What it takes to get a Trump pardon: Loyalty, connections or the pardon czar

One civil rights attorney seeking clemency for an imprisoned client scored an invite to Mar-a-Lago, then approached President Donald Trump as he dined. An advocate combed through sentencing memos to find details she thought would resonate with the political appointees now in charge. A lawyer flew to Memphis to have lunch at the home of the pardon czar - a position created by the president.

Since taking office in January, Trump has upended the federal pardoning process, increasing the White House’s authority over a task that until now was largely governed by Justice Department guidelines. Although many presidents have issued controversial pardons and circumvented their lawyers’ advice, Trump has far outpaced his predecessors during the first year of his term and often done so with public flair, relishing one of the few unrestrained powers of the president.

People are making money off the new system. Trump’s pardon frenzy has given rise to a lucrative cottage industry of high-powered lawyers connected to the White House who seek his attention on behalf of their convicted clients. In some cases, applicants have hired big-name lawyers who can charge hefty legal fees. In others, clients leverage their own connections to Mar-a-Lago or members of Trump’s inner circle.

Although ethics experts said the shift undermines a process designed to ensure fairness, administration officials argue that the existing, backlogged system fails incarcerated people, who sometimes wait years to be considered.

“I’m not interested in who’s connected to the president or who’s connected to anyone else,” said Alice Johnson, Trump’s pardon czar. “I look at each individual case and what they’ve done and if this person is ready to reenter society, and if they’ve paid their debt.”

Advocates and attorneys have gone to great lengths to get their cases before the White House. In interviews, they described a four-pronged approach to getting the president’s attention: appealing directly to Trump on TV shows he watches or at places he is known to go, making large monetary contributions to business and groups affiliated with him, forging relationships with the Justice Department’s pardon office and engaging the czar herself.

“You can’t blame people for trying to go through the back door if the front door is locked,” said Amy Povah, a former inmate and founder of a clemency advocacy group that advocated for a woman pardoned last month.

At the center of it all is Johnson, a widely respected criminal justice advocate whose conviction for federal drug and money laundering charges was wiped away by Trump during his first term. As pardon czar, Johnson said in an interview, she consults Justice Department attorneys to sift through court and prison records but relies mostly on her lived experience and the instincts of the president.

“I advocated for this process to be more effective and quicker and not get hung up in the DOJ,” said Johnson, whose own case captured Trump’s attention with the help of reality TV star Kim Kardashian. “The president wanted it to be in the White House.”

Trump’s hiring of Johnson to oversee clemency actions increased the White House’s influence over how cases are evaluated - power that administration officials have said is needed to expedite consideration. More than 8,000 clemency applications are awaiting vetting by the Justice Department, according to the latest department figures. Most applicants are incarcerated and are seeking commutations to cut their sentences short.

Some of Trump’s recipients fit a profile similar to grant recipients in previous administrations. Others, critics say, stood out for their demonstrations of loyalty to and financial investment in the president. On his first day in office, he pardoned nearly all of the roughly 1,600 people charged with crimes at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 - a move that absolved rioters of any legal ramifications for their involvement in one of the most divisive events in American history. Since then, he has granted clemency to dozens of other Americans.

Trump last month pardoned Paul Walczak, a Florida businessman who pleaded guilty to tax crimes, after Walczak’s mother attended a million-dollar dinner in support of the president, the New York Times reported. Trevor Milton, the Nikola founder convicted of securities fraud and wire fraud, was pardoned after he donated more than $1 million to Trump’s campaign. His longtime attorney in the case is the brother of Attorney General Pam Bondi, though a person familiar with the matter - speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss information not made public - said Brad Bondi was not involved in the pardon application.

Trump also pardoned Julie Chrisley and Todd Chrisley, reality stars who were only a fraction through their prison sentences for tax evasion and defrauding banks. Johnson said she introduced the Chrisleys’ case to the president after the daughter, Savannah Chrisley, who spoke at the Republican National Convention in support of Trump, approached her and convinced her of its merits. She declined to say where the two met.

