Trump Defends Pardoning One of His Political Donors – Who Was Represented by Pam Bondi’s Brother
President Donald Trump defended his pardon of Trevor Milton, the disgraced former CEO of the electric truck manufacturer Nikola.
In December 2023, Milton was sentenced to four years in prison after being convicted of defrauding investors. He had been free pending appeal.
“Milton’s scheme targeted individual, non-professional investors — so-called “retail investors” — by making false and misleading statements directly to the investing public through social media and television, print, and podcast interviews,” the Department of Justice said shortly after he was sentenced.
During the case, Milton retained Brad Bondi, the brother of longtime Trump ally Pam Bondi, who is now U.S. Attorney General. Milton was also represented by Marc Mukasey, who has represented the Trump Organization.
Milton and his wife donated more than $1.8 million to a pro-Trump reelection fund the month before November’s election.
Trump took questions from reporters in the Oval Office on Friday, where one asked about the pardon, but failed to mention the donations or the lawyer connections.
“What was your reason for pardoning Trevor Milton?” the reporter asked.
“Uh, highly recommended by many people,” Trump replied. “There are many people like that. They support Trump and they went after him. You don’t realize this is a vicious group of people that were in this office before us. This is a vicious group. They’re violent.”
Milton himself broke the news of the pardon on Thursday.
“I am free. The prosecutors can no longer hurt me,” he said in a video he posted on Instagram. “They can’t destroy my family, they can’t rip everything away from me, they can’t ruin my life.”
Not only does Trump’s pardon spare Milton from his prison sentence, but it also frees the felon from having to pay restitution to shareholders who lost millions investing in Nikola, which is named after the famous engineer Nikola Tesla. (Tesla also served as the inspiration for the name for Tesla, Inc., whose CEO is White House adviser Elon Musk, though Musk did not found the company.)
Watch above via CNN.
