On the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, a top White House official assured a Republican lobbyist that his client’s pardon application would be placed in the pipeline for consideration by President Trump before he left office.
Hours later, the administration was torn apart by Trump supporters’ attack on the Capitol. The lobbyist never heard back about the pardon, and his client remained imprisoned for his role in an insurance bribery scandal that shook North Carolina Republican politics and left thousands of retirees unable to obtain access to their annuities for years.
Four years later, the lobbyist is back, pushing for a presidential pardon for the same client, the insurance mogul Greg E. Lindberg.
But this time around is different. 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.
Lawyers and lobbyists with connections to Mr. Trump have scrambled to take advantage. They have collected large fees from clemency seekers who would not be eligible for second chances under apolitical criteria that are intended to guide a Justice Department system for recommending mercy for those who have served their time or demonstrated remorse and a lower likelihood of recidivism.
Instead, clemency petitioners are mostly circumventing that system, tailoring their pitches to the president by emphasizing their loyalty to him and echoing his claims of political persecution.
Among them are a rapper convicted in connection with a Malaysian embezzlement scheme, a reality-television-star couple found guilty of defrauding banks and evading taxes, and two Washington, D.C., police officers convicted after a chase that killed a young man.
Mr. Trump’s use of clemency in his first term “was all about cronyism and partisanship and helping out his friends and his political advisers,” said Rachel E. Barkow, a professor at New York University School of Law who has studied the use of presidential clemency. “The potential for corruption is higher” this time around, 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.”
“Like any sequel,” she said, “it’s going to be worse.”
An Unorthodox Approach
Both Mr. Trump and former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. were criticized for ignoring the screening and guidelines of the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney in their clemency grants. Clemency experts objected to Mr. Biden’s far-reaching pardons of his son Hunter and other family members, and to Mr. Trump’s sweeping grant of clemency to all of the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
The process used by the pardon attorney’s office to identify and recommend applicants for clemency is intended to favor those who accept responsibility for their crimes and are unlikely to reoffend.
Presidents are under no obligation to act on the office’s recommendations in extending second chances through pardons, which wipe out convictions, and through commutations, which reduce prison sentences.
According to people familiar with the matter, Mr. Trump’s White House had marginalized the pardon attorney’s office, shifting control of much of the clemency operation to the White House Counsel’s Office.
On Friday evening, Elizabeth G. Oyer, who had been the U.S. pardon attorney since being appointed in 2022 during the Biden administration, said on social media that she had been fired from the post by Todd Blanche, the newly confirmed deputy attorney general.
Even before her firing, a senior White House official said in an interview that “the White House Counsel’s Office is the one handling all clemency petitions.”
Among the White House officials involved are Sean Hayes, who worked for Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, and Gary Lawkowski, who served as deputy general counsel for Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign.
In addition, Mr. Trump last month named Alice Johnson as “pardon czar,” responsible for recommending clemency grants. That formalized a role she had filled as an outside adviser during Mr. Trump’s first term, when she advocated for legislation and clemency grants to reduce sentences for mostly nonviolent drug offenders. Mr. Trump in 2018 had commuted her life sentence for nonviolent drug-related offenses, then granted her a full pardon in 2020.
Clemency supporters expressed optimism that Ms. Johnson would push for pardons and commutations for people of color, as well as for those who lack wealth or political connections and whose petitions might otherwise languish in the pardon attorney’s office. Before Mr. Trump, her own application had been denied by the office, which has drawn criticism for moving too slowly and giving too much weight to prosecutors’ views.
Shared Grievances
Alex Little, a former federal prosecutor, represents three people seeking clemency with appeals that mirror Mr. Trump’s grievances.
“There are key players in the Trump administration who have had a front-row seat to prosecutorial misconduct,” he said in an interview. “It changes your perspective on these issues, and it’s difficult to ignore that when you’re back in government.”
Mr. Little prepared thick binders with court documents, testimonials and narrative summaries to present to the White House and certain Justice Department officials — but notably not the Office of the Pardon Attorney — in arguing for mercy for his clients.
Among them are the conservative reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley. They were sentenced in 2022 to years in federal prison for bank fraud and tax evasion, which prosecutors said was done to fund a lavish lifestyle. Mr. Little wrote that their conviction “exemplifies the weaponization of justice against conservatives and public figures, eroding basic constitutional protections.”
