Vazquez accepted a plea deal in 2025 after she was accused of participating in a bribery scheme while in office. 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.
Gay Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) reminded Donald Trump that he cannot issue a presidential pardon for former Colorado county clerk Tina Peters. Peters was convicted of election interference in state court in August 2024, and presidential pardons cannot exonerate state-level criminal convictions. As such, Peters will continue to serve the rest of her nine-year sentence, even though Trump has threatened "harsh measures" if she isn't freed.
But Peters was found guilty in state court, which means her conviction is beyond the scope of the president's pardon powers. After the 2020 election, Peters allowed an authorized person to access the county's voting machines and gather county passwords and proprietary information about the machines. Like Trump, Peters peddled conspiracy theories about the 2020 election being rigged against him. Last year, she was sentenced to nine years in prison after being convicted of tampering with voting machines.
Donald Trump has accused officials in Honduras of trying to change the result of the country's presidential election, as the release of vote counts was paused with two rightwing candidates locked in a technical tie. The virtual vote count had been slow and unstable before it was interrupted around midday on Monday. The electoral court said a technical problem was to blame and insisted the manual count was continuing.
Earlier this month, President Donald Trump quietly pardoned 77 people across the country who participated in the fake electors scheme of 2020, the wildly illegal attempt to subvert election results in battleground states that Joe Biden won and instead declare Trump the winner.
WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump issued a second pardon to a Jan. 6 defendant who had remained behind bars despite the sweeping grant of clemency for Capitol rioters because of a separate conviction for illegally possessing firearms. The decision is the latest example of Trump's willingness to use his constitutional authority to help supporters who once tried to keep him in power despite his loss to President Joe Biden in 2020.
President Donald Trump issued a second pardon to a Jan. 6 defendant who had remained behind bars despite the sweeping grant of clemency for Capitol rioters because of a separate conviction for illegally possessing firearms. The decision is the latest example of Trump's willingness to use his constitutional authority to help supporters who once tried to keep him in power despite his loss to President Joe Biden in 2020.
A federal jury found Michael McMahon, a retired NYPD sergeant turned private investigator, guilty of acting as a foreign agent and interstate stalking after a two-week trial in June 2023. The jury acquitted him on a count of conspiracy to act as a foreign agent. According to prosecutors, McMahon was a critical member of a Chinese campaign to intimidate dissident Xu Jin, a former Wuhan city official, and his family, with the end goal of pressuring Xu into returning to China.
