A Closer Look at the Beneficiaries of President Trump’s Pardon Spree
If only someone had warned Boosie Badazz. The U.S. rapper is seeking a refund from Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman after the wannabe lobbyist goofballs failed to secure Boosie a pardon from President Trump. Wohl and Burkman built a reputation — and a rap sheet of their own — during the first Trump administration for absurd schemes to smear the president’s foes and for trying to suppress the Black vote. NOTUS reported this week that Boosie is now pursuing an arbitration against the two men, trying to claw back half of the $600,000 he paid them to advance his push for a pardon for charges of possessing a firearm as a felon.
You can’t blame Boosie for trying. Under the second Trump administration, the “pardon economy” is booming. Beginning with the blanket pardon of some 1,600 individuals involved with the January 6 riot on his first day in office, Trump has been handing pardons out like candy to people convicted of federal crimes who he claims were victims of retaliation by the Biden administration; who are donors to or allies of his own administration; or whose lobbyists or lawyers really do have the access to the president that Burkman and Wohl pretended to possess. Trump installed his all-purpose lout Ed Martin as U.S. pardon attorney and largely abandoned the traditional pardon process, which requires the filing of official petitions, demonstration of good conduct and remorse, and other key guardrails.
As my colleague Derick Dirmaier put it, “Anytime you introduce a new genre and economy type, that’s something.”
Below, we run through some of the most absurd pardons of Trump II.
Juan Orlando Hernández, former president of Honduras
If there’s one thing the Trump administration claims to hate, it’s drug trafficking. The U.S. military has even engaged in a lawless campaign against “narco terrorists” in the Caribbean, killing more than 200 people so far via unauthorized boat strikes. Yet Trump in November granted a “full and complete pardon” to former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, springing him from a 45-year sentence.
The U.S. government had convicted Hernández on drugs and weapons charges for being a co-conspirator in a drug operation that brought 400 tons of cocaine into the U.S., per the BBC.
Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York City
In the mold of the January 6 pardons, Trump in October pardoned his former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, his ex-chief of staff Mark Meadows, and other Big Lie promoters including attorneys Sidney Powell and John Eastman. Notably, presidents only have the power to pardon federal crimes, and this band of misfits had not received federal charges for their involvement in 2020 election schemes. Still, Martin insisted that the quartet had received a “full, complete, and unconditional” pardon, per PBS. As PBS noted, Giuliani and Meadows were charged by prosecutors in Georgia, Arizona and elsewhere over their 2020 election interference, but those cases are no longer being actively pursued.
Giuliani has taken the biggest personal hit of the four as a result of his efforts to assert that the 2020 election was stolen. He was disbarred in Washington, D.C. and New York, and had to pay $148 million for defaming two Georgia election workers with his conspiracy theories.
Chanpeng Zhao, co-founder and former CEO of Binance
Trump will often paint the individuals whose charges he’s clearing as, like him, victims of Democratic persecution. Such was the case with former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao.
In October 2025, Trump pardoned Zhao, who was sentenced to four months in prison after reaching a plea agreement acknowledging that he enabled money laundering at his crypto exchange. Under Zhao’s watch, Binance was used to conduct virtual trades involving child sex abuse, drug trafficking, and terrorism. At the time, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Zhao “was prosecuted by the Biden administration in their war on cryptocurrency,” per NBC.
In what is surely a completely unrelated move, Binance facilitated a $2 billion purchase of the Trump sons’ World Liberty Financial cryptocurrency in March 2025, months before Zhao’s pardon. Trump told 60 Minutes of Zhao, “I have no idea who he is. I was told that he was a victim, just like I was and just like many other people, of a vicious, horrible group of people in the Biden administration.”
Rod Blagojevich, former governor of Illinois
After commuting his sentence during his first term in office, Trump pardoned his former Celebrity Apprentice co-star Rod Blagojevich in February 2025. Blagojevich was infamously convicted of corruption in 2011 for a bevy of crimes including trying to sell the U.S. Senate seat that Barack Obama vacated when he was elected president.
