Trump issues avalanche of pardons, including for a woman whose sentence he commuted in his first term
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has issued a flurry of pardons in recent days, including for the father of a big donor to his super PAC, a former governor of Puerto Rico and a woman whose sentence he commuted during his first term but who ended up back in prison under a different scheme.
Trump commuted Adriana Camberos’ sentence just before his first term in the White House ended in 2021. That came after she was convicted as part of an effort to divert bottles of 5-Hour energy drinks purchased for resale in Mexico and instead keep them in the U.S. Prosecutors said she and several accomplices placed false labels and filled the bottles with a fake liquid before selling them.
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In 2024, she and her brother Andrés were convicted in a separate case, this one involving lying to manufacturers to sell wholesale groceries and additional items at deep discounts after promising that they were intended for sale in Mexico or to prisoners or rehabilitation centers. The brothers sold the products at higher prices to American distributors, prosecutors said.
The Camberos were among 13 pardons Trump granted Thursday, along with eight commutations. An additional pardon was announced Friday for Terren Peizer, a resident of Puerto Rico and California who ran the Miami-based health care company Ontrak.
Peizer had been convicted and sentenced to 42 months in prison and fined $5.25 million for participating in an insider trading scheme to avoid losses exceeding $12.5 million, according to the Department of Justice.
The president has granted a series of pardons during the first year of his second term, many of them targeting criminal cases that were once pursued by federal prosecutors. They came amid an ongoing effort by the Trump administration to erode public integrity barriers, including the firing of the Justice Department’s pardon lawyer.
Also pardoned this week was former Puerto Rico governor Wanda Vázquez, who had pleaded guilty last August to a campaign finance violation in a federal case that authorities said also involved a former FBI agent and a Venezuelan banker. His sentencing was set for the end of this month.
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Federal prosecutors had been seeking a year behind bars, something Vazquez’s lawyers opposed as they accused prosecutors of violating a plea deal reached last year in which previous charges including bribery and fraud were dropped.
They had noted that Vázquez had agreed to plead guilty to accepting a promise of a campaign contribution that was never received.
Also involved in the case was banker Julio Herrera Velutini, whose daughter, Isabela Herrera, donated $2.5 million to Trump’s super PAC MAGA Inc. in 2024, and gave the group an additional $1 million last summer. The third defendant in the case was former FBI agent Mark Rossini, who was also pardoned by the president.
The recent wave of pardons adds to Trump’s earlier pardons of former Democratic Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and former Republican Connecticut Gov. John Rowland, whose promising political career was upended by a corruption scandal and two stints in federal prison.
Trump also pardoned former U.S. Rep. Michael Grimm, a New York Republican who resigned from Congress after a tax fraud conviction and made headlines for threatening to throw a reporter off a Capitol balcony over a question he didn’t like. Reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley, who had been convicted of defrauding banks and evading taxes, also won a pardon from Trump.
The president also pardoned Texas Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar in a bribery and conspiracy case. However, he later expressed regret and frustration for having done so, when Cuellar announced that he was seeking re-election without changing parties to become a Republican.