Bernard Kerik, the former New York police commissioner, who was convicted of tax fraud and lying to the government, was pardoned by President Trump. Photo / Andrew Burton, The New York Times
The process bypassed the formal procedures used by past presidents and was driven instead by friendship, fame, personal empathy and a shared sense of persecution.
Early Tuesday morning, Bernard Kerik's telephone rang. On the line was David Safavian, a friend and fellow former government official who like Kerik was once imprisoned for misconduct. Safavian had life-changing news.
Safavian, who had ties to the White House, said that he was putting together a letter asking President Donald Trump to pardon Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner who pleaded guilty to tax fraud and other charges. Safavian needed names of supporters to sign the letter. By noon.
Kerik hit the phones. Shortly after 10am, he reached Geraldo Rivera, the Fox News correspondent and a friend of Trump's. Rivera, who described Kerik as "an American hero," instantly agreed to sign the one-page letter. Kerik called Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., and when Safavian reached King around 10:30, he too agreed to sign.
At 11:57am, Kerik's phone rang again. This time it was the president.
"He said, 'As we speak, I am signing a full presidential pardon on your behalf,' " Kerik recalled in an interview Wednesday. "Once he started talking and I realised what we were talking about, I got emotional."
At 1:41pm, Trump approached reporters before boarding Air Force One and mentioned that he had pardoned Kerik. At 2:10, the White House announced that Safavian had been pardoned as well.
The clemency orders that the president issued that day to celebrity felons like Kerik, Rod Blagojevich and Michael Milken came about through a typically Trumpian process, an ad hoc scramble that bypassed the formal procedures used by past presidents and was driven instead by friendship, fame, personal empathy and a shared sense of persecution. While aides said the timing was random, it reinforced Trump's antipathy toward the law enforcement establishment.
All 11 recipients had an inside connection or were promoted on Fox News. Some were vocal supporters of Trump, donated to his campaign or in one case had a son who weekended in the Hamptons with the president's eldest son. Even three obscure women serving time on drug or fraud charges got on Trump's radar screen through a personal connection.
While 14,000 clemency petitions sit unaddressed at the Justice Department's Office of the Pardon Attorney, Trump eagerly granted relief to a former football team owner who hosted a pre-inauguration party, a onetime contestant on Celebrity Apprentice and an infamous investor championed both by Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal lawyer, and by the billionaire who hosted a US$10 million fundraiser for Trump just last weekend.
"There is now no longer any pretense of regularity," said Margaret Love, who served as a pardon lawyer under President Bill Clinton and now represents clients seeking clemency. "The president seems proud to declare that he makes his own decisions without relying on any official source of advice, but acts on the recommendation of friends, colleagues and political allies."
Trump's advisers acknowledge that the process is unique to this president but stressed that he has become personally committed to countering the excesses of the criminal justice system, a mission fueled by his own scalding encounters with investigations since taking office. In addition to his pardons, Trump in 2018 signed the First Step Act providing sentencing relief for many criminals.
"The president seems to be someone who's willing to listen to people's appeals," said Robert Blagojevich, who lobbied for a commutation for his brother, Rod Blagojevich, the former governor of Illinois sentenced to 14 years for trying to essentially sell the Senate seat vacated by President Barack Obama. "I think he's just got an antenna to listen to people who have been truly wronged by the system."
Indeed, Trump takes personal pleasure in dispensing mercy. He called Patti Blagojevich, who is married to the former governor, right after signing the papers Tuesday. He likewise called Ricky Munoz to tell him that his wife, Crystal Munoz, was coming home.
Advisers said there is little rhyme or reason to how Trump chooses clemency recipients. He meets with advisers every few weeks to discuss various cases. Once he makes a decision, he tends to announce them right away, without bothering to draft a communications strategy, reasoning that there is no point in anyone sitting in prison longer than needed.
Trump recognises that his friends-and-family approach generates criticism but has repeatedly cited his 2018 pardon of I. Lewis Libby Jr. as proof that he is willing to absorb attacks that others would not. President George W. Bush refused to pardon Libby, who served as chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney and was convicted of lying to authorities.
Trump has known some of those he favoured this week for years, including Kerik and Milken, the so-called junk bond king who tried at least twice to obtain a pardon from Bush without success. Trump called Milken "a brilliant guy" in his first memoir and has hosted him at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. He called Kerik "a friend of mine" and "a great guy" in 2004 when Kerik was forced to withdraw his nomination for Bush's secretary of homeland security because of ethics issues.
In addition to Giuliani, Milken's pardon was supported by Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and his developer friends Howard Lorber and Richard LeFrak. Also supportive was Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, a longtime friend who last year flew on Milken's private jet from Washington to Los Angeles and helped secure a real estate tax break that could benefit Milken.