The former Democratic governor, who served from 2003 til he was ousted and impeached in 2009, rebranded himself as a “Trump-ocrat” after his commutation. In a bid for Trump’s attention, he even wrote a piece for Newsmax from prison arguing that modern Democrats would have impeached Abraham Lincoln. In announcing the full pardon, Trump called Blagojevich’s sentence a “terrible injustice” for a nice man, per NPR.
Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX)
Guess you can’t bat 1,000 when you’re trying to curry favor via sweeping pardons. Trump has admitted he regrets pardoning Rep. Henry Cuellar in December after the congressman decided to run for reelection as a Democrat rather than switching parties.
“Such a lack of LOYALTY, something that Texas Voters, and Henry’s daughters, will not like. Oh’ well, next time, no more Mr. Nice guy!” Trump posted on Truth Social at the time. He has continued to lash out at Cuellar and make it clear this was not the outcome he expected. “Never assumed he would be running for office again, and certainly not as a Democrat,” Trump truthed in July after meeting with top congressional Republicans to talk midterms strategy, per Fox’s San Antonio affiliate.
Cuellar and his wife, Imelda, were indicted on 12 counts of bribery, conspiracy and money laundering in 2024 after the congressman allegedly accepted some $600,000 in bribes from the government of Azerbaijan and a Mexican bank, according to the Texas Tribune.
Scott Jenkins, former sheriff of Culpeper County, Virginia
Martin really said the quiet part loud with this one. Scott Jenkins was a former Virginia sheriff convicted for bribery and sentenced to 10 years in prison for accepting $75,000 to hand out badges to untrained businessmen, making them auxiliary deputy sheriffs in his department.
But Jenkins is also a diehard Trump fan and Second Amendment advocate, and Trump went ahead and pardoned him last May, blaming his conviction on a “Corrupt and Weaponized Justice Department.” “No MAGA left behind,” Martin wrote on X at the time.
Michele Fiore, former judge of Pahrump, Nevada
Fiore, a classic TPM character, was pardoned last April while awaiting sentencing for ripping off funds she’d ostensibly raised to build a statue honoring a police officer killed in the line of duty. Per the Associated Press, Fiore had raised more than $70,000 for the statue, and spent some of that money “on cosmetic surgery, rent and her daughter’s wedding.” Classy.
The White House issued no comment after Trump pardoned her in April 2025, though she was facing decades in prison after being found guilty of six counts of federal wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Fiore is a diehard Trump supporter whose name might ring bells for longtime TPM readers. The former Las Vegas city councilwoman, state assemblywoman, judge and perennial candidate inserted herself into the Bundy ranch standoff in 2016, spreading conspiracy theories about the killing of a militia member by law enforcement at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge during that months-long incident. Fiore also drew attention for volunteering to travel abroad to “put a piece of brass” in the “ocular cavity” of Syrian refugees back in 2015. She ran unsuccessful campaigns for state treasurer and governor, and was appointed as a judge in the deep-red town of Pahrump, Nevada, though she does not have a law degree, per the AP. Fiore, who the Pahrump Valley Times reports ran to hold on to her seat “despite being suspended from the bench and facing disciplinary charges,” recently lost that race.
SAVE Act Lite: A Plot to Distract Trump
In an alternate reality where you see the world through Trump’s rose-colored glasses, Senate Republicans would give a gigantic middle finger to the Democrats, decades of Senate procedure, the filibuster and, with that, their future ability to block any Dem priorities should their opponents retake control of the Senate, in order to pass the notorious SAVE America Act — the voter suppression bill that won’t leave the news cycle alone — without any hassle. But, that’s not the nightmare alternate reality we are living in. Republicans simply don’t have the votes to pass the SAVE Act in the Senate.
That means congressional Republicans are now settling for the next best thing. Try to pass a SAVE America Act Lite — a version so watered down that it’s hard to call it the SAVE Act with a straight face — and hope and pray that Trump doesn’t realize.
House Republicans released (and advanced out of committee) a budget resolution this week. The budget resolution — as the past two party-line reconciliation bills may have taught you already — is simply a blueprint that gives committees instructions and total targets for how much they can spend. This time around, fueled by Trump and his far-right MAGA allies’ obsession with the SAVE America Act, the blueprint includes instructions to put $10 billion towards election related matters — or, as I like to call it, SAVE Lite.
House Republicans can’t just plop the SAVE Act they already passed or the beefed up version Trump is yelling about (which implements a near all ban on mail-in ballots) into a budget reconciliation bill because it has nothing to do with the budget. Well, they can try — but the Senate parliamentarian will shut it down quicker than Trump can say “The 2020 election was rigged.” So in their minds, the next best thing is trying to bribe states with federal grants to make them voluntarily implement their own restrictive rules.
That is not the SAVE Act and will not have the same kind of sweeping restrictions. But it seems they are hoping it will be enough to shut up the president, some of their most vocal colleagues and the online MAGA troll army.
It is yet to be seen if House Republicans, who are leading the charge on this, can even get together as a caucus and pass the blueprint. But, even if they did, getting it through the upper chamber would be an uphill battle.
It doesn’t even seem Senate Republicans are remotely on board with this plan. “That’d be news to me,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said Thursday when asked about Johnson’s timeline for the Senate to adopt their budget resolution before the August recess.
The split between the upper and lower chamber is clear as day, even as the House forges ahead with their plan. Johnson and co. will, of course, eventually need the Senate to get onboard at some point or this will all be a colossal waste of time.
The Handbasket x TPM Are Hosting an Event!
There are a handful of tickets left for our upcoming event on July 29. We’ll be hosting an evening of trivia, drinks and conversation at the Crystal Lake bar in Brooklyn in partnership with the great independent journalist Marisa Kabas, founder of The Handbasket newsletter.
Come hang with us, and get your ticket now before they’re all gone!
(Don’t) Eat Your Vegetables
How Much of This Week’s News Do You Remember?
- Mitch McConnell shared a photo from his hospital room as proof he is recovering from his fall. What was included that could indicate the date: a) a digital clock b) a newspaper c) both d) a calendar
- What was Lindsey Graham’s cause of death?
- For what position did Trump endorse My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell this week?
Answers below
You Said It
“If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed…….and we will deserve it.” – Lindsey Graham, 2016
Let’s Pump Our ‘Warfighters’ Full of Testosterone
Everyone’s favorite Big Strong Boy Pete Hegseth this week announced that the Department of Defense is making a “testosterone deficiency” screening a part of annual required medical screenings for troops 30 or older. He wants to use taxpayer funds to make voluntary testosterone replacement therapy available to those who want it.
The announcement came via a direct-to-camera X video literally captioned “the High-T Department of War.” As many commentators pointed out, Hegseth seems to be fully endorsing gender affirming care for dudes while banning transgender troops from service.
Butler 2024, Meet Dallas 1963
Monday July 13 marked the two-year anniversary of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. In his latest Rough Edges column, Mike Rothschild explores how Butler became the new Dallas 1963 — Ground Zero for a web of conspiracy theories about international plots, far-right or far-left agitators, and elaborate cover-ups. Mike breaks down the specific conspiracies that emerged around Butler and explains why they’re so salient — especially as the assassination attempts against Trump keep piling up.
What Summer Looks Like Now
Trivia answers: 1) b, a newspaper 2) aortic rupture 3) governor of Minnesota
Hard to enjoy much of anything on such a horrible news cycle. But here’s my Saturday morning kitty, Shadowcat !
Morning weekenders.
Everyone’s favorite pardon, Mitch McConnell’s pardon (well, its claimed) from the afterlife.
Please Mike Johnson. Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you. Save the save the SAVE Act.