Vázquez

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.