How Trumps presidential pardons became booming business for law firms: You have to pay $2 million, $3 million
WASHINGTON — When former California congressional candidate Omar Navarro started asking his Republican allies about a presidential pardon, he got hit with sticker shock.“I talked to people that were in the Republican Party, and people that supported me in the past, and they made insinuations that you have to pay this law firm $2 million, $3 million and they’ll help you get a pardon,” Navarro told The Post from the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles.The 37-year-old, who was sentenced in February to four years in federal prison after pleading guilty to embezzling $250,000 from his campaign, declined to give names, claiming: “The person that told me this is pretty powerful in the government, in the government agencies, like in the military and stuff like that, and so I’m very scared to even say anything about that.”There is no suggestion that these payments constitute illegal activity, not least by President Trump or anyone in the White House. However, the amount clemency clients pay firms and fixers to advocate for them is staggering.“President Trump takes his absolute constitutional power to issue pardons and commutations seriously,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt told The Post Thursday.
“That’s why we have a rigorous review process involving the Department of Justice and the White House Counsel’s Office — a team of elite lawyers who carefully evaluate every request before it reaches the President’s desk, and he serves as the final decision-maker.“The President finds it detestable that anyone would even attempt to profit off pardons.”Yet a parade of clemency hopefuls are more than willing to shell out seven figures for the lobbying industry’s fastest-growing sector, euphemistically called “executive relief.”Nursing home owner Joseph Schwartz was pardoned by Trump in November 2025 after admitting to withholding $39 million in payroll taxes from Uncle Sam.He paid three different firms a total of $1.1 million to adv...