Nikola founder Trevor Milton pardoned after $1.8m bribe to Trump (Updated)

Well, here’s a weird one. We got a press release in our inboxes claiming that Nikola Motors founder Trevor Milton, who was convicted of defrauding investors of hundreds of millions of dollars, has been issued a full pardon for his crimes.

Update: This article has been updated to include confirmations from media of the pardon, to acknowledge the $1.8 million in payments Milton and his wife gave to a pro-Trump PAC, and with comments from Mr. Trump in a press conference where he said that Milton’s support was one of the reasons for his decision.

In case you need a refresher, Trevor Milton was the founder of Nikola Motors who was found guilty of fraud due to false statements he made to investors in the runup to production of Nikola’s zero emission trucks.

He was sentenced in December 2023. His sentence included four years in prison, seizure of property, a $1 million fine, and three years of supervised release after serving the sentence.

The verdict and sentence related to false statements that Milton made to the public about progress with his company’s electric trucks. In particular, one situation involved a faked video of Nikola’s “One” hydrogen truck in which the truck was shown running when, in fact, it was just rolling down a hill.

Despite all this, Nikola got new leadership and went on to make battery and fuel cell electric semi trucks without Milton – we took multiple rides in the the trucks (they were pretty good, to be honest), and visited one of their fueling stations.

But it all wasn’t enough to keep Nikola from going bankrupt last month.

Fast forward to yesterday and we got a very weird press release in our inboxes – which we sat on for a little while, since it felt sketchy.

The press release came from “Trevor Milton Media,” and is highly praiseful of Milton, and also ends with an ad for an upcoming documentary. It claims that Donald Trump, also a convicted felon, