In Trump’s pardons for public officials, Republicans win most of the mercy

In October 2024, a federal jury in Las Vegas convicted Michele Fiore, a local elected official and ardent supporter of President Donald Trump, of charity fraud. Fiore, the jury found, solicited donations for a slain police officer’s memorial and spent nearly $80,000 of it on plastic surgery, her daughter’s wedding and rent.

The jury deliberated for less than two hours, including a lunch break, before finding Fiore guilty on seven charges brought by the Department of Justice.

Weeks before she was to be sentenced last year, Trump granted Fiore “a full and unconditional pardon,” sparing her the prospect of decades in prison, payment of criminal fines, and any restitution to donors whose funds she misspent. In a statement at the time, a White House spokesperson noted Fiore’s support for the president and said that Biden-era prosecutors had targeted the politician, known in Nevada as “Lady Trump,” because of “outspoken conservative views.”

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In an email to Reuters, Fiore criticized prosecutors and witnesses and maintained her innocence. “I have never taken one red cent of donations for my personal use,” she wrote. She declined to answer detailed questions about her career, case and conviction.

Fiore is one of at least 85 public officials granted clemency by Trump after charges or convictions related to corruption, according to the first comprehensive examination of such measures over the president’s two terms in office so far. The Reuters review shows that the political impetus behind Fiore’s pardon wasn’t an outlier: The recipients of Trump’s clemency for public officials overwhelmingly have been fellow Republicans or vocal proponents of his MAGA movement.

They include at least 11 of 15 Republican members of Congress convicted of wrongdoing over the past two decades. Of the 85 public officials identified in Reuters’ analysis, 36 were elected as Republicans and another 19 were Republicans appointed to political office. Nine others had either campaigned for Trump or publicly espoused support for his agenda. Only four were known Democrats, including one Texas congressman whom Trump erroneously believed would switch parties after the pardon. The news agency couldn’t determine partisan affiliation for the 17 other officials.

Trump’s repeated acts of clemency for public officials charged with or convicted of corruption-related crimes have led to what more than a dozen current and former prosecutors, along with other legal experts and political researchers, say is impunity for people meant to uphold the public trust. The impunity, these people said, can encourage more wrongdoing by other officials, eroding the foundational democratic concept that no one, no matter what office they hold, is above the law. The problem, they added, is compounded if the concept of clemency is tainted by perceptions of partisan or personal bias.

“President Trump is trying to end accountability for public officials,” said Phillip Halpern, a retired assistant US attorney in San Diego who prosecuted two Republican congressmen Trump later pardoned. “He’s setting a standard to encourage corruption and allow it to flourish.”

Trump’s absolution has allowed nearly three-quarters of the 85 officials in Reuters’ analysis to leave prison early, evade trials or sentencing, or regain eligibility to exercise certain freedoms, like owning a gun. In total, the analysis found, these people were spared 130 years behind bars and avoided payment of more than $15 million in financial penalties. More than half of the recipients have remained in politics either as public officials or as vocal supporters of Trump and his agenda. That includes Fiore, who isn’t working but is still earning a government salary as a Nevada county justice of the peace.

Noting his own indictments by federal prosecutors during the presidency of Joe Biden, Trump has said he aims to right wrongs by a DOJ that he has claimed – repeatedly and without evidence – targeted innocent people for partisan purposes. “I am your warrior,” he told a conservative gathering in 2023, while campaigning for re-election. “I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”

Administration officials have repeatedly defended the president’s use of the pardon power, granted by the Constitution and ample in scope. Lauren Bis, a White House spokesperson, in a statement said Trump grants clemency for “many Americans unjustly prosecuted by the Biden administration’s weaponized Department of Justice.”

Reuters’ review encompassed clemency recipients who held an elected or appointed government role or were employed in the civil or uniformed services. Most were paid from government coffers. Recipients included seven advisors to Trump, three DOJ officials, three governors, 10 state lawmakers, two city council members, two judges and two sheriffs. Their charges and crimes included fraud, bribery, conspiracy, racketeering, obstruction of justice and others.

