President Donald Trump on Friday pardoned 11 people, most of whom were convicted of violating a federal environmental law targeting air pollution, according to a White House official.
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Trump pardoned Joshua Davis, Matt Geouge, Jonathan Achtemeier, Tim Clancy, Ryan and Wade Lalone, Barry Pierce, Aaron Rudolf, and Mackenzie Spurlock, all of whom were convicted of violations related to the Clean Air Act, a landmark air pollution regulation passed in 1963.
Many in the group were found to have tampered with emissions control equipment in vehicles or to have sold parts to bypass the controls in violation of the Clean Air Act.
Trump posted on Truth Social that some of the pardons were for people “persecuted by the Biden administration, and were in, or being sent to, prison, for ‘fixing their car.’”
During his presidency, Trump has rolled back environmental regulations, especially those designed to combat climate change. However, the administration recently lost a major court battle over Biden-era air pollution standards.
Trump also pardoned Adam Kidan, a major Republican donor and business partner of infamous lobbyist Jack Abramoff, the kingpin of a massive corruption scandal that rocked Washington in the 2000s. Kidan in 2005 pleaded guilty to federal wire fraud and mail fraud conspiracy charges related to his purchase of a line of cruise ships for offshore gambling. Kidan was sentenced to nearly six years in prison in 2006 but was released in 2009.
According to federal elections records, Kidan, who now runs a staffing agency, has donated nearly $4 million to Republican Party campaigns and committees since 2017, including those associated with Trump.
Jack Harvard, a former Plano, Texas, mayor who was convicted of bank fraud charges in the 1990s, was also pardoned. The White House official said that Harvard “turned his life around” following his conviction, “protecting and raising endangered animals on his ranch, and allowing the U.S. military and NATO troops to train on his land free of charge.”
Over the first year and a half of his second term in office, Trump has wielded his clemency powers to grant relief to a wide array of convicts — many of them politically connected — outside of the traditional pardon-application process.
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The day he was inaugurated for a second term, Trump pardoned most Jan. 6 defendants, a sweeping action that granted clemency to more than 1,500 convicted in connection with the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, including those who assaulted police officers.
Every recent president has exercised the pardon power to benefit his allies, but legal experts have told The Washington Post that Trump’s use of clemency has bucked the norms of the process.
Trump has pardoned some of the most high-profile public corruption and white-collar defendants prosecuted during President Joe Biden’s administration, as well as some prosecuted during his own first term and some under earlier administrations.
His list of clemency recipients includes a number of politicians: former Republican congressman George Santos of New York, Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas and former Tennessee state senator Brian Kelsey (R).
Trump, who pledged during the campaign to crack down on the illegal flow of deadly drugs coming across the border, also granted clemency to several individuals convicted for drug-related crimes, including Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, Chicago gang leader Larry Hoover, Baltimore drug kingpin Garnett Gilbert Smith and former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández.
Trump has defended his use of the pardons, saying the people he granted clemency had been pursued by what he considers a corrupt and overzealous Justice Department under Biden. But the attorneys interviewed said they investigated each case scrupulously and apolitically to ensure a fair prosecution.
During his first term in office, Trump issued 238 total acts of clemency.
Biden issued more acts of clemency than any other president. By the end of his term in 2025, he had granted a total of 4,245 pardons and commutations.
Typically, Justice Department employees vet tens of thousands of applications, only recommending to the president people who have completed their sentences and shown contrition. Trump, however, has pardoned criminals without any such vetting, people familiar with the process said, sometimes granting clemency to convicts who have not started their sentences or admitted wrongdoing. Trump and his allies have pointed to Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter as an example of how Trump’s predecessors politicized the pardon.
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