Donald Trump ushers in 2026 with series of white-collar pardons
US President Donald Trump has pardoned or reduced the sentences of 10 people convicted of fraud and other white-collar crimes over the past 10 days.
Out of the 21 clemency grants Trump has issued since 15 January, 10 were for people convicted of fraud and white-collar crimes, according to the Financial Times.
This follows his the anniversary of his 2024 election win and the start of his second term, during which Trump gave reprieves to 42 people who had been charged with white-collar crimes. This included pardoning Changpeng Zhao, founder of Binance, who pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering regime and served 4 months in prison in 2024.
Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of Theranos, is the latest person convicted of criminal fraud, and she reportedly asked Trump to commute her sentence. Holmes began serving an 11-year sentence, reduced to nine years, in May 2023 at a minimum-security federal prison in Texas after being convicted of defrauding investors.
Pardoning over FCPA pause
This comes as Trump ordered a pause to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) last year, claiming it was “overexpansive and unpredictable” and wasted “limited prosecutorial resources”.
The 1977 federal law made it illegal for US companies and citizens to make payments to foreign government officials “to secure any improper advantage” in order to win or retain business.
Speaking at the time, Mark Srere, partner at law firm BCLP, noted that the president halting this law “will certainly dry up US enforcers sharing information about US companies with their foreign enforcers.”
Another person who has sought a pardon is Tim Leissner, the disgraced former Goldman Sachs banker at the centre of the 1MDB scandal, who pleaded guilty and co-operated with prosecutors. The FT quoted his lawyers saying, “Since the current DoJ has suspended prosecutions of FCPA cases, we believe that, under these circumstances, clemency is appropriate and just.”
Trump’s lack of focus on white-collar crime has resulted in Senator Elizabeth Warren and fellow Democrats accusing him of letting white-collar criminals “off the hook”.
The Democrats have demanded a probe into the president for shifting more than 25,000 personnel away from investigating fraud, tax evasion and money laundering in favour of his immigration enforcement agenda with ICE.