Reuters’ tally of public officials doesn’t include at least 18 active-duty military, police and government employees who were among those charged with or convicted for storming the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Before Trump issued his blanket clemency for the roughly 1,500 people involved in the riot, many of these 18 had used their official credentials to rally others against the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election.

Some of Trump’s predecessors have also drawn fire for controversial use of the pardon power, most recently Biden because of clemency for his son, Hunter, convicted on federal gun and tax charges. Both Biden and former President Barack Obama commuted more prison sentences than Trump, cutting short the punishments of many non-violent drug offenders. But over his nearly six years in office so far, Trump has granted far more pardons than any other recent president, particularly through his mass clemency for the Capitol rioters.

Sending signals

Earlier this year, Reuters examined the president’s upending of the pardon process. In nearly 2,000 acts of clemency, Trump has forgone longstanding practice of presidents working with the DOJ to evaluate who should merit clemency. He has instead relied on a growing number of clemency consultants who, leveraging close ties to the president or his inner circle, advocate for would-be recipients.

The shift, the news agency found, has marginalized the DOJ, where a series of guidelines shaped the process for more than a century and sought to ensure that recipients admit guilt and espouse remorse before receiving clemency. Among many of those whom Trump pardoned, Reuters found, remorse has mostly been replaced by defiance, expressions of disdain for prosecutors and courts, and a sense of victimization similar to that voiced by the president himself.

Of the 85 public officials in the Reuters review, more than three-quarters didn’t cooperate with prosecutors. Most neither pleaded guilty nor publicly expressed remorse after their conviction.

Trump’s repeated pardoning of public officials, legal experts say, is part of a broader weakening of the federal government’s tools to fight corruption in the first place. Consider the administration’s management of the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, a prosecutorial office established after the Watergate crisis to fight corruption and prevent the politicization of criminal cases.

More than half of the public officials in Reuters’ review were charged or convicted in cases prosecuted with involvement by the Public Integrity Section. That team, based in Washington, numbered about 30 at the end of the Biden administration. The squad now has just two full-time prosecutors, according to four people familiar with the office’s operations. In addition to several senior prosecutors in the unit who resigned in protest of new department directives, others moved elsewhere in the DOJ.

Audrey Cook, a DOJ spokesperson, in a statement wrote that the department “remains committed to identifying, investigating, and prosecuting public corruption wherever the facts and the law warrant it.” She added: “No one should mistake the President’s use of his constitutional pardon authority for a change in the law or a license to engage in criminal conduct.”

At the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which historically worked closely with the Public Integrity Section, Director Kash Patel last year shut down an elite squad that focused on corruption and fired some of its investigators. Patel claimed the squad, known as CR-15, was “weaponizing law enforcement” in its investigation of false claims by Trump and Republican lawmakers that Biden stole the 2020 presidential election.

FBI officials didn’t respond to requests from Reuters for comment.

Changes like those to the Public Integrity Section have slowed prosecution of corruption cases.

The DOJ generally charges hundreds of federal, state and local officials with corruption-related crimes annually, according to summaries the DOJ provided to Congress each year before Trump resumed office in 2025. But so far in his second term, the DOJ hasn't disclosed the start of a single new bribery case, according to a June study authored by two former anti-corruption prosecutors and published by the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.

“Why would any prosecutor or FBI agent want to do this kind of work now?” said Molly Gaston, one of the authors and one of several DOJ veterans fired by the administration because of their involvement in Trump’s prosecution. “It’s nothing but a career killer.”

For those convicted before the recent pullback in prosecution, Trump’s pardons can be career revivers. And for Trump, the pardons can generate goodwill that the recipients then redeploy on behalf of the president and his agenda.

“If President Trump asks me to do just about anything, I’ll do it,” said Rod Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor, a Democrat, who was convicted last decade for crimes including his effort to sell Obama’s vacant Senate seat.

Since leaving prison, and receiving a commutation and pardon from Trump, Blagojevich has reemerged as a lobbyist, earning $50,000 this year for helping a fugitive former Indiana city councilman seek a pardon, federal lobbying records show. He is also busy promoting a forthcoming book, “Framed, F*cked, and Freed,” relating his legal travails and featuring a blurb from Trump calling Blagojevich’s conviction “a terrible injustice.”

