The people US president Donald Trump has granted clemency to range from rappers to financiers and lobbyists. Notable names on the list include:
Steve Bannon
Bannon, 67, was a key adviser in Trump’s 2016 presidential run. He was charged last year with swindling Trump supporters over an effort to raise private funds to build the president’s wall on the US-Mexico border. He has pleaded not guilty.
White House officials had advised Trump against pardoning Bannon, who left the Trump administration in late 2017. The two men have lately rekindled their relationship as Trump sought support for his unproven claims of voter fraud, an official familiar with the situation said.
Elliott Broidy
Broidy, a major Republican party fundraiser, pleaded guilty in October to acting as an unregistered foreign agent, admitting to accepting money to secretly lobby the Trump administration for Chinese and Malaysian interests. He has been pardoned. Broidy held finance posts in Trump’s 2016 campaign and on his inaugural committee.
Prosecutors alleged Broidy received millions of dollars in payments from an unnamed foreign national to try to arrange the end of a U.S. investigation into billions of dollars embezzled from 1MDB, a Malaysian government investment fund.
Kwame Kilpatrick
The former Detroit mayor was sentenced in 2013 to 28 years in prison following his conviction on two dozen charges including racketeering, bribery and extortion from a conspiracy, which prosecutors said had worsened the city’s financial crisis. Kilpatrick, 50, once seen as a rising star in the Democratic party, received one of the longest corruption sentences ever handed to a major US politician. Kilpatrick, who was mayor from 2002 to 2008, extorted bribes from contractors who wanted to get or keep Detroit city contracts, prosecutors said. His sentence has been commuted.
Lil Wayne
Lil Wayne, 38, whose real name is Dwayne Michael Carter, pleaded guilty in federal court in December to illegally possessing a firearm and faced up to 10 years in prison. He was scheduled to be sentenced in March in Florida. A year earlier, the Grammy winner was found with a loaded, gold-plated .45-caliber handgun in his baggage aboard a private plane that had landed at an executive airport near Miami. A previous felony conviction made it illegal for the rapper to have the weapon or ammunition. In October, Wayne tweeted a picture of himself with Trump following what he called a “great meeting” with the president. He has been pardoned.
Rapper Kodak Black
Black, 23, who was born Bill Kahan Kapri, is in federal prison for making a false statement to buy a firearm, and released the album called Bill Israel from behind bars.
Black pleaded guilty in August 2019, and three months later was sentenced to three years and 10 months in prison. He is seeking compassionate release. In a since-deleted tweet in November, Black promised to spend $1m on charity if the president released him, the hip-hop magazine XXL reported. His sentence has been commuted.
Sholam Weiss
Weiss was convicted of bilking $125m from National Heritage Life Insurance and its elderly policyholders. He fled the United States and was sentenced in absentia in 2000 to 845 years in prison, but he was eventually extradited from Austria. Weiss, 66, is at a US penitentiary in Pennsylvania, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Trump lawyers from his first impeachment, Alan Dershowitz and Jay Sekulow, sent letters to the White House in support of Weiss. His sentence has been commuted.
Anthony Levandowski
Levandowski, a former Google engineer, pleaded guilty to stealing secret technology related to self-driving cars from the company before becoming the head of Uber’s rival unit. In August, a judge in San Francisco sentenced Levandowski to 18 months in prison but said he could enter custody once the Covid-19 pandemic has subsided.
The judge, William Alsup, who has been involved in Silicon Valley litigation for nearly five decades, described Levandowski’s conviction as the “biggest trade secret crime I have ever seen”. He has been pardoned.
Other pardons and commutations
Todd Boulanger
Abel Holtz
Rick Renzi
Kenneth Kurson
Casey Urlacher
Carl Andrews Boggs
Dr. Scott Harkonen
Johnny D. Phillips, Jr
Dr. Mahmoud Reza Banki
James E. Johnson, Jr
Tommaso Buti
Glen Moss
Aviem Sella
John Nystrom
Scott Conor Crosby
Lynn Barney
Joshua J. Smith
Amy Povah
Dr. Frederick Nahas
David Tamman
Dr. Faustino Bernadett
Paul Erickson
Gregory Jorgensen, Deborah Jorgensen, Martin Jorgensen (posthumous)
Todd Farha, Thaddeus Bereday, William Kale, Paul Behrens, Peter Clay
Patrick Lee Swisher
Robert Sherrill
Dr. Robert S. Corkern
David Lamar Clanton
George Gilmore
Desiree Perez
Robert “Bob” Zangrillo
Hillel Nahmad
Brian McSwain
John Duncan Fordham
William “Ed” Henry
Randall “Duke” Cunningham – conditional pardon
Stephen Odzer
Steven Benjamin Floyd
Joey Hancock
David E. Miller
James Austin Hayes
Drew Brownstein
Robert Bowker
Amir Khan
David Rowland
Jessica Frease
Robert Cannon “Robin” Hayes
Thomas Kenton “Ken” Ford
Michael Liberty
Greg Reyes
Ferrell Damon Scott
Jerry Donnell Walden
Jeffrey Alan Conway
Benedict Olberding
Syrita Steib-Martin
Michael Ashley
Lou Hobbs
Matthew Antoine Canady
Mario Claiborne
Rodney Nakia Gibson
Tom Leroy Whitehurst
Monstsho Eugene Vernon
Luis Fernando Sicard
DeWayne Phelps
Isaac Nelson
Traie Tavares Kelly
Javier Gonzales
Douglas Jemal
Eric Wesley Patton
Robert William Cawthon
Hal Knudson Mergler
Gary Evan Hendler
John Harold Wall
Steven Samuel Grantham
Clarence Olin Freeman
Fred Keith Alford
John Knock
Kenneth Charles Fragoso
Luis Gonzalez
Anthony DeJohn
Corvain Cooper
Way Quoe Long
Michael Pelletier
Craig Cesal
Darrell Frazier
Lavonne Roach
Blanca Virgen –
Robert Francis
Brian Simmons
Derrick Smith
Jaime A. Davidson
Raymond Hersman
David Barren
James Romans
Jonathon Braun
Michael Harris
Kyle Kimoto
Chalana McFarland
Eliyahu Weinstein
John Estin Davis
Alex Adjmi
Noah Kleinman
Tena Logan
MaryAnne Locke
Jawad A. Musa
Adriana Shayota
April Coots
Caroline Yeats
Jodi Lynn Richter
Kristina Bohnenkamp
Mary Roberts
Cassandra Ann Kasowski
Lerna Lea Paulson
Ann Butler
Sydney Navarro
Tara Perry
Jon Harder
Chris Young
Adrianne Miller
Fred “Dave” Clark
William Walters
James Brian Cruz
Salomon Melgen
In addition, President Trump commuted the sentences to time served for the following individuals: Jeff Cheney, Marquis Dargon, Jennings Gilbert, Dwayne L. Harrison, Reginald Dinez Johnson, Sharon King, and Hector Madrigal, Sr.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
