Democratic lawmakers sent letters Thursday to numerous people whose sentences President Donald Trump pardoned or commuted, asking if they received “favorable consideration” or were granted clemency through a “pay-to-play” scheme, as the president has repeatedly drawn controversy for granting clemency to people with direct political or financial ties to him.
President Donald Trump looks on during a proclamation signing in the Oval Office of the White House on May 5.
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May 7Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., and Reps. Dave Min, D-Calif., and Raul Ruiz, D-Calif., asked pardon recipients about the circumstances behind their clemency and whether it was a result of improper political influence or a “quid pro quo”—sending 17 letters, which does not include all of the political donors and allies whom Trump has pardoned.
January 16Trump pardoned former Gov. Wanda Vázquez of Puerto Rico, Julio Herrera Velutini, the banker she accepted bribes from, and at least one other co-conspirator involved with her case, after Herrera’s daughter Isabel donated a combined $3.5 million to Trump’s MAGA, Inc. super PAC.
Herrera was also represented by Christopher Kise, the president’s former personal attorney, whom the Times reports was able to negotiate an “unusually lenient” plea deal for Herrera with the Trump administration prior to the banker’s pardon.
December 5Trump pardoned Tina Peters, a Colorado County clerk who promoted Trump’s claims of election fraud after the 2020 election and was convicted for allowing unauthorized access to voting machines—but the pardon didn’t have any effect, because Peters was pardoned on state, not federal, charges.
November 9Trump issued pardons to nearly 80 people for playing roles in “any slate or proposed slate of Presidential electors,” as well as for “any conduct relating to their efforts to expose voting fraud and vulnerabilities in the 2020 presidential election”—noting the pardons could also extend to others involved with the 2020 election efforts, but does not include Trump himself.
Those pardoned include the “fake electors” who approved fraudulent slates of electors falsely claiming Trump had won their state in the 2020 election, as well as a number of former Trump lawyers who worked with him to challenge the election results, such as Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro, Jenna Ellis, Christina Bobb, John Eastman.
Others who were pardoned after being employed by the president include Boris Epshteyn, a longtime Trump attorney and advisor, and former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
These most recent pardon recipients appear to have given Trump approximately $250,000 in combined political donations through 2025, according to Federal Election Commission filings, with David Hanna, a Georgia elector and CEO of Atlanticus Holdings Corporation, giving the most at $145,500.
October 21Changpeng “CZ” Zhao: Trump pardoned the billionaire Binance founder after Zhao’s company worked extensively with the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial business, with World Liberty’s USD1 stablecoin used for a $2 billion investment made in Binance earlier this fall.
Binance launched a task force aimed at “striking a deal” with World Liberty after Trump won the 2024 election in hopes of easing Zhao and Binance’s legal woes, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday, with Binance’s engineers building the technology behind the USD1 token (World Liberty denies having any involvement with Zhao’s pardon).
Zhao’s pardon also came after Trump erased another legal trouble for his company, with the Securities and Exchange Commission dropping a lawsuit against Binance in May only days after the exchange began listing USD1.
October 17George Santos: Trump pardoned the disgraced former New York congressman after his campaign donated $2,800 to Trump’s reelection campaign in September 2019, according to FEC filings, with Santos’ campaign also spending nearly $1,000 on stays at the Trump Organization’s former Washington, D.C., hotel.
May 28Imaad Shah Zuberi: Trump commuted the sentence of Zuberi, a fundraiser and venture capitalist, after he was convicted of crimes that partially stemmed from a $900,000 donation his company Avenue Ventures made to Trump’s first inaugural committee in 2017.
Zuberi, who was also indicted for concealing his work as a foreign agent, separately donated a combined $225,000 to Trump’s various political committees in 2017 and 2018, according to FEC filings.
May 28Julie and Todd Chrisley: Trump pardoned the reality TV show stars—who were ultimately convicted for fraud—after their daughter Savannah Chrisley spoke during the Republican National Convention in 2024 in support of Trump, also donating nearly $1,000 to his political committee that year.
April 23Paul Walczak: Trump pardoned Walczak, a former nursing home executive who pleaded guilty to tax crimes, only weeks after his mother Elizabeth Fago attended a $1 million fundraiser for Trump that promised “face-to-face access” to the president, The New York Times reported.
