The July 4 batch: nine polluters and a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser host

Editor's note: the pardon is on the official record, and reporting documents Kidan's donations to the president's committees and a fundraiser he hosted at Mar-a-Lago, but the campaign finance records themselves are not in the evidence.

On July 3, 2026, Trump pardoned 11 people. Nine - Joshua Davis, Matt Geouge, Jonathan Achtemeier, Tim Clancy, Ryan and Wade Lalone, Barry Pierce, Aaron Rudolf and Mackenzie Spurlock - were convicted in Clean Air Act 'defeat device' cases for disabling or selling kits to disable diesel emissions controls. Trump announced them on Truth Social as victims 'persecuted by the Biden Administration... for fixing their car,' adding 'I AM SETTING THEM ALL FREE, RIGHT NOW!' One recipient, Davis, had been part of a 2023 EPA settlement ordering $600,000 in payments.

The tenth name drew no presidential comment: Adam Kidan, Jack Abramoff's business partner, who pleaded guilty in the SunCruz casino-fleet fraud (a $147.5 million purchase built on a counterfeit wire transfer) and served years of a 70-month sentence. Since 2017 Kidan has given nearly $4 million to Republican campaigns and committees - more than $270,000 to Trump-affiliated committees in 2024 alone - and hosted a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago. The NYT noted he had been ordered to pay $21.7 million in restitution, which a pardon typically extinguishes. The eleventh, Jack Harvard, is a former Plano, Texas mayor convicted of bank fraud, credited by the White House for an 'upstanding record' since.

The batch shows the mature form of the machine: environmental-crime pardons packaged as populist grievance for public consumption, with a mega-donor's slate ridden through quietly on the same warrant, processed by the White House's internal pardon operation (special counsel David Warrington, chief of staff Susie Wiles, Pardon Attorney Ed Martin) rather than DOJ review.