Trump has granted clemency to at least 85 public officials charged with or convicted of corruption, sparing them a combined 130 years behind bars.
Of the 85 officials, 36 were elected as Republicans and 19 more were Republicans appointed to office. Nine others had campaigned for Trump or backed his agenda. Together they were spared 130 years behind bars and more than $15 million in penalties.
Michele Fiore, a Nevada Republican known locally as "Lady Trump," raised donations for a memorial to a police officer killed in the line of duty. In October 2024, a Las Vegas jury convicted her of spending more than $70,000 of it on plastic surgery, her daughter's wedding and rent. The jury took less than two hours, lunch break included. The officer's widow was among the dozen victims who testified.
Weeks before her sentencing, Trump gave Fiore "a full and unconditional pardon." She owes the donors nothing. The White House pointed to her "outspoken conservative views." She is still a Nye County justice of the peace. She isn't working, but by January she will have collected $252,536 in salary and benefits since her indictment, as Marisa Taylor, Chris Prentice and Mike Spector first reported in Reuters.
In Tennessee, a jury convicted former House speaker Glen Casada and his aide Cade Cothren of steering $52,000 in taxpayer money through a kickback scheme. Country singer John Rich lobbied Trump for them. Trump pardoned both, and the White House called it "a minor issue." Even the state's Republican lieutenant governor, Randy McNally, said he was "taken aback."
More than half of the 85 were prosecuted with help from the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section, the anti-corruption unit created after Watergate. It had about 30 prosecutors when Biden left office. It now has two. FBI Director Kash Patel shut down CR-15, an elite corruption squad, and fired some of its investigators. A June study found the Justice Department had not disclosed a single new bribery case in Trump's second term.
The White House cut prosecutors out of almost every pardon review. It says the recipients were "unjustly prosecuted" by a "weaponized" Justice Department. It has offered no evidence for that, and juries convicted Fiore, Casada and Cothren.
"If you help me personally, Donald Trump, I will help you personally, even if you engaged in corruption," said NYU law professor Rachel Barkow, a clemency expert.
