President Donald Trump’s pardon machine is running at full speed.
The White House’s pardon czar, Alice Marie Johnson, who herself was pardoned by Trump in 2020, announced Friday that the president had pardoned dozens of people, including a governor convicted on corruption charges and a repeat offender.
Opens in new windowAdriana Camberos, 54, received a second pardon from Trump for a 2024 fraud conviction, the New York Times reports. She was also convicted in 2017 for selling millions of counterfeit 5-Hour Energy bottles to grocers. Her sentence for that crime was commuted by Trump in 2021, in the waning days of his first term. Camberos’s most recent pardon also included one for her brother, Andres, 45, for the pair’s multimillion-dollar grocery scam.
Trump also pardoned former Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda Vázquez, 65, who pleaded guilty last year to criminal bribery charges connected to a scheme to finance her campaign for governor. Trump also pardoned her two co-defendants.
As it pertains to Vázquez, her 2020 federal indictment alleged that Julio Herrera Velutini, owner of Britannia Financial Group, the international bank that operated in San Juan and also participated in the scheme, and his consultant, Mark Rossini, a former FBI agent.
Both of these co-defendants provided funding for Vázquez’s political campaign in exchange for her replacing the territory’s top bank regulator, according to CNN.
Vázquez, Herrera, and Rossini pleaded guilty to lesser misdemeanor charges in August after reaching an agreement with Trump’s own Justice Department as the case was nearing pretrial.
In the meantime, Herrera’s daughter, Isabel Herrera, became a big-time MAGA donor, having donated $2.5 million in 2024 and $1 million last year to the pro-Trump political action committee MAGA Inc., campaign finance records show.
Even though the indictment was brought against Vázquez in 2020 during Trump’s first term, and the plea agreement was reached under Trump’s second term, the White House has claimed without evidence that Vázquez’s case was “weaponized” under former President Joe Biden’s Justice Department.
Her lawyers have maintained she was originally indicted in 2020 because she had endorsed Trump for re-election ten days prior.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House and DOJ for comment.
In a statement, Rep. Pablo José Hernández, Puerto Rico’s resident commissioner and a non-voting member for the territory in the House, criticized Trump’s pardon.
“Impunity protects and fosters corruption,” he said. “The pardon granted to former Governor Wanda Vázquez undermines public integrity, shatters faith in justice, and offends those of us who believe in honest governance.”
Vázquez joins the list of several criminal politicians that Trump has pardoned in his second term, including Democratic Congressman Henry Cuellar, former President of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández, and many state lawmakers. Trump additionally commuted the prison sentence for former New York Congressman George Santos.
