Paid brokers tout ties to Trump’s orbit to lobby for presidential pardons
Presidents have been pardoning criminals since George Washington. It’s a constitutional power — no explanation needed.
The Department of Justice does screen applicants and typically only recommends those who remorsefully seek mercy. But that’s not always been the process: President Ford pardoned Richard Nixon. President Clinton pardoned Marc Rich after donations. President Biden pardoned his son Hunter and Anthony Fauci.
President Trump? He’s developed his own vetting system: pardoning political allies — including all of the Jan. 6 rioters — as well as a string of unrepentant financial conmen who argued — just like him — that they were wrongly prosecuted.
How do these people get their grievances in the president’s ear? Donations appear to help, and those who-can-pay hire pardon brokers: lawyers and lobbyists who sell their ties to the president, for exorbitant fees. It’s a marketplace of money and mercy.
Ammon Covino is seeking a pardon. Seated is his wife Crystal and joining them at this Virginia hotel lounge are lobbyists Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, who don’t know they’re being recorded as they pitch their services as pardon brokers.
JACK (AT BAR): Look, you can’t, you can’t just submit a pardon application. It doesn’t work that way.
Ammon is a felon. The Covinos run several zoos and aquariums. A decade ago, he was convicted of illegal wildlife trafficking and served 23 months in prison. He applied for a pardon taking the regular route through the Justice Department.
CRYSTAL: We just filled out the form.
AMMON: It’s a three-page form.
STAHL: And what happened?
AMMON: When the pardons came out we were on the list of rejections.
So we asked him to try again the new way. Why?
We had wanted to interview brokers who promise pardon seekers they can circumvent the Justice Department — for a hefty fee. What they do is not illegal, yet none would talk to us. So we asked Ammon to engage with these access merchants as if he’s reapplying for a pardon and let our cameras follow him. First, he emailed a dozen of these brokers.
STAHL: How fast did they get back to you?
AMMON: Some got right away and some within a day. Right away, “Yes, exclamation point, exclamation point.” “We’re the people that can help you do that.” I kept saying, “This feels illegal.” And I get on my AI and say, “Is this illegal?” “No, this is how it’s done.”
In a series of phone calls, one broker after another bragged about their close relationships to President Trump’s inner circle.
This duo replied to Ammon’s email with seven minutes.
Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl are Trump loyalists with a long resume of political stunts. Their robocall scheme to suppress Black voting in 2020 led to a criminal conviction. Now in the pardons game, they claim they got one for this owner of a nursing home chain, convicted of massive tax fraud. He paid them nearly a million dollars for their promise to reach the president. We found that some brokers charge as much as $3 million. So we decided to use hidden cameras and sent the Covinos to meet Burkman and Wohl.
JACK (AT BAR): I don’t think your pardon, I don’t think it will be too difficult.
They said they would put Ammon’s pardon plea in the hands of the president — and push.
JACK: With this particular White House, you have to put pressure on the president from all directions in a consistent way to force his hand. We literally want to put the pen in his hand and get him to sign it because he’s tired of hearing about it.
STAHL: So when you went the regular route, how much did it cost you?
CRYSTAL: A postage stamp.
STAHL: A postage stamp? That’s it. And this would cost you?
CRYSTAL: $300,000.
STAHL: What did you say?
AMMON: I said, “What’s it for?” And they said, “Well, we have to buy tickets.”
CRYSTAL: We have to go to Mar-a-Lago. We have to attend events that the president’s at. We have to possibly buy a $10,000 ticket to a fundraiser that the president is attending.
AMMON: They said we have to hire contractors.
STAHL: Oh, what does that mean?
AMMON: To do certain things.
CRYSTAL: “Influencers” is how they–
AMMON: Influencers that know other people that can put us in the vicinity of the people that can make a difference.
JACK: What we do is we mobilize members of Congress to call him. We use certain influencers who have regular meetings to call him, and we put him in a pincer movement.
Burkman and Wohl made a similar pitch to Boosie Badazz, a rapper with a lengthy criminal record, after he was convicted on a gun charge.
BOOSIE: This is what I was led to believe if you come with this money, you will get a pardon.
STAHL: How much did you give them, up front?
BOOSIE: $600K. Yeah.
STAHL: We have some texts that they sent to your lawyer.
This text listed the influential people they supposedly recruited.
STAHL: “Laura Loomer, Erika Kirk, Mike Johnson.” He’s the speaker of the House. Another text, the broker mentions Natalie Harp, she’s the executive assistant that’s very close to the president and suggests that she’s gonna personally hand your application to the president.
BOOZIE: Yeah, yeah. I just thought, I mean, “This is the way it’s done.” I’m paying these guys, you know? And they’re gonna make it happen.
They didn’t make it happen: Boosie didn’t get his pardon. As for the four people they claimed to know? They denied any involvement in the case. Boosie’s contract with the brokers stipulated that if he wasn’t pardoned, he’d get half his money back. But they won’t pay, claiming the contract is invalid, and denying they sent the text. The rapper is suing.
BOOSIE: I said, “Just return it. You didn’t give me my pardon.” It’s a bunch of BS. And they were so cocky.
OSLER: There’s definitely a lot of money flowing around. And that makes a Petri dish for corruption.
Law Professor Mark Osler of the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota has spent the past 15 years helping indigent felons apply for pardons. Now, he says, they’re locked out of the system.
