pardon

WASHINGTON — President Trump plans to pardon former Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda Vázquez, a White House official said Friday.

Vázquez pleaded guilty last August to a campaign finance violation in a federal case that authorities say also involved a former FBI agent and a Venezuelan banker. Her sentencing was set for later this month.

Federal prosecutors had been seeking one year behind bars, something that Vázquez’s attorneys opposed as they accused prosecutors of violating a guilty plea deal reached last year that saw previous charges including bribery and fraud dropped.

They noted that Vázquez had agreed to plead guilty to accepting a promise of a campaign contribution that was never received.

Attorneys for Vázquez did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The official who confirmed the planned pardon indicated Trump saw the case as political prosecution and said the investigation into Vázquez, a Republican aligned with the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, had begun 10 days after she endorsed Trump in 2020. The official wasn’t authorized to reveal the news by name and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Pablo José Hernández, Puerto Rico’s representative in Congress and a member of the island’s main opposition party, condemned a pardon for Vázquez.

“Impunity protects and fosters corruption. The pardon … undermines public integrity, shatters faith in justice, and offends those of us who believe in honest governance,” said Hernández, a Democrat with Puerto Rico’s Popular Democratic Party.

Vázquez, an attorney, was the U.S. territory’s first former governor to plead guilty to a crime, specifically accepting a donation from a foreigner for her 2020 political campaign.

She was arrested in August 2022 and accused of engaging in a bribery scheme from December 2019 through June 2020 while governor. At the time, she told reporters that she was innocent.

Authorities said that Puerto Rico’s Office of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions was investigating an international bank owned by Venezuelan Julio Martín Herrera Velutini because of alleged suspicious transactions that had not been reported by the bank.

Authorities said Herrera and Mark Rossini, a former FBI agent who provided consulting services to Herrera, allegedly promised to support Vázquez’s campaign if she dismissed the commissioner and appointed a new one of Herrera’s choosing.

Authorities said Vázquez demanded the commissioner’s resignation in February 2020 after allegedly accepting the bribery offer. She also was accused of appointing a new commissioner in May 2020: a former consultant for Herrera’s bank.

Vázquez was the second woman to serve as Puerto Rico’s governor and the first former governor to face federal charges.

She was sworn in as governor in August 2019 after former Gov. Ricardo Rosselló resigned following massive protests. Vázquez served until 2021, after losing the primaries of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party to former Gov. Pedro Pierluisi.

Superville writes for the Associated Press. AP reporter Dánica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico contributed to this report.

The White House has confirmed to United States media that President Donald Trump plans to grant a pardon to a former governor of Puerto Rico, Wanda Vazquez Garced.

On Friday, CBS News broke the story that a pardon was imminent, and Trump administration officials have since tied the pardon to the president’s campaign against what he considers “lawfare”.

“This entire case is an example of political persecution,” a Trump official told the news agency Reuters, on condition of anonymity.

Trump has pardoned a string of right-wing officials and allies since returning to office for a second term, including former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez – who was convicted of federal drug charges – and supporters who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, to protest his 2020 election defeat.

With more than 1,700 pardons and acts of clemency granted over the last year alone, Trump is on track to surpass his predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, for the most pardons offered. Biden, over his four-year term, announced 4,245 acts of clemency, the most of any president in modern history.

But news of Vazquez’s pardon stirred dissent among Puerto Rico’s political opposition, including Pablo Jose Hernandez Rivera, who represents the island territory in the US House of Representatives.

“Impunity protects and promotes corruption,” Hernandez wrote on social media.

“The pardon granted to former governor Wanda Vazquez weakens public integrity, erodes trust in the justice system, and offends those of us who believe in honest government.”

Puerto Rico, as a territory, only has non-voting representation in the US Congress, and Trump has had a tumultuous relationship with the island.

In August, Trump removed the five Democratic members of Puerto Rico’s federal control board, which governs the island’s finances. And during his 2024 re-election campaign, Trump held a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York that featured a politician who called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage”.

But Trump has sought to protect political allies through his use of pardons, often accusing the US justice system of being unfairly biased against conservatives.

He has also denounced what he calls the “weaponisation” of the Justice Department under his Democratic predecessors. Trump himself faced four criminal indictments, two on the federal level, during the four years between his two terms.

Only one state-level indictment, in New York, resulted in a conviction and sentence.

Vazquez identifies as a Republican, and she is a member of the New Progressive Party, which advocates for US statehood for Puerto Rico.

She became governor of Puerto Rico after her predecessor, Ricardo Rosello, stepped down in 2019, and she served until January 2021.

Vazquez was arrested in 2022 after the US Justice Department accused her of participating in an act of corruption while in office, allegedly promising to fire a commissioner in exchange for a campaign contribution.

The bribery case focused on incidents that happened while she was in office between December 2019 and June 2020.

At the time, Puerto Rico’s Office of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions had been investigating a bank owned by the Venezuelan financier Julio Martin Herrera Velutini for suspicious transactions.

According to prosecutors, Vazquez agreed to call for the commissioner’s resignation in exchange for a promise of financial support in the 2020 gubernatorial election. She ultimately hired an associate of Herrera Velutini to replace the commissioner.

Herrera Velutini and Mark Rossini, a consultant and former agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), allegedly paid $300,000 to political consultants to boost Vazquez’s 2020 campaign. She went on to lose the primary, though.

