trump Undid His Own Justice Department’s Work With Pardons, Rewarding Those Convicted on His Watch

In President Donald Trump‘s first term, his Justice Department actively pursued those accused of fraud and corruption.

P.G. Sittenfeld, a rising Democratic star on Cincinnati’s City Council, was charged with taking a bribe in exchange for his support of advancement deals.

Devon Archer, a financier and corporate board member, was convicted in a scheme to defraud $60 million from a Native American tribal entity.

And Brian Kelsey, a former Republican state senator from Tennessee, was the target of a federal grand jury investigation for illegally funneling nearly $100,000 into his failed congressional campaign.

All three were subsequently sentenced to prison. Theirs are among more than a dozen criminal cases that were investigated or prosecuted in Trump’s first term and then undone, through the president’s clemency power, in his second term.

Trump has railed against what he considers the politicization of the Justice Department under his predecessor joe Biden,and last week White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said his priority was pardoning people “abused and used” by Biden’s Justice Department. But his actions in these cases show he has tried to undo even the work carried out by his own appointees. No president as Bill Clinton has used clemency to erase his own governance’s prosecutions on such a scale.

What’s more, Sittenfeld, Archer and Kelsey did not qualify for pardons under the standards outlined by the Justice Department, whose Office of the Pardon Attorney reviews applications and forwards its recommendations to the president.Those guidelines require applicants to wait at least five years after their conviction or release from custody, accept responsibility for their crimes, show evidence of rehabilitation and submit a formal petition for review.

The three men met none of those criteria. Their pardons were arranged by them or their lawyers directly with officials in the White House – or, in Archer’s case, after he testified before congressional Republicans in an investigation into Biden’s son Hunter, which Trump said prompted “many people” to ask him to grant the pardon.

“It’s not that he’s correcting another administration’s mistakes,” Doug Berman, an Ohio State University law professor who studies clemency, said of Trump’s second-term pardons of people prosecuted under his first-term Justice Department. “He’s rejecting his own – or more accurately, (he’s rejecting) the work of people he appointed but didn’t fully control.”

Last week, Trump pardoned former Tennessee House Speaker Glen Casada and his onetime chief of staff, Cade Cothren, who were convicted by a jury in a kickback scheme. Prosecutors

Former Cincinnati Councilmember Seeks Trump Pardon After Bribery conviction

P.G. Sittenfeld, a former Cincinnati City Councilmember convicted on bribery and attempted extortion charges, is seeking a pardon from Donald Trump. The case, initially pursued by a Trump appointee, David DeVillers, has drawn attention due to the involvement of lawyers with deep ties to Trump’s political orbit throughout the appeals process.

Sittenfeld was indicted in 2020 for accepting $20,000 in donations to a political action committee he controlled from undercover FBI agents posing as developers. Recordings played at trial allegedly captured Sittenfeld promising to “deliver the votes” on the City Council. He maintained his innocence, claiming the prosecution was wrongful and that he never explicitly linked donations to official actions.

DeVillers, the U.S. attorney who led the case, oversaw a broader crackdown on corruption, also securing the conviction of former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, currently serving a 20-year federal prison sentence and also seeking a pardon from Trump. After leaving office, DeVillers emphasized the illegality of accepting money with implied promises of future action.

In 2022, Sittenfeld was convicted on two counts and sentenced to 16 months in federal prison. While initially freed by an appeals court panel,the conviction was later upheld 2-1,with all three judges calling for Supreme Court clarification on defining the line between campaign contributions and criminal bribery.

Notably, Sittenfeld’s appeal was handled pro bono by lawyers from the Jones Day firm, many of whom have close connections to Trump’s past and present administrations.james Burnham,Yaakov Roth,and Noel Francisco – all former Trump administration officials and Jones Day partners – played key roles in his appeals.

Sittenfeld’s defense argued that prosecutors failed to demonstrate an explicit agreement linking donations to specific actions, asserting he simply expressed support for development projects.The case raises questions about the boundaries of campaign finance and the potential for criminalizing implicit understandings between politicians and donors, and now hinges on a potential pardon from the former president. Critics have labeled Sittenfeld a “buffoonish carnival barker” and a threat to democracy.

## Trump pardoned a Man Who Prosecutors Said Defrauded a Native American Tribe of Millions

Trump Pardons Reveal a Pattern: Access for Those With White House Ties