Donald Trump’s system for handing out pardons “is the definition of corruption,” according to the former U.S. Pardon Attorney he fired in March.
Liz Oyer, who served in that role from April 2022 until she refused to recommend the restoration of Trump-supporting actor Mel Gibson’s gun rights, told The Daily Beast Podcast that “it’s a very good time to be a white-collar criminal because of this possibility of getting a pardon” from the president.
“There has cropped up a whole pardon economy that extends beyond the president himself to people in his orbit with access to the president” the former public defender told host Joanna Coles.
“It’s been reported that pardon seekers are paying in many cases a million dollars or more for high-priced lawyers and lobbyists with connections to Donald Trump to try to get their applications to the front of the line,” she continued. “This is creating really sort of a feeding frenzy around pardons. The pardon process has become a complete financial, transactional process, not something that is rooted in principles of law or justice.”
Those who don’t have the means to reach the president are losing out as a result, Oyer explained.
“There are, right now, somewhere around 14,000 people who have applied for pardons through the Justice Department, whose applications are being ignored in favor of the wealthy and well-connected, and some of these are individuals who really do have compelling cases for second chances through clemency, but those folks don’t have the ability to jump the line to access the president,” she said.
Oyer gave several examples of how Trump “has monetized the pardon power in a way that no president in history ever has” and created a system where “what seems to matter most is political connections, loyalty, and money.”
Florida healthcare executive and tax cheat Paul Walczak, for example, was pardoned three weeks after his mother paid $1 million to attend a Mar-a-Lago dinner. Walczak didn’t have to go to jail or pay back nearly $4.4 million in restitution.
Oyer also cited the March pardon of Trevor Milton, the founder of an electric and hydrogen-powered truck starter, who faced charges of defrauding investors. Milton and his wife had donated $1.8 million to pro-Trump political action committees before last year’s election. He too was spared prison and paying $680 million to shareholders.
“Most of the pardon recipients under Donald Trump have been people convicted of large scale white collar fraud crimes… crimes that have involved stealing money from investors, stealing money from taxpayers and the government, frauds on Medicare and Medicaid benefits,” Oyer said.
In making these pardon decisions, the administration didn’t seem to have an interest in taking into account Oyer’s input.
“Typically the pardon attorney has a contact in the Office of the White House Counsel and engages in discussions about pardons through the White House counsel’s office,” Oyer explained. “During this Trump administration, my office was never able to establish that line of communication with the White House.”
Regarding her firing, Oyer said that since Gibson had been convicted of a domestic violence misdemeanor, she could not honestly recommend the restoration of his gun rights.
“After I left the department, the attorney general went ahead and restored his gun rights anyway, and that’s sort of illustrative of what’s going on in the Justice Department right now,” Oyer continued. “Career experts who are applying their knowledge and expertise neutrally are not valued or even wanted in these discussions if they serve as an obstacle to accomplishing the political objectives of the president.”
When approached for comment, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told the Daily Beast: “The only pardon corruption anyone should be talking about is Joe Biden who pardoned and commuted sentences of violent criminals including child killers and mass murderers—and that’s not to mention the proactive pardons he ‘signed’ for his family members like Hunter on his way out the door.”
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