The former president undermined negotiations between Jonathan Braun and prosecutors who hoped Braun would testify against other predatory lenders in exchange for his release
Very early in the morning on Donald Trump‘s last day in office, the president announced he was pardoning Jonathan Braun, a loan shark who had been convicted of running a vast marijuana ring. Braun, who at the time was serving a 10-year sentence, was pardoned along with 142 others, including rappers Lil Wayne and Kodak Black.
Trump’s move undermined a years-long federal investigation, The New York Times reported Sunday. The paper also uncovered ties between Braun and the family of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
Federal prosecutors were in the midst of negotiations hoping to secure Braun’s cooperation in a Justice Department investigation into predatory lenders in the merchant cash advance industry when Trump announced his clemency. Investigators felt that an industry insider like Braun could reveal information about predatory lending agreements, but after he was released from incarceration, prosecutors no longer had leverage they could use to compel Braun to talk.
I thought accepting a pardon was an implicit guilty plea and have up your fifth amendment protections. Couldn’t they lean on him based on that?
He was already guilty and serving time. They were working with early release as a bargaining chip but now that’s gone.
Exactly, now why would he submit to hundreds of hours of interviews with people that can charge him with other crimes adjacent to what he was convinced and pardoned of. There is no incentive for him to cooperate. There is nothing the investigators can offer him that will make it with his while.