President Trump’s pardons have canceled nearly $2 billion in repayments to the federal government and restitution to victims that would have been owed by criminals whose cases were wiped out by the clemency, according to a new analysis by California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
He said the pardons not only ended any prison time but also erased the rest of their debts.
That included $1.3 billion in victim restitution, with the rest coming from fines and forfeiture cases, where the money was owed to Uncle Sam because taxpayers were the victims of theft or fraud.
“Trump’s pardons have erased those legal and moral obligations,” Mr. Newsom said. “Trump is showing who he is by favoring his friends and donors over the livelihoods of Americans who have been hurt by those he’s pardoned — and over the taxpayer victims left holding the bag.”
The total spans both of Mr. Trump’s terms and includes cases where someone had already been sentenced and others that were still developing when Mr. Trump’s pardon cut them off.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said the governor “should focus on himself.”
She pointed to the governor’s pardon last month — first reported by The Washington Times — that erased an immigrant’s conviction of attempted murder to shield him from deportation.
“President Trump has exercised his constitutional authority to issue pardons and commutations for a variety of individuals – especially those who have been over prosecuted and targeted by a weaponized Biden DOJ,” Ms. Jackson said.
“The only pardons Newscum should be critical of are from President Autopen, who pardoned and commuted sentences of violent criminals including child killers and mass murderers – and that’s not to mention the proactive pardons he ‘signed’ for his family members like [son] Hunter on his way out the door,” she said.
Mr. Newsom chose to highlight a different comparison to President Biden, saying his pardons over his four years in office only forgave $688,000 in financial penalties, or 2,000 times less than Mr. Trump’s figure.
The California governor, a Democrat with White House ambitions, has been focused on Mr. Trump’s pardons.
In January he announced a website tool to track Trump clemency actions.
Mr. Newsom said Mr. Trump has pardoned “an unusually high number of wealthy people accused of financial crimes,” including bank and wire fraud and money laundering.
He said the president was letting fraudsters off at the federal level while chastising Democrat-led states for fraud in their federally-backed welfare programs.
Among those Mr. Trump has pardoned were Julie and Todd Chrisley, who were stars of a long-running reality TV show before being convicted for fraud. Their May 2025 pardon was expected to wipe out an order to repay $17.8 million in restitution to banks.
The president also pardoned Joseph Schwartz, who was sentenced to three years in prison and ordered to pay $5 million in restitution.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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