On 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. After 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 left thousands of North Carolina retirees unable to access their annuities for years. Now, the lobbyist is back, pushing for a pardon for the same man, insurance mogul Greg Lindberg. The new administration has a team of appointees focusing on the process, with a focus on clemency grants that underscore the president’s grievances about what he sees as the political weaponization of the justice system, reports the New York Times.
Lawyers and lobbyists with Trump connections have collected large fees from clemency seekers who would not be eligible for second chances under apolitical criteria 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. Clemency petitioners are circumventing that system, tailoring their pitches to the president by emphasizing their loyalty to him and echoing his claims of political persecution. 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 law Prof. Rachel Barkow of New York University. “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.” Trump’s White House has marginalized the Justice Department pardon attorney’s office, shifting control of much of the clemency operation to the White House Counsel’s Office. On Friday evening, Elizabeth Oyer, who had been the U.S. pardon attorney since being appointed in 2022 in the Biden administration, said she had been fired by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.