OSLER: People think, “Well, if I can get to this person who can find the president at Mar-a-Lago,” “If I can pay a million dollars to this friend of a White House counsel then I will have a shot.” And that is not a system. That’s something different entirely. It’s anarchy.
STAHL: In the new system no expression of remorse that you know of?
OSLER: Well, in fact, what seems to have been a winning tactic for some people is exactly the opposite, saying, “The people who were wrong were the people who accused me, that I have been a victim of a weaponized Department of Justice.”
Burkman and Wohl told the Covinos to tap into the president’s grievances and say that Ammon was a victim of a weaponized prosecution.
JACK (AT BAR): It’s a question of reminding the president this is an Obama prosecution that never should have happened.
He told them this White House vets cases differently.
JAKE: So, like Trump makes his own decisions. He relies very little on DOJ. So with Trump, DOJ is–
JACOB: It’s an afterthought.
Until nine days ago, Ed Martin, a Trump appointee, ran the pardon office at DOJ, where 16,000 applications are awaiting a decision.
STAHL: People pay $300,000, $1 million, $3 million to these brokers to get the application before the president. Meanwhile, all these other people that you look at the Department of Justice, they are not getting their pardons. And is that a fair system?
ED: I’m not seeing– I reject your characterization of the system. I’ve not seen it. I’ve not heard it. I sat with a thousand people in the last year in my office, and I listened to them tell– some of them ended up with clemency. Some of them were pardoned.
We checked: About 70% of President Trump’s clemencies in his second term have not gone through DOJ. If you include the Jan. 6 rioters, that goes up to 92%. And we noticed that some pardons came after well-timed donations or a business deal.
Take for example this businessman who was sent to prison for fraud. He conned investors with this video of the first zero-emission truck driving along. It was actually a fake, rolling down a hill. After he and his wife donated almost $2 million to support Trump’s re-election, he was pardoned.
This CEO failed to prevent money laundering on his crypto exchange. He was pardoned after his company, Binance, boosted a Trump family crypto venture, though both sides deny any connection to the pardon. And this health care executive, convicted of tax crimes, was pardoned after his mother paid a million dollars to attend a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser.
STAHL: A pardon seeker going to Mar-a-Lago and joining in a fundraising event where you had to pay money and then getting a pardon, why isn’t that a quid pro quo? Why isn’t that pay to play?
ED: I don’t know about those examples, but I would just say the prerogative, again the presidential prerogative, that it’s in the Constitution. It’s complete. It’s plenary. When people say, “It’s brokers, there’s quid pro quo,” I’ve never seen it. I haven’t seen it, haven’t heard it.
STAHL: Ed.
ED: Yup?
STAHL: The point is, they’re going around you.
ED: Well, I– I– I–
STAHL: And the whole point, they’re bragging about going around you.
ED: I just don’t, I don’t see any evidence of some magical brokers. I think people are trying to make money.
STAHL: So are you saying that these brokers, they’re con men?
ED: They’re snake oil salesmen, they’re swamp salesmen. What word do you want?
JACK: We want to do this. I think we can help you.
After we notified Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl of our hidden-camera operation …
JACOB: A sting operation client, a fake client.
JACK: A sting run by you, right?
They agreed to sit down with us to discuss the new pardon economy.
JACOB: There’s nothing corrupt about it. There’s nothing improper about it.
STAHL: It seems that you have to have money to get a pardon these days.
JACK: We don’t work for free any more than you do, right? You’re well-paid for what you do. We’re well-paid for what I do. Navigating Washington, as you well know is not an easy thing. The average person, the average rich person, they need help doing that. How would the president become aware of these cases unless some–
STAHL: Through the normal way that presidents have done it for 100 years or more.
JACK: Well, lobbyists have been hired for two centuries to do just that.
STAHL: People have gone through a system that has been set up.
JACOB: You think there weren’t lobbyists working on pardons in the Obama administration?
STAHL: There were, but–
JACOB: The Biden administration?
OSLER: There’ve always been lawyers who are willing to prepare a clemency petition — often for a couple of thousands of dollars. What’s changed is the amount of money that people are charging.
Professor Osler hopes the pardon system isn’t beyond repair. We have learned that the White House has become sensitive to the perception that the president is selling pardons.
JACK: If you go that route–
All the brokers warned the Covinos to avoid donating.
OSLER: You can’t blame people who wanna get out of prison for doing what they’re told works. But I can blame the people who are making that the system.
STAHL: So it’s the brokers, and the lobbyists and the lawyers in this game?
OSLER: It’s really, in the end, it falls on the administration.
The Covinos told us the pardon economy feels like cheating.
CRYSTAL: It feels unfair.
AMMON: It feels unfair.
STAHL: Let’s say the money was not an issue for you, that $300,000 was just fine. Would you do it?
AMMON: Yes. I don’t like the fact that you have to pay for such a huge amount of money because of who you know. But if that’s how the game’s played, then that’s how the game’s played.
The White House told us, “Anyone spending money to lobby for pardons is foolishly wasting their money,” adding, “President Trump performs his constitutional duties in an ethically sound manner, and to suggest so otherwise is either ill-informed or malicious.”
Produced by Shachar Bar-On and Michael Kaplan. Broadcast associate, Aria Een. Edited by Sean Kelly.
Read the full story on presidential pardons.
