[Ms. Oyer was the Department of Justice pardon attorney from 2022 to 2025.](https://archive.is/2025.12.26-102252/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/26/opinion/trump-biden-presidential-pardons.html)
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“The president pardoned one of his supporters, Michele Fiore, a Nevada politician who was convicted of federal charges that she used money from a police memorial fund for personal expenses, including for plastic surgery. He pardoned another supporter, Scott Jenkins, a former sheriff in Virginia who took bribes in exchange for badges. He pardoned Todd and Julie Chrisley, reality TV personalities imprisoned for tax evasion and defrauding banks, whose daughter campaigned for Mr. Trump. He commuted the sentence of Imaad Zuberi, a major donor convicted of a host of crimes including illegal lobbying.
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Mr. Trump pardoned Tim Leiweke, a developer accused of bid rigging, after playing a round of golf with one of his lawyers. He pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras and a convicted drug trafficker, who’d written Mr. Trump a letter casting himself as a victim of “political persecution.” And he pardoned Paul Walczak, a former nursing home executive who had pleaded guilty to tax crimes, after his mother attended a Mar-a-Lago dinner.
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After pardoning Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire founder of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance convicted of money laundering violations, Mr. Trump told an interviewer, “I don’t know who he is.””

Pardons For Sale