Paul Pogue, the former owner of a Texas construction company, was pardoned for tax charges after his family contributed more than $200,000 in the last six months to help reelect Trump. In August, his son Benjamin and daughter-in-law Ashleigh posted a picture on Instagram of themselves with Donald Trump Jr. and his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, in the Hamptons. "What an experience spending the weekend with these two and more!" Ashleigh Pogue wrote.
In announcing his pardon, the White House cited Paul Pogue's charitable work around the world, including the creation of two nonprofit organizations that help rebuild churches and provide aid to people after natural disasters.
Ariel Friedler, the former executive of a software development company who pleaded guilty to conspiring to hack a competitor, found his way in the door through Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey and a close ally of Trump's.
Christie said Wednesday that he met with Friedler in person and agreed to represent him in a pardon application after being referred by a former prosecutor he knew. Christie said he heard nothing since 2018 about the case until Trump called him out of the blue last Thursday to ask about it.
"He said, 'Listen, I've reviewed the application, but tell me what you think about this guy and what happened to him,' " Christie said. A former prosecutor, Christie said he told the president that the government overreached.
"Do you really think this guy has a good heart?" he recalled Trump asking.
"I'm not soft," Christie said he replied, "but this is over the top."
Angela Stanton, an author and television personality with a record stemming from a stolen-vehicle ring, was championed by Alveda King, a niece of Martin Luther King Jr. A Fox News contributor and outspoken Trump supporter, King appeared with Stanton at a "Women for Trump" summit in 2018.
While most of this week's recipients had political ties, Trump's defenders pointed to three women whose sentences he commuted without any notable political background. But even those three — Munoz, 40; Tynice Nichole Hall, 36; and Judith Negron, 48 — came to his attention because of someone he already knew, Alice Marie Johnson.
Trump commuted Johnson's life sentence for a nonviolent drug conviction in 2018 after reality television star Kim Kardashian West made a personal plea. Since then, Johnson has become his prison reform whisperer and appeared in a multimillion-dollar Super Bowl ad for his campaign.
During an October appearance at Benedict College, a historically black school in South Carolina, Trump told Johnson to give him names of others who had been mistreated. Johnson then traveled to Washington to meet with prisoner advocates, and they identified about 10 women for the White House.
Johnson served in prison with all three of those released this week by Trump.
Negron, who was sentenced to 35 years for Medicare fraud, filed a clemency petition years ago, but it "disappeared into the bowels of the government," according to her lawyer, Bill Norris. She was stunned to learn that the president had suddenly ordered her freed. "I'm indebted to him," she said Wednesday.
Munoz, serving nearly two decades on a marijuana charge, said that she was called to the office of her case manager and counsellor Tuesday. "When I went into their office, they said, 'Who do you know? Do you know some people?' " She did not understand at first. But the person she knew had secured her a commutation
Advocates for justice overhaul said Trump should be praised for his interventions. "Some people are trying to bash Trump for letting people circumvent the process and go directly to the White House," said Amy Ralston Povah, founder of the Clemency for All Nonviolent Drug Offenders Foundation. "But the system is broken."
Among those activists these days is Safavian, the government's top procurement official under Bush sentenced to a year in prison for covering up ties to corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Now the general counsel for the American Conservative Union Foundation, Safavian lobbies for legislation and programs granting leniency and job training for lower-level drug offenders as well as white-collar former convicts like himself.
Not everyone believes in his conversion. Walter Shaub, former head of the Office of Government Ethics, said Trump's pardon of Safavian sent a message to dishonest officials to "wait long enough and a corrupt president may bless your corruption."
But others, including liberal CNN commentator Van Jones, praised Safavian's work to redeem the system, calling him "a quiet wonder" and declining to second-guess the pardon.
As with the others, Safavian had friends in the right places. The head of the conservative union, Matt Schlapp, is a strong supporter of Trump, and his wife, Mercedes Schlapp, worked as the White House strategic communications director before moving to the president's campaign.
As he pushed for Kerik's pardon, Safavian said he did not realize that he would receive one himself. "Quite frankly, it was out of the blue for me," he said. "I was in the drive-thru window at McDonald's when I got the call that the president had just signed my pardon.
"I had zero role in the pardon process," he added. "None. I didn't ask for it."
Written by: Peter Baker, J. David Goodman, Michael Rothfeld and Elizabeth Williamson
Photographs by: Laura McDermott, Phlan M. Ebenhack, Andrew Burton, Keith Meyers and Anna Moneymaker
© 2020 THE NEW YORK TIMES
Russell Vought was a key architect of Project 2025.