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corporate crime
Trump Unleashes Feds on US Cities While Giving Free Rein to Corporate Criminals
The president's "law and order" claims, said the watchdog group Public Citizen, "lose all credibility when cast against the lawlessness Trump allows for the pursuit of corporate profits.”
Jan 15, 2026
US President Donald Trump is letting corporate criminals—including some of his donors—run wild with no accountability as he unleashes federal immigration agents across the country and threatens to deploy troops against protesters in Minneapolis in the name of "law and order."
A report published Thursday by the watchdog group Public Citizen shows that the Trump administration in the president's second term has so far canceled or halted 159 enforcement actions—from federal investigations to lawsuits—against 166 corporations accused of illegal conduct.
"As a result of Trump’s corporate enforcement retreat, at least eighteen corporations accused of lawbreaking avoided paying $3.1 billion in penalties for misconduct, including 12 that benefited from canceled enforcement and six that settled enforcement actions with penalties significantly reduced from those sought under" former President Joe Biden, the report observes.
Public Citizen estimates that a third of the corporations that have benefited from dropped or frozen enforcement efforts during Trump's second term have ties to his administration, including more than 30 that donated to the president's inaugural fund or ballroom project.
Those corporations include Amazon, Coinbase, Microsoft, Meta, and Pfizer. The pharmaceutical giant, which Pam Bondi represented before becoming US attorney general, has benefited from three canceled Justice Department enforcement actions since the start of Trump's term—more than any other company.
Rick Claypool, a Public Citizen research director and author of the new report, said the findings further undercut Trump's claim to care about the rule of law.
“The Trump administration is canceling accountability for corporate predators that cheat consumers, exploit workers, and illegally abuse their power at home and abroad,” said Claypool. “The ‘law enforcement’ claims the White House uses as pretext for authoritarian anti-immigrant crackdowns, city occupations, and imperial resource seizures abroad lose all credibility when cast against the lawlessness Trump allows for the pursuit of corporate profits."
NEW @Public_Citizen report:
Trump agencies canceled or froze 159 enforcement actions vs 166 alleged corporate lawbreakers over the 1st year of his 2nd term.
1/3 of the corps have Trump admin ties such as ballroom donations.
They avoided paying $3.1 billion in penalties. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/szM0umFzmD
— Rick Claypool (@RickClaypool) January 15, 2026
Public Citizen's analysis came hours after Trump, in an early morning social media post, threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to crush protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Minneapolis, where federal agents have shot at least two people over the past week—one fatally—and brutalized many others.
Lisa Gilbert, Public Citizen's co-president, said Thursday that "invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy military forces against the American people is the exact opposite of what Minneapolis—and the country—needs right now."
“Trump should abandon this idea immediately and stop threatening to use the military against the American people," said Gilbert.
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‘Somebody’s Getting Rich’: Senator Suggests Trump Pardon Spree Is Yet Another Grift
"There's clearly a whole group of people around him that are making millions of dollars, and they're handing out favors to folks in the form of pardons," said Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy.
Dec 04, 2025
A Democratic US senator suggested during a television appearance late Wednesday that President Donald Trump's flurry of pardons for fraudsters and other white-collar criminals—from disgraced politicians to former corporate executives—is yet another cash grab concocted by the president's inner circle and lobbyists with ties to the White House.
“My sense is that somebody is getting rich, ultimately,“ Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told MSNBC's Chris Hayes shortly after Trump pardoned a former entertainment venue executive who was indicted by the president's own Justice Department over the summer.
"There is a cabal of administration officials and MAGA-friendly lobbyists that are in league together," Murphy continued. "They all huddle together at these elite restaurants and clubs in Washington, DC, and they likely hatch deals in which, if somebody pays a MAGA-affiliated lobbyist a couple hundred thousand dollars, then maybe you’ll be able to get a pardon.”
"There's clearly a whole group of people around him that are making millions of dollars, and they're handing out favors to folks in the form of pardons in order to make sure that they get their pockets lined," the senator added. "That's just, like, bread and butter corruption."
Watch:
The pardons Trump is handing out are a huge, growing scandal that not enough people are talking about. This is a money making operation - for for Trump, his family, his crypto pals, and the Trump-affiliated lobbyists and grifters who the pardon seekers pay. pic.twitter.com/FwLRyHDMqN
— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) December 4, 2025
Since the start of his second term, Trump has used his pardon power to rescue well-connected executives and political allies from accountability, invariably claiming—without evidence—that the Biden administration manufactured the charges.