FEC filings confirm Fago’s donation, and she has separately donated more than $16,000 to Trump-related committees, and Walczak reportedly claimed in his application for a pardon that he was targeted because of his mother’s advocacy for Trump, and her involvement with an effort to publish the diary of former President Joe Biden’s daughter during the 2020 election.
March 27Trevor Milton: Trump pardoned Milton, the founder of startup Nikola Motor, after the billionaire donated approximately $946,000 to Trump since 2016, $900,000 less than a month before the 2024 election.
Milton’s wife, Chelsey Virginia Milton, also separately gave a combined $927,900 to Trump’s reelection campaign in October 2024.
March 27HDR Global Trading Ltd and Bitmex Founders: Trump pardoned HDR Global Trading Ltd., the parent company of crypto exchange BitMEX, and several of its founders and ex-employees after the company and its workers were convicted for violating the Bank Secrecy Act, with the pardons also viewed as another way Trump boosted the cryptocurrency industry that is significantly enriching him and his family.
BitMEX allows customers to trade Trump’s $TRUMP memecoin and World Liberty Financial’s WLFI token on its platform—with Reuters and crypto outlets noting the exchange listed $TRUMP faster than many other competitors.
BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes, one of the people Trump pardoned, also wrote a blog post in February in support of Trump’s memecoin, calling on more politicians to release their own memecoins and describing $TRUMP as “a new weapon against political corruption.”
February 10Rod Blagojevich: The former Illinois governor worked with Trump before his presidential days, appearing as a contestant on “Celebrity Apprentice” in 2010, and despite serving in politics as a Democrat, has repeatedly cheered the president, particularly after Trump commuted Blagojevich’s 14-year sentence in 2020 before fully pardoning him in his second term.
Unlike other people who have received pardons after donating to Trump, Blagojevich has actually taken in money from the president: Trump and his company donated a combined $9,000 to Blagojevich’s political campaigns between 2002 and 2007, according to multiple reports.
January 21Ross Ulbricht: Ulbricht, who operated a marketplace on the dark web, received a pardon from Trump after the Silk Road founder’s case became heavily promoted by Libertarians, as they argued his prosecution was an example of government overreach and lobbied Trump for a pardon.
When Trump pardoned Ulbricht, he delivered on a promise during a speech at the Libertarian National Convention before the 2024 election, and Libertarian Party chair Angela McArdle told Reason that after Trump promised to free Ulbricht, the party intentionally stopped campaigning in battleground states where they could have siphoned votes away from Trump.
Trump pardoned Binance founder and CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao on October 21.
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Democratic lawmakers sent letters to some of the political donors and business partners whom Trump pardoned, including Milton, Zuberi, Zhang, Walczak and Chrisley. They also targeted a number of people without clear financial ties to the president, including Lawrence Duran, Jason Galanis, Marian Morgan and David Gentile, who were all convicted of fraud; British billionaire Joseph Lewis and Devon Archer, the former business partner of Hunter Biden who has since turned his allegiance to Trump. Former Nevada politician Michelle Fiore also received a letter, and was known as a longtime Trump supporter prior to the president pardoning her—even earning the nickname “Lady Trump.” The president previously endorsed her in a race for state treasurer while she spread his false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election. Lawmakers also sent letters to several people whom they noted had employed former Trump lawyers or Trump-friendly attorneys to help secure their pardons, such as Adriana Isabel Camberos and Andres Enrique Camberos, who were represented by former White House counsel Stefan Passantino and former Rudy Giuliani attorney Adam Katz. Ozy Media CEO Carlos Watson was questioned for receiving a pardon after employing law firm Aidala, Bertuna & Kamins, which lawmakers allege used Trump allies like Steve Bannon to help secure Watson’s pardon and made the defendant’s case to the White House directly, bypassing the Justice Department. Oak View Group co-founder Timothy Leiweke received a letter after he was represented in his pardon efforts by former Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., whom lawmakers allege successfully pushed for Leiweke’s pardon over a round of golf with the president. The Democrats did not send letters to a number of other pardon recipients with ties to the president, including Vázquez, Peters and Ulbricht, but lawmakers confirmed to Forbes that it’s possible additional letters could be sent out.
Democrats have asked the pardon recipients they questioned to respond by May 22. Lawmakers asked for them to respond to questions about their process of securing clemency and whether it involved any third party groups, lobbyists or government officials, and whether they made any financial contributions to Trump’s campaign, groups connected to his administration or any outside pardon lobbyists.