Blagojevich told Reuters that Trump, during a phone call after his pardon in 2025, said he would support a political comeback for the former governor. Reuters couldn’t independently confirm the details of the conversation.

“The signal he sends with the pardon power is: If you help me personally, Donald Trump, I will help you personally, even if you engaged in corruption,” said Rachel Barkow, a New York University law professor and clemency expert.

‘A higher standard’

Some of Trump’s pardons, including Fiore’s, have prompted outrage from pro-Trump partisans. Before Trump pardoned him last year, John Rowland, a Connecticut Republican who served as a state lawmaker, congressman and governor, had a rap sheet as a repeat offender.

In 2004, he pleaded guilty and served 10 months in prison for accepting illegal gifts as governor. A decade later, he was sentenced to 30 months in prison for concealing payments for consulting he had done on behalf of congressional candidates. That conviction included charges of conspiracy and falsification of records.

“He obviously didn't learn his lesson,” said Christopher Shays, a former Republican congressman who represented Connecticut for over two decades, overlapping with much of Rowland’s time in Congress and the governor’s mansion. “If you have public officials who believe they can get away with being corrupt, there will be more corruption.”

When Trump pardoned Rowland in May of last year, neither the president nor the White House gave a reason for the clemency or commented on it publicly. Rowland, in a statement at the time, expressed gratitude but didn’t detail the process that led to it. In an email to Reuters, he declined to comment further.

As with the many others granted clemency by Trump, the paths to pardons for some public officials lay through well-connected advocates who have no ties to law or criminal justice. A Tennessee lawmaker and one of his aides, for instance, was each sentenced last year to more than two years in prison and fines of more than $20,000 for a bribery and kickback scheme using taxpayer money. Trump gave them full pardons after a country singer vouched on their behalf.

In 2019, local press reported that Cade Cothren, then an aide to the speaker of the lower house of the Tennessee legislature, had texted profane and racist messages to his boss and others, and said he used cocaine in the General Assembly building. Cothren resigned as a result, and Glen Casada, the speaker, relinquished his post but served out his term as a legislator.

Months later, prosecutors said, Casada and Cothren devised a scheme to exploit a Tennessee fund that gives lawmakers money for communications with constituents. In January 2021, the waning days of Trump’s first presidency, the FBI raided the two men’s homes and Casada’s legislative headquarters. Both men pleaded not guilty to federal charges including conspiracy, bribery and fraud. In May 2025, a jury found that Casada helped steer $52,000 in government funds to a company run under an alias by Cothren, who in exchange paid Casada at least $7,100 in bribes and kickbacks.

Cynthia Sherwood, an attorney for Cothren, in a statement asserted his innocence. Ed Yarbrough, Casada’s attorney, declined to comment on the specifics of the case but said criticisms of the pardon, including from Republicans, were based on “personal and political bias” and that “President Trump did the right thing.”

By the time they were convicted, Trump was back in office and had begun his campaign to reverse convictions he and associates deemed politically motivated. Sensing the changing climate, attorneys and advocates for Cothren and Casada began pressing contacts in Washington, three people familiar with the effort told Reuters.

One of Cothren’s attorneys, two of these people said, had once represented John Rich, a songwriter, singer and longtime Trump supporter who had access to the White House. Rich, one of these people said, agreed to speak to Trump on behalf of Cothren and Casada.

Days after their conviction, Rich posted on social media that he “personally advocated” to Trump on Cothren’s behalf. Despite the case’s origins during Trump’s first administration, Rich said the former speaker had been “targeted by Biden’s DOJ” and “persecuted by the FBI.” Rich, through a spokesperson, declined to comment.

In November 2025, Trump pardoned both men. In a statement at the time, the White House said that the DOJ had “significantly over-prosecuted these individuals for a minor issue.”

The pardon stunned even prominent Tennessee Republicans, including Randy McNally, the state’s lieutenant governor. “I was taken aback by the pardons and some of the comments made that they were innocent,” McNally told Reuters in an interview. “Individuals that are elected to office should be held to a higher standard.”