The summary, which was read aloud by the Chrisleys’ daughter, Savannah Chrisley, on her podcast last month, notes that her parents are “vocal supporters of President Trump.”
Mr. Little’s summary linked the prosecutors in the Chrisleys’ case to Fani T. Willis, the Georgia state prosecutor who charged Mr. Trump in 2023 in connection with his efforts to cling to power after the 2020 election.
Mr. Little is also working on the Lindberg case, comparing him in the pardon packet to Mr. Trump, and writing that Mr. Lindberg “became a target of overzealous career prosecutors at the D.O.J. and F.B.I. who twisted a legitimate business dispute into criminal charges.” His summary notes that Mr. Lindberg was previously represented by Mr. Blanche, and suggesting that the deputy attorney general, who is expected to oversee the Justice Department’s clemency portfolio, believes the case was flawed.
The Justice Department did not respond to questions about whether Mr. Blanche would recuse himself from the matter.
Also working for Mr. Lindberg are two well-connected lawyers who had pushed for a pardon at the end of the last Trump administration: the veteran Republican lobbyist Alex Vogel and the noted defense attorney Alan M. Dershowitz, who had defended Mr. Trump during his first impeachment trial and developed a niche as a clemency advocate toward the end of the administration.
Mr. Dershowitz in an interview cast his clemency work as a continuation of his legal representation, adding, “I only take on cases that I think merit clemency.”
Mr. Vogel was the person who was lobbying a top White House official in the hours before the Capitol riot, according to a person familiar with the episode.
High-Priced Advocacy
Mr. Vogel’s firm was paid $100,000 in less than three months of lobbying for one of Mr. Lindberg’s companies back then, according to congressional filings, hinting at the lucrative fees available to those who offer to help secure pardons from Mr. Trump. A different Lindberg company re-engaged Mr. Vogel’s firm after Mr. Trump’s victory in the 2024 election and paid it $100,000 in December.
Another Trump-connected lawyer at a law firm where Mr. Vogel is a partner, Jonathan Fahey, represented a Washington, D.C., police officer who was pardoned by Mr. Trump in January. The officer had been sentenced to four years in prison for conspiring to cover up a police chase that killed a 20-year-old Black man. The episode led to days of racial-justice protests and clashes in the nation’s capital.
Mr. Fahey, who has complained about a politicization of the Justice Department against Mr. Trump, in a social media post called the officer “the victim of a politically motivated prosecution.”
Similarly, allies of the Sam Bankman-Fried have been consulting with a former Trump campaign lawyer to position the imprisoned cryptocurrency mogul for a pardon by claiming he was treated unfairly by a prosecutor and a judge with whom Mr. Trump’s team has clashed.
Margaret Love, who served as the U.S. pardon attorney in the 1990s and now works in private practice advising petitioners, warned that Mr. Trump’s approach to clemency risked favoring wealthy or well-connected people who claim mistreatment by the justice system.
“Ordinary people who express remorse and seek forgiveness should be able to access clemency’s benefits without the intervention of high-priced lawyers and lobbyists,” she said in an email.
Other lawyers with ties to Mr. Trump who successfully secured clemency during his first term are back with more clients.
Adam Katz previously helped secure a commutation for Adriana Camberos, a Southern California businesswoman who was sentenced to prison for her role in a scheme to sell millions of counterfeit bottles of the caffeinated drink 5-hour Energy. She was convicted in a new fraud case involving consumer goods in October, becoming one of at least seven people who have since been charged with new crimes, including domestic violence, according to analyses by The New York Times.
Mr. Katz, who once represented Rudolph W. Giuliani in a defamation case related to his effort to overturn Mr. Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, is pursuing a pardon for the rapper Prakazrel Michel, known as Pras, who was convicted in 2023 for foreign lobbying violations and other crimes related to a Malaysian embezzlement scheme.
Allies of Mr. Michel, who is Black, have argued to Trump administration officials that he was treated more harshly by the Biden Justice Department than white associates who were implicated in connection with the case.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Michel suggested that argument would resonate with Ms. Johnson, asserting that she “understands more than anyone the gross injustices embedded in our criminal justice system.”
Ms. Johnson did not respond to a request for comment.
Erica L. Green contributed reporting.
