adobe, Apple, AT&T, Boeing, Coinbase, ExxonMobil, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Goldman Sachs, Google, Hyundai and its affiliate, Johnson & Johnson, Kraken, Lockheed Martin, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Stanley Black & Decker, Stellantis, and Toyota.
Ripple, Robinhood Markets, and Uber gave even more, while Abbott Laboratories, Bank of America, Citibank, Coca-Cola, CoreCivic, Ericsson, Hewlett Packard, and Syngenta gave less or an undisclosed amount.
Apple and OpenAI's contributions came from the companies' chief executives, Tim Cook and Sam Altman, while Uber had a corporate donation and one from CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. All three of them appear on the report's list of "Big Tech oligarchs seeking corporate clemency from the Trump administration," alongside Musk, Bezos, TikTok's Shou Zi Chew, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta—which owns Instagram and Facebook—and Sundar Pichai of Alphabet, the parent company of Google.
"President Trump talks 'tough on crime,'" the report says, "but his administration is once again betraying a preference for going soft on corporations that break the law."
Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman similarly called out not only Trump—who was convicted of 34 felonies—but also Attorney General Pam Bondi and Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel, who all "bloviate about how tough they are on crime."
"The reality is the Trump administration by its actions is inviting a corporate crime spree," Weissman said in a statement. "Not only does the wholesale abandonment of cases against alleged corporate wrongdoers let bad actors off the hook, it invites—and virtually guarantees—a surge in consumer rip offs, endangerment of workers, poisoning of the air and water, discriminatory employment practices, and more."
Public Citizen's analysis comes amid mounting alarm over Trump's so-called Department of Government Efficiency, led by Musk, the richest person on Earth. As Common Dreamsreported Monday, the Center for Biological Diversity noted in a new lawsuit that Trump's executive order establishing the government-gutting initiative requires all federal agencies to form DOGE teams.
The center's complaint stresses that "Mr. Musk and other billionaire and tech executives working with DOGE stand to benefit personally and financially from the DOGE teams' work, including by securing government contracts, slashing environmental rules that apply to their companies, and reducing the government's regulatory capacity and authority, including by targeting specific agencies, statutes, and spending decisions that affect their businesses."
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Ocasio-Cortez Prods Trump AG to Say Whether She's Under Investigation
"Tom Homan has gone on multiple forums threatening political prosecution against me, citing resources I distributed informing my constituents and the American public of their constitutional and legal rights."
Feb 28, 2025
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is demanding answers from U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi over whether she is facing a probe for hosting a "Know Your Rights" webinar as the Trump administration pursues mass deportations and other attacks on immigrants.
"I write to request clarity on whether the Department of Justice (DOJ) has yielded to political pressure and attempts to weaponize the agency against elected officials whose speech they disagree with," Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) wrote a letter she made public on Friday.
"Over the past two weeks, 'Border Czar' Tom Homan has gone on multiple forums threatening political prosecution against me, citing resources I distributed informing my constituents and the American public of their constitutional and legal rights," she noted.
"Mr. Homan's repeated attempts to use your agency to politically intimidate duly elected officials are a textbook threat to the right to free speech in the United States."
Ocasio-Cortez—who has publicly stood up to Trump's border czar—wants a clear response from Bondi by March 5. She pointed out Thursday that "it has been 14 days since Mr. Homan first threatened to weaponize your agency, but I have not yet heard any referral from the federal government. Homan's actions undercut core constitutional rights and further transparency is necessary."
The president and his allies have long accused Democrats of weaponizing the DOJ for efforts to hold the Republican accountable for mishandling classified materials and trying to overturn the 2020 election, which culminated in him encouraging supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, an attack that did not reverse Trump's loss and resulted in multiple deaths.
The congresswoman's letter quotes the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and highlights that Vice President JD Vance recently claimed that "we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square."
She then argued that "Mr. Homan's repeated attempts to use your agency to politically intimidate duly elected officials are a textbook threat to the right to free speech in the United States. Threatening criminal proceedings for exercising the First Amendment is itself a violation of the First Amendment."
"Educating the public about their rights, especially in a time of rising uncertainty, is a key part of our responsibility as elected officials," Ocasio-Cortez added. "A government that uses threats of DOJ investigations to suppress free speech is a threat to all, regardless of political ideology."
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