‘No political victim’

In one instance, Trump’s pardon of a public official backfired politically.

A federal grand jury in Texas in 2024 indicted Democratic Congressman Henry Cuellar and his wife on charges of accepting nearly $600,000 in bribes from an Azerbaijani energy company and a Mexican bank. For the first year of Trump’s current term, prosecutors prepared for trial.

But in December 2025, Trump pardoned the Cuellars.

In a social media post at the time, Trump said prosecutors had unfairly targeted Cuellar for “speaking the TRUTH” about problems with Biden-era border policies. Cuellar didn’t respond to requests from Reuters for comment.

As with almost every other act of clemency since Trump returned to office, according to two people familiar with the matter, the White House excluded prosecutors from any review before issuing the pardons. Traditionally, the DOJ’s pardon attorney seeks feedback from the prosecutors before recommending clemency.

To the dismay of Republicans, Cuellar later announced he would seek reelection next month – and once again as a Democrat. The longtime congressman, still popular in his district, could retain the seat, a victory that could help Democrats regain control of the House of Representatives. In a social media post last week, Trump spoke of a Texas trip to campaign for Cuellar’s opponent. He called Cuellar “a disloyal and ungrateful person” and “a LOSER who, right now, should be serving a longterm jail sentence.”

Fiore, the Nevada justice of the peace, was a vocal Trump supporter even before she was arrested and charged with misappropriating charity funds. A former state assembly member and Las Vegas city councilwoman, she was well known for conflicts including a brawl in which she allegedly broke the finger of a fellow councilwoman at Las Vegas City Hall.

In 2021, Fiore filmed a campaign video for an ill-fated run for the Nevada governorship. The video came months after FBI agents raided her home in January of that year, searching for possible irregularities in financing for her city hall campaign, investigators later testified. Wielding a handgun and driving a truck bearing a “Trump 2024” bumper sticker – well before the president officially sought the White House again – Fiore in the video fired at bottles labeled with MAGA targets like “vaccine mandates” and “critical race theory.”

“The Joe Biden administration is coming after me,” she said. “I’m ready for the fight.”

Her defense attorney, Michael Sanft, told Reuters that Fiore’s vocal politics made her a target of federal prosecutors. Her use of the memorial donations, he added, was more “sloppy accounting” than crime. “It was a ticky-tacky foul, in my opinion,” he said.

The 2024 Fiore conviction involved attorneys from the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, then still a stronger squad. Legal experts said it illustrates the value of specialized prosecutors in cases where local factors, from politics to limited expertise among area law enforcement, may make prosecution difficult. Several studies reviewed by Reuters found that as much as 90% of the corruption convictions in the US since Watergate have been the result of federal prosecutions, by design meant to shield cases from politics or conflicts of interest.

Jason Frierson, the US attorney at the time, recused himself from the case because he had served in the state legislature, as a Democrat, at the same time as Fiore. “I did not want the process to look political,” he told Reuters. After Frierson’s recusal, three people familiar with the investigation said, the FBI approached public integrity prosecutors, who agreed to pursue the case.

By 2024, they had enough evidence to convince a jury that Fiore had used the money raised for a statue of the slain police officer for personal purposes. The court heard witnesses including a dozen victims, among them the policeman’s widow and Nevada’s governor, a Republican who testified that he had donated some of his own campaign funds to the planned memorial.

After the pardon, Fiore remains controversial.

After her indictment, a state commission suspended Fiore from her role as a Nye County justice of the peace and for a time halted her pay. The position in Nevada is a judicial job, overseeing local courts that hear minor legal infractions. The commission later reinstated her pay, however, meaning that Fiore, by the time her term ends in January, will have collected $252,536 in salary and benefits since the indictment, according to Nye County figures.

The Nevada Commission on Judicial Discipline, the state entity that suspended her but allowed her to continue collecting her salary, declined to comment.

Among those disgusted are some fellow Republicans. “She was committing crimes against people in our community, including a hero,” said Lisa Mayo-DeRiso, a longtime Republican political consultant in Las Vegas, referring to the policeman killed in the line of duty. “Michele Fiore is no political victim.”