“He is delegitimizing courts, jury verdicts - even prosecutions by his own Department of Justice,” said Liz Oyer, a former Justice Department pardon attorney whom the Trump administration fired in March.

The White House does not adhere to the Justice Department’s manual for clemency actions, said an administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal processes.

Clemency petitions recommended for presidential approval have typically wound their way through multiple rounds of reviews by federal prosecutors and met recommendations laid out in the Justice Department’s clemency manual. Under the guidelines, applicants must show remorse and meet high standards of productivity for extended periods after they complete their sentences.

The process has taken on added importance since America’s prison population swelled in the 1990s under harsh sentencing laws. Those laws were later overhauled but did not typically provide relief to those already incarcerated. Trump, who was found guilty last year on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in a process he decried as slanted, has made criminal justice revision a focus in office.

Johnson said the flaws in a system she experienced firsthand shaped the changes she is implementing as czar. In her first few months on the job, for example, she paid closer attention to the views of prison staff than prosecutors offices that last engaged with the person decades earlier. She stressed that she collaborates with the Justice Department and that White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and White House Counsel David Warrington review every case before it reaches the president.

Rachel Barkow, a professor at the NYU School of Law and an expert on clemency power, commended Johnson for taking fewer cues from prosecutors but questioned, “If you now have to go through the White House and Alice, is there truly equal access for everyone?”

Before assuming her new job, Johnson joined Kanye West and others in fighting for clemency for Larry Hoover, once an infamous gang leader in the Midwest.

Hoover’s attorneys, Justin Moore and Josh Dubin, credit her with his commutation last month.

“She sees herself in Larry,” Dubin said. “And she sees Larry in herself.”

Scott Jenkins, a former Virginia sheriff convicted of federal bribery and fraud charges at the end of the Biden administration, found a champion in Trump appointee Ed Martin, according to two people familiar with the decision who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private discussions. Martin, whose nomination by Trump to serve as the top federal prosecutor in D.C. stalled in the Senate, was sworn in last month as the Justice Department’s pardon attorney. Martin was also named the head of Justice Department’s new “weaponization” group - dual roles that could give him the power to review past prosecutions he perceives as politically motivated and then push to grant those defendants clemency.

Presidents typically reserve controversial pardons for the end of their terms. Republicans and Democrats criticized former president Joe Biden for granting broad pardons to his son, Hunter Biden, and other relatives, as he left office, fearing that those unusual and personal clemency actions could be used as justification by future presidents to abuse the pardon powers.

In January, John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley who served as deputy assistant attorney general in the George W. Bush administration, wrote an op-ed in Newsweek praising Trump for allowing criminal processes to play out before granting pardons - unlike Biden, who issued preemptive clemency actions. The piece was titled “Sorry, Biden’s Pardons Are Much Worse Than Trump’s.”

After last month’s pardons, Yoo changed his mind.

“It’s like a celebrity pardon-a-thon,” he said. “It’s all these people with well-known cases, but it’s not because great matters of state are involved.”

That week in May, Johnson walked into the Oval Office with case files for people she hoped would get a second chance.

On her list: A woman who helped her husband run a drug trafficking organization; a man who led efforts to impeach Biden while in prison for fraud; and Hoover, the former gangster who built one of the most sprawling criminal enterprises in the Midwest.

Johnson said she had chosen some candidates after conversations with their attorneys, including one who joined her in Memphis for lunch. (Johnson said she does not tend to invite attorneys to her home but made an exception during a particularly busy time in her schedule.) Others advocated directly to the president - in a dining room at his Mar-a-Lago estate, on the stage of the Republican National Convention and on Fox News.

During her meeting with Trump, Johnson said, he approved of some of her nominations and rejected others. She said the president was invested in each case.

The next day, he pardoned 17 of the people she had presented and commuted the sentences of eight others.