More than $1 billion. That’s likely how much the government lost in restitution and other fees from Trump’s pardon recipients. Presidential pardons erase any unpaid fees defendants have been ordered to pay as part of their sentences, though it’s unclear in many cases whether Trump’s pardon recipients had paid any part of their fees, making the exact amount the government lost out on unknown. Those who received clemency after offering some benefit to Trump were often those who owed particularly large amounts of cash: Zhao was ordered to pay $50 million in restitution; Milton owed approximately $676 million in restitution to shareholders and a Nikola investor; Ulbricht was ordered to pay $183.9 million and HDR Global Trading owed a $100 million fine. In Milton’s case, it’s unclear how much of his nine-figure fine he would have had to pay, however, as the amount was still being finalized and had not been approved by a judge at the time of his pardon.
Many of Trump’s pardons and commutations in his second term have been for people who support him politically, though FEC filings suggest many haven’t given his campaign any notable donations. Former Nevada politician Michelle Fiore was known as a longtime Trump supporter prior to the president pardoning her—even earning the nickname “Lady Trump”—and he had previously endorsed her in a race for state treasurer while she had spread his false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election. U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin described Trump’s pardon of former Virginia sheriff Scott Howard Jenkins as showing, “No MAGA left behind,” while former Republican Rep. Michael Grimm earned a pardon after speaking out in Trump’s favor and becoming an on-air personality for Trump-friendly Newsmax. Former Tennessee state Sen. Brian Kelsey, indicted on campaign finance-related crimes, was pardoned after he repeatedly praised Trump on social media and later went to work as a lawyer for America First Policy Institute, a right-wing think tank widely credited for helping to spearhead Trump’s presidential transition. Most notably, Trump’s first pardons after his inauguration were blanket pardons to participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol building, after rioters stormed the Capitol in protest of Trump’s loss in the 2020 election. The president also commuted the sentences of 14 people who were convicted of harsher crimes related to Jan. 6, including leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, though none are shown to have donated significant amounts to Trump’s campaign.
Jeremy Hutchinson, a former Arkansas state senator whom Trump pardoned for corruption and fraud charges, also spent significant money on his pardon, though it didn’t go to Trump directly. The New York Times reported in 2020 that Hutchinson’s father Tim Hutchinson paid a lobbyist $10,000 in 2020, during Trump’s first term, to lobby for his son’s release. Before Trump took up Ulbricht’s cause to shore up support among Libertarians, a man connected to the Silk Road founder, Brian Anderson, also spent $22,500 lobbying on Ulbricht’s behalf at the end of Trump’s first presidency. NBC News reported last week the Trump administration is now seeking to halt outside lobbying efforts around pardons, citing more recent reports in which people have attempted to solicit as much as $30 million to help secure clemency.
Trump pardoned former Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., on October 17, after he donated to the president's campaign and supported Trump in Congress.
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It’s unclear. Politico reported in May 2025 that Martin was reviewing pardon applications for Jan. 6 conspirators that Trump had already given commutations to, such as Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes. Crypto booster Roger Ver, known as “Bitcoin Jesus,” has also been angling for clemency from Trump for charges of tax evasion and mail fraud, Bloomberg reported in August, though a campaign to secure a pardon for Ver appears to have fizzled out. Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell—who was moved to a lower-security facility last after speaking with the DOJ and absolving Trump of any role in Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation—has also been angling for clemency, with whistleblower documents given to House Democrats suggesting Maxwell is preparing a “commutation application” for the president. Her attorney told Politico in April they would not seek a pardon until after the public interest in Epstein and the Epstein files has died down, however. Trump has not committed either way to giving Maxwell clemency, saying in October he would “have to take a look at it” and he “wouldn’t consider it or not consider,” and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in February that the last time she talked to Trump about it, “He said it’s not something he’s considering or thinking about.” Lawyers for Sean “Diddy” Combs, who was sentenced to four years in prison, have also said they’ve reached out to the White House about a pardon. Trump has complained Combs was “very hostile” to the president during his campaign, however, and told The Times in January he was not considering granting Combs’ pardon request. The president also ruled out pardons for now-indicted Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, former Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., and cryptocurrency entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried, and said he “[hadn’t] been asked” about pardoning Derek Chauvin, the officer convicted of murdering George Floyd in 2020.
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