Donald Trump, the pardoner-in-chief who has abused this presidential power incessantly since returning to office, just handed out a fresh batch of pardons. Nine were extended to individuals who installed or sold devices that disabled diesel trucks’ pollution controls, letting them spew illegal levels of exhaust fumes, and one to a major Republican donor who pleaded guilty alongside Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist whose bribery scandal became synonymous with Washington corruption in the 2000s, in a nearly $150 million fraud scheme.
The New York Times reports:
The president … pardoned Adam Kidan, a major donor to Republicans, including Mr. Trump. He had served about two and a half years in prison for his role in a fraud scheme involving the disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
The Clean Air Act pardons benefited people who had sold or installed devices for diesel trucks that defeated their emissions controls, making them far more polluting. It was the latest move by the Trump administration to undermine laws intended to fight climate change and curb air pollutants that harm human health. …
By 2020, the most recent numbers available, the E.P.A. estimated that the emissions controls had been removed from more than 550,000 diesel pickup trucks over the prior decade, or roughly 15 percent of all diesel trucks originally certified with those controls. The effect, the agency found, was the equivalent of adding more than nine million diesel pickups to American roads, spewing harmful nitrogen oxides at levels up to 300 times the legal limits. …
Mr. Kidan had pleaded guilty in 2005 to conspiracy and fraud charges involving his purchase of a casino boat fleet with Mr. Abramoff, who became a poster child for Washington corruption in the pre-Trump era. Mr. Abramoff and Mr. Kidan were each sentenced to 70 months in prison and ordered to pay a total of $21.7 million in restitution related to the $147.5 million purchase of a cruise ship line in 2000. Mr. Kidan served less than half of that prison sentence and became an executive in the staffing industry. He has donated millions of dollars to Republican campaigns and groups over the years, including more than $270,000 to Mr. Trump’s political committees in 2024, according to campaign finance records. It is not clear whether he paid the full amount of the restitution.
A pardon doesn’t just erase a conviction. It can erase restitution, too—and it’s not clear how much of the $21.7 million Kidan and Abramoff were ordered to repay he ever actually paid. What we do know is that being a major donor to this president definitely didn’t hurt. And that’s just not how pardons are supposed to work.
The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.
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