President Donald Trump’s tough-on-crime rhetoric appears to come with a caveat for people in his political orbit.
Trump quietly commuted the sentence of James Womack, son of longtime Arkansas Republican Rep. Steve Womack, granting clemency to a man who pleaded guilty in 2023 to distributing more than five grams of methamphetamine this week. The conviction carried an eight-year federal prison sentence.
Rep. Womack, a long-time Trump ally who was endorsed by the president during his most recent reelection campaign, publicly thanked Trump the following day. In a statement, the congressman praised the president’s “gracious and thoughtful action,” saying it allowed his son to reunite with family “during a profoundly difficult time.”
A White House official familiar with the matter told the Daily Beast the commutation was driven in part by humanitarian concerns, including Jame’s mother’s diagnosis of abdominal cancer and his brother’s seizure disorder, which has left the brother unable to live independently. The source also cited Jame’s clean prison record as a factor.
Rep. Steve Womack’s office did not immediately respond to the Daily Beast’s request for comment.
The sentence commutations come during the administration’s aggressive crackdown on crime following last week’s fatal shooting of unarmed mother Renee Nicole Good, 37, by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, 43—an incident the administration has used to justify a surge of more than 3,000 federal enforcement agents sent to the Minneapolis–St. Paul region.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has defended the raids, saying on Fox News that “criminal illegal aliens in this country are going to be brought to justice under this administration.”
The administration has pointed to its recent capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro as another example of Trump’s drug crackdown. At a press conference earlier this month, Trump said Maduro was taken into custody because he was “trafficking colossal amounts of deadly drugs into the United States,” underscoring the hard-line approach.
Womack is not the only Trump-connected figure to benefit from the president’s renewed generosity. This week, Trump also issued a pardon to Venezuelan banker Julio Herrera Velutini, who had been charged with bribery and wire fraud in connection with an alleged scheme involving former Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda Vázquez, whom Trump also pardoned.
Herrera has documented ties to the Trump administration. Hid daughter, Isabela Herrera, donated $2.5 million to Trump-aligned super PAC MAGA Inc. during the 2024 election cycle. White House officials told The New York Times the donation played no role in the pardon.
The White House’s pardon czar, Alice Marie Johnson, who was pardoned by Trump in 2020, announced on Friday that the president pardoned 21 people this week. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the matter.
One of Trump’s other notable pardons this week was of Adriana Camberos, 54. It was Cambreros second pardon from the President. The first Cambreros received after being convicted for selling counterfeit 5-Hour Energy; the second, after Cambreros was convicted of running a multimillion-dollar grocery scam with her brother.
Democrats have blasted Trump’s expanding use of pardons as an abuse of executive power that undercuts his own law-and-order rhetoric. Sen. Chris Murphy called the wave of clemency “bread-and-butter corruption” and said the president has issued “audaciously politically toxic pardons,” including for figures convicted of serious crimes such as drug trafficking and fraud.
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