Many of those pardoned have been accused or convicted of white-collar crimes; "fraud" appears 57 times on the Justice Department page listing the names and offenses of those who have received clemency from the president this year.
Trump's willingness to unthinkingly pardon fraudsters has spawned a lucrative business for lobbyists and consultants linked to the administration. NBC News reported earlier this year that "two people directly familiar with proposals to lobbying firms said they knew of a client’s offer of $5 million to help get a case to Trump."
Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire founder of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, reportedly had a lobbyist working to secure his pardon, which came in late October.
"I don't know who he is," Trump said when asked about the decision, adding that "a lot of people asked me" to pardon Zhao, who pleaded guilty in 2023 to "failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program."
Trump also made history with what's believed to be the nation's first-ever presidential pardon of a corporation: HDR Global Trading, the owner and operator of crypto exchange BitMEX. The company was sentenced earlier this year to a $100 million fine for violating anti-money laundering laws.
In a report published in September, Murphy detailed how corporate pardons "are happening throughout the federal government, in the form of rescinded orders, dropped cases, and the first-ever presidential pardon for a corporation." The watchdog group Public Citizen estimates that the Trump administration has halted or dropped more than 160 corporate enforcement cases since the start of the president's second term.
"Corporate pardons are just one of the ways that Trump is replacing democracy and rule of law with authoritarian power and rule by personal favor," Murphy wrote in his report. "If we are going to save our democracy, we need to act now."
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'Pro-White Collar Crime': Trump Pardons Former Executive Indicted by His Own DOJ
"This president serves the ultra-wealthy—not working people," said one watchdog group.
Dec 04, 2025
US President Donald Trump on Wednesday granted a full, unconditional pardon to former entertainment venue executive Tim Leiweke, who was indicted just months ago by Trump's own Justice Department for "orchestrating a conspiracy to rig the bidding process for an arena at a public university."
Leiweke, who expressed "profound gratitude" for the pardon, stepped down as CEO of Oak View Group in July, on the same day that the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division announced the indictment.
The longtime sports executive was accused of conspiring with the CEO of a competitor to rig bidding for the development of the $375 million, 15,000-seat Moody Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Assistant Attorney General Abigail Slater said the scheme "deprived a public university and taxpayers of the benefits of competitive bidding."
Leiweke pleaded not guilty to the charge, which carried a maximum prison sentence of 10 years.
Bloomberg observed that the pardon comes "just before Leiweke is scheduled to be deposed by lawyers for the Justice Department and Live Nation Entertainment Inc. on Thursday in the DOJ’s separate civil antitrust case against the company and its subsidiary Ticketmaster."
"Leiweke earlier unsuccessfully tried to avoid the deposition, citing liability from then pending criminal charges, according to court records," Bloomberg added.
Federal investigators have accused Oak View Group, Leiweke's former company, of quietly receiving kickbacks for promoting Ticketmaster services at Oak View Group venues.
The pardon was announced on the same day that Trump granted clemency to US Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), who faced bribery and money laundering charges. Days earlier, the president commuted the prison sentence of a former private equity executive convicted of defrauding more than 10,000 investors.
"Private equity CEO David Gentile was sentenced to seven years for defrauding investors of 1.6 BILLION," the watchdog group Public Citizen wrote Wednesday. "But Trump commuted his sentence. This isn't the first time Trump has helped the corporate class evade accountability. This president serves the ultra-wealthy—not working people."
Antitrust advocate Matt Stoller accused Trump of advancing a "straightforward pro-white collar crime agenda" by using his pardon power to rescue fraudsters from prison time.
"Trump's pro-white collar crime agenda seems pretty open at this point," Stoller wrote in response to the Cuellar pardon.
As the New York Times reported earlier this year, Trump has employed "the vast power of his office to redefine criminality to suit his needs—using pardons to inoculate criminals he happens to like, downplaying corruption and fraud as crimes, and seeking to stigmatize political opponents by labeling them criminals."
"An offshoot of this strategy is relegating white-collar offenses to a rank of secondary importance behind violent and property crimes," the Times noted. "He has even tried to create a new red-alert category—what he calls 'immigrant crime,' even though studies have shown that immigrants are not more likely to commit violent offenses than people born in the country."
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