Donald Trump granted clemency to dozens of people on Wednesday, including his former strategist Steve Bannon, the rapper Lil Wayne and former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, in one of his final official acts as president.
A list of pardons and commutations the White House released early Wednesday, Trump’s last day in office, doesn’t include the president himself. Trump had discussed pre-emptively pardoning himself and associates, but some advisers had cautioned the president against what would have been an unprecedented action, according to people familiar with the matter.
The president pardoned 73 people and commuted the sentences of 70. Many are relatively little-known felons, but the list includes a number of celebrities, former lawmakers, executives and people connected to the president, his family or members of Congress.
While Trump has drawn criticism for extending pardons to political allies, including former campaign chief Paul Manafort and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, he’s issued fewer pardons than other recent presidents.
According to Justice Department statistics, Trump’s issued 116 pardons, compared to the 212 granted by Barack Obama, 189 granted by George W. Bush and 396 granted by Bill Clinton, who also extended clemency to political allies. Notably, Clinton pardoned Marc Rich, a hedge fund manager, Democratic donor and founder of Glencore PLC, on his final day in office.
Trump didn’t grant clemency to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange or former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden. But Trump was still polling people close to him, as late as Tuesday, about whether he should.
Trump spoke to Bannon Tuesday. People familiar with the pardon planning said Monday that clemency for the former White House strategist, who was once estranged from the president, wasn’t being prepared. Trump ordered it at the last minute, the people said.
Trump granted a pardon to the rapper Dwayne Carter, known as Lil Wayne, who pleaded guilty to a federal gun charge last year, and commuted the sentence of the rapper Bill Kapri, known as Kodak Black, who is serving time for falsifying paperwork to obtain a firearm.
He pardoned a former top fundraiser for the Republican Party, Elliott Broidy, who pleaded guilty in October to illegally lobbying on behalf of a Malaysian businessman seeking to end a federal investigation into the 1MDB scandal.
The White House said the president commuted a sentence for a “Jonathon Braun,” who was serving time for conspiracy to smuggle marijuana and to commit money laundering. That appears to refer to Jonathan Braun, a notorious Staten Island lender who built a cash-advance company while free on bail after pleading guilty to the conspiracy charges in 2011.
Braun was profiled in a 2018 Bloomberg News series, which described how he cheated and threatened small-business borrowers while charging 400% or more for short-term loans. Braun denied any wrongdoing in his lending business.
The White House said Braun has served five years of a 10-year sentence. Court records indicate he began serving the 10-year sentence in January 2020, with less than two years credit for time previously served.
Marc Fernich, a lawyer for Braun, did not immediately respond to a voicemail message and email Wednesday morning requesting comment.
Other clemency grants include:
• A commutation for Sholam Weiss, who is believed to be serving the longest white-collar sentence in U.S. history, 835 years, for money laundering and other charges stemming from the failure of the National Heritage Life Insurance Co. He fled while on bail and partied with prostitutes at a luxury hotel before the authorities tracked him down in Austria. “He regrets doing that,” Weiss’s nephew, Hershy Marton, said in an interview in December.
• A pardon for Bannon, who was among a group of four Trump supporters accused last year of using money donated to the supposedly nonprofit “We Build The Wall” campaign for personal gain. Despite portraying the group as a volunteer effort, Bannon received more than $1 million and used some of it to pay personal expenses, prosecutors said. Bannon denied the charges.