President Donald Trump tried to distract himself from his State Fair fiasco by pardoning criminals.
Trump, 80, announced on Truth Social Friday afternoon that he would be granting clemency to six people whom he claimed were “persecuted” by former President Joe Biden.
“It is my Great Honor to have just signed Pardons for six people who were persecuted by the Biden Administration, and were in, or being sent to, prison, for ‘fixing their car,’” the president wrote on his social media platform.
“While I know this sounds ridiculous, it is nevertheless a fact, and part of the Weaponization and Stupidity that our Country had to endure during four long years of Sleepy Joe Biden,” he added. “I AM SETTING THEM ALL FREE, RIGHT NOW!”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment on exactly whom the pardons are intended for.
The president privately discussed clemency requests on Friday, including one from Sean “Diddy” Combs, according to CBS News. Trump previously told The New York Times in January that he was not considering the mogul’s request.
Trump’s “fixing their car” comment likely refers to violators of the Clean Air Act, who faced felony convictions under Biden for tampering with emissions monitoring devices on motor vehicles.
“They gave a man seven years in jail, actually, because he fixed his own car,” Trump said last month.
On Nov. 7, the president gave a pardon to Wyoming diesel mechanic Troy Lake, who spent seven months—not years—in federal prison after he pleaded guilty to violating the Clean Air Act by dismantling the air pollution monitoring systems on hundreds of commercial truck engines.
A December 2024 press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado said that Lake instructed employees of his company, Elite Diesel Service Inc., to “disable the computerized on-board diagnostic (OBD) systems on at least 344 heavy-duty commercial trucks.”
Lake was initially sentenced to one year and one day in prison, but was released early on house arrest in September, according to conservative news outlet Cowboy State Daily.
“I mean, they actually have, the Democrats, a restriction that if you get caught fixing your tractor, they bring you to jail,” Trump said at a roundtable discussion in Wisconsin last month. “Do you know that I pardoned a man last week who was sentenced to seven years in jail because he got caught fixing his car or his truck?”
In January, the Justice Department ordered federal prosecutors to abandon criminal investigations and current cases into defeat devices that circumvent emissions controls. The DOJ clarified that they would still enforce civil violations “when appropriate.”
Lobbying for clemency requests has skyrocketed under Trump 2.0, an administration that granted blanket pardons to all Jan. 6 Capitol rioters on the president’s first day in office.
