‘Fortunate Sons’ and Clemency In The Trump Era – Update for January 22, 2026

We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

TRUMP PARDONS 13, COMMUTES 8

For those who think that the old can be new again, recall Creedance Clearwater Revival’s 1969 protest song, Fortunate Son, and lay those lyrics next to President Donald Trump’s clemencies granted last week to 13 people (pardons) and 8 people (sentence commutations).

The pardons included five people who had served their sentences years ago, one woman whom Trump had pardoned five years ago for a fraud who was now indicted for a new fraud, and three currently facing a political bribery scandal in Puerto Rico.

The commutations included one mortgage fraud defendant serving 62 months and seven drug cases, two of whom were serving life sentences and four others serving 20 years or more.

One of the commutations went to James Phillip Womack — son of Arkansas Republican Congressman Steve Womack — who was sentenced in May of last year to eight years behind bars after being convicted of methamphetamine distribution.

The clemencies garnering the most reporting were pardons of Puerto Rico’s former governor, Wanda Vázquez Garced, who pled guilty last year in a federal public corruption case, and her two co-defendants, her aide Mark Rossini and billionaire Venezuelan-Italian banker Julio Martin Herrera Velutini.

Herrera Velutini’s daughter, Isabel Herrera, donated $2.5 million in December 2024 and $1 million last July to the pro-Trump political action committee MAGA Inc., according to public records. A White House official told CBS News that the donations had nothing to do with the pardon.

In a related story, the Washington Post reported yesterday that the pardoned January 6^th defendants are demanding return of restitution payments paid as part of their criminal sentences. A judge ruling on a demand of one of them, Yvonne St. Cyr (who served half of her 30-month sentence before being pardoned), said in an order returning her $2,270.00), “Sometimes a judge is called upon to do what the law requires, even if it may seem at odds with what justice or one’s initial instincts might warrant. This is one such occasion.”

The Post said, “The ruling revealed an overlooked consequence of Trump’s pardon for some Jan. 6 offenders: Not only did it free them from prison but it emboldened them to demand payback from the government. At least eight Jan. 6 defendants are pursuing refunds of the financial penalties paid as part of their sentences, according to a Post review of court records… Others are filing civil lawsuits against the government seeking millions of dollars, alleging politically tainted prosecutions and violations of their constitutional rights. Hundreds more have filed claims accusing the Justice Department, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies of inflicting property damage and personal injuries, according to their lawyer.”

Washington Monthly observed last week that

It is safe to say that Trump’s abuse of the pardon power has no parallel in American history. Almost every president has granted a few that seem dodgy in retrospect; many have used them as an instrument of partisan politics; a few have used them as instruments of corruption. But in extent and scale, Trump’s pardons fall well below the subterranean ethical floor established even over the past 50 years. In pardoning 1,500 rioters convicted of involvement in the January 6 insurrection, Trump showed contempt for the law enforcement officers who protected the Capitol, and the system of government they preserved. His other pardons, from crypto fraudsters to foreign drug lords, reek with contempt for the very idea of law. Trump is also the first president to claim the power to undo a predecessor’s pardons, and the first to claim the power to pardon an offender convicted by a state, not the federal government. 

DOJ, Pardon and Commutations (January 15, 2026)

CBS, Trump Pardons Puerto Rico’s former governor Wanda Vázquez (January 16, 2026)

KATV, Trump commutes prison sentence of congressman’s son convicted in federal drug case (January 17, 2026)

Washington Post, They ransacked the U.S. Capitol and want the government to pay them back (January 20, 2026)

Washington Monthly, Amnesty Transactional (January 14, 2026)

~ Thomas L. Root