Trump issued pardons to nearly 80 people for playing roles in “any slate or proposed slate of Presidential electors,” as well as for “any conduct relating to their efforts to expose voting fraud and vulnerabilities in the 2020 presidential election”—noting the pardons could also extend to others involved with the 2020 election efforts, but does not include Trump himself.
Those pardoned include the “fake electors” who approved fraudulent slates of electors falsely claiming Trump had won their state in the 2020 election, as well as a number of former Trump lawyers who worked with him to challenge the election results, such as Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro, Jenna Ellis, Christina Bobb, John Eastman.
Others who were pardoned after being employed by the president include Boris Epshteyn, a longtime Trump attorney and advisor, and former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
These most recent pardon recipients appear to have given Trump approximately $250,000 in combined political donations through 2025, according to Federal Election Commission filings, with David Hanna, a Georgia elector and CEO of Atlanticus Holdings Corporation, giving the most at $145,500.
Changpeng “CZ” Zhao: Trump pardoned the billionaire Binance founder after Zhao’s company worked extensively with the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial business, with World Liberty’s USD1 stablecoin used for a $2 billion investment made in Binance earlier this fall.
Binance launched a task force aimed at “striking a deal” with World Liberty after Trump won the 2024 election in hopes of easing Zhao and Binance’s legal woes, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday, with Binance’s engineers building the technology behind the USD1 token (World Liberty denies having any involvement with Zhao’s pardon).
Zhao’s pardon also came after Trump erased another legal trouble for his company, with the Securities and Exchange Commission dropping a lawsuit against Binance in May only days after the exchange began listing USD1.
George Santos: Trump pardoned the disgraced former New York congressman after his campaign donated $2,800 to Trump’s reelection campaign in September 2019, according to FEC filings, with Santos’ campaign also spending nearly $1,000 on stays at the Trump Organization’s former Washington, D.C., hotel.
Imaad Shah Zuberi: Trump commuted the sentence of Zuberi, a fundraiser and venture capitalist, after he was convicted of crimes that partially stemmed from a $900,000 donation his company Avenue Ventures made to Trump’s first inaugural committee in 2017.
Zuberi, who was also indicted for concealing his work as a foreign agent, separately donated a combined $225,000 to Trump’s various political committees in 2017 and 2018, according to FEC filings.
Julie and Todd Chrisley: Trump pardoned the reality TV show stars—who were ultimately convicted for fraud—after their daughter Savannah Chrisley spoke during the Republican National Convention in 2024 in support of Trump, also donating nearly $1,000 to his political committee that year.
Paul Walczak: Trump pardoned Walczak, a former nursing home executive who pleaded guilty to tax crimes, only weeks after his mother Elizabeth Fago attended a $1 million fundraiser for Trump that promised “face-to-face access” to the president, The New York Times reported.
FEC filings confirm Fago’s donation, and she has separately donated more than $16,000 to Trump-related committees, and Walczak reportedly claimed in his application for a pardon that he was targeted because of his mother’s advocacy for Trump, and her involvement with an effort to publish the diary of former President Joe Biden’s daughter during the 2020 election.
Trevor Milton: Trump pardoned Milton, the founder of startup Nikola Motor, after the billionaire donated approximately $946,000 to Trump since 2016, $900,000 less than a month before the 2024 election.
Milton’s wife, Chelsey Virginia Milton, also separately gave a combined $927,900 to Trump’s reelection campaign in October 2024.
HDR Global Trading Ltd and Bitmex Founders: Trump pardoned HDR Global Trading Ltd., the parent company of crypto exchange BitMEX, and several of its founders and ex-employees after the company and its workers were convicted for violating the Bank Secrecy Act, with the pardons also viewed as another way Trump boosted the cryptocurrency industry that is significantly enriching him and his family.
BitMEX allows customers to trade Trump’s $TRUMP memecoin and World Liberty Financial’s WLFI token on its platform—with Reuters and crypto outlets noting the exchange listed $TRUMP faster than many other competitors.
BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes, one of the people Trump pardoned, also wrote a blog post in February in support of Trump’s memecoin, calling on more politicians to release their own memecoins and describing $TRUMP as “a new weapon against political corruption.”
Rod Blagojevich: The former Illinois governor worked with Trump before his presidential days, appearing as a contestant on “Celebrity Apprentice” in 2010, and despite serving in politics as a Democrat, has repeatedly cheered the president, particularly after Trump commuted Blagojevich’s 14-year sentence in 2020 before fully pardoning him in his second term.
Unlike other people who have received pardons after donating to Trump, Blagojevich has actually taken in money from the president: Trump and his company donated a combined $9,000 to Blagojevich’s political campaigns between 2002 and 2007, according to multiple reports.
Ross Ulbricht: Ulbricht, who operated a marketplace on the dark web, received a pardon from Trump after the Silk Road founder’s case became heavily promoted by Libertarians, as they argued his prosecution was an example of government overreach and lobbied Trump for a pardon.
When Trump pardoned Ulbricht, he delivered on a promise during a speech at the Libertarian National Convention before the 2024 election, and Libertarian Party chair Angela McArdle told Reason that after Trump promised to free Ulbricht, the party intentionally stopped campaigning in battleground states where they could have siphoned votes away from Trump.
More than $1 billion. That’s likely how much the government lost in restitution and other fees from Trump’s pardon recipients. Presidential pardons erase any unpaid fees defendants have been ordered to pay as part of their sentences, though it’s unclear in many cases whether Trump’s pardon recipients had paid any part of their fees, making the exact amount the government lost out on unknown. Those who received clemency after offering some benefit to Trump were often those who owed particularly large amounts of cash: Zhao was ordered to pay $50 million in restitution; Milton owed approximately $676 million in restitution to shareholders and a Nikola investor; Ulbricht was ordered to pay $183.9 million and HDR Global Trading owed a $100 million fine. In Milton’s case, it’s unclear how much of his nine-figure fine he would have had to pay, however, as the amount was still being finalized and had not been approved by a judge at the time of his pardon.