Vazquez at first denied any wrongdoing, but she agreed to a plea deal in August. She was the first former Puerto Rican governor to face federal charges.

DENVER — Just in time for the holidays, President Trump has issued another of his dubious pardons. Or rather, make that a “pardon.”

This one comes on behalf of a former Colorado elections official serving a nine-year sentence for election fraud.

“Democrats have been relentless in their targeting of TINA PETERS, a Patriot who simply wanted to make sure our elections were fair and honest,” Trump said in a typically gaseous, dissembling post on social media.

“Tina is sitting in a Colorado prison for the ‘crime’ of demanding Honest Elections,” the president went on. “Today I am granting Tina a full pardon for her attempts to expose voter fraud in the rigged 2020 Presidential Election.”

Actually, Peters’ crime was conspiring to let an unauthorized person access voting equipment as part of a nutty scheme to “prove” the November 2020 balloting was bogus, then lying and covering up her illegal actions.

And she’s not likely to leave jail anytime soon.

That’s because Trump has precisely zero say over Peters’ fate, given the former Mesa County elections chief was convicted on state charges. The president’s pardon power — which Trump has twisted to a snapping point — extends only to federal cases. If we’re going to play make-believe, then perhaps Foo-Foo the Snoo can personally escort Peters from prison and crown her Queen of the Rockies.

That’s not to suggest, however, that Trump’s empty gesture was harmless. (Apologies to Foo-Foo and Dr. Seuss.)

Some extremists, ever ready to do Trump’s malevolent bidding, have taken up Peters’ cause, using the same belligerent language that foreshadowed the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. In fact, threats have come from some of the very same thugs whom Trump pardoned in one of the first shameless acts of his presidency.

“WE THE PEOPLE ARE COMING TO BREAK TINA PETERS OUT OF PRISON IN 45 DAYS,” Jake Lang, a rioter who was charged with attacking police with an aluminum baseball bat, said on social media. “If Tina M. Peters is not released from La Vista Prison in Colorado to Federal Authorities by January 31st, 2026; US MARSHALS & JANUARY 6ERS PATRIOTS WILL BE STORMING IN TO FREE TINA!!”’

(Capitalization and random punctuation are apparently the way to show fervency as well as prove one’s MAGA bona fides.)

Enrique Tarrio, the former head of the Proud Boys extremist group whom Trump also pardoned, shared a screenshot of the president’s social media post. “A battle,” Tarrio said, “is coming.”

Trump’s pretend pardon is not the first intervention on Peters’ behalf.

In March, the Justice Department asked a federal judge to free her from prison, saying there were “reasonable concerns” about the length of Peters’ sentence. The judge declined.

In November, the administration wrote the Colorado Department of Corrections and asked that Peters be transferred to federal custody, which would presumably allow for her release. No go.

Earlier this month, apparently looking to up the pressure, the Justice Department announced an investigation of the state’s prison system. (Perhaps Peters was denied the special “magnetic mattress” she requested at her sentencing, to help deal with sleep issues.)

Like any child, when Trump doesn’t get his way he calls people names. On Monday, he set his sights on Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis — “a weak and pathetic man” — for refusing to spring Peters from state prison.

“The criminals from Venezuela took over sections of Colorado,” Trump said, “and he was afraid to do anything, but he puts Tina in jail for nine years because she caught people cheating.”

The only true part of that statement is that Colorado does, in fact, exist.

While Trump portrays Peters as a martyr, she is nothing of the sort.

As Polis noted in response to Trump’s “pardon,” she was prosecuted by a Republican district attorney and convicted by a jury of her peers — a jury, it should be noted, that was drawn from the citizenry of Mesa County. The place is no liberal playpen. Voters in the rugged enclave on Colorado’s Western Slope backed Trump all three times he ran for president, by margins approaching 2-to-1.

If Peters’ sentence seems harsh — which it does — hear what the judge had to say.

Peters was motivated not by principle or a search for the truth but rather, he suggested, vanity and personal aggrandizement. She betrayed the public trust and eroded faith in an honestly run election to ingratiate herself with Trump and others grifting off his Big Lie.

“You are as privileged as they come and you used that privilege to obtain power, a following and fame,” Judge Matthew Barrett told Peters in a lacerating lecture. “You’re a charlatan who used and is still using your prior position in office to peddle a snake oil that’s been proven to be junk time and time again.”

Peters remains unrepentant.

In petitioning Trump for a pardon, her attorney submitted nine pages of cockamamie claims, asserting that Peters was the victim of a conspiracy involving, among others, voting-machine vendors, Colorado’s secretary of state and the Venezuelan government.

To her credit, Peters has rejected calls for violence to set her free.

“Tina categorically DENOUNCES and REJECTS any statements or OPERATIONS, public or private, involving a ‘prison break’ or use of force against La Vista or any other CDOC facility in any way,” a post on social media stated, again with the random capitalization.

Perhaps the parole board will take note of those sentiments when the 70-year-old Peters becomes eligible for conditional release in January 2029, a date that just happens to coincide with the end of Trump’s term.

Which seems fitting.

Keep Peters locked up until then, serving as an example and deterrent to others who might consider emulating her by vandalizing the truth and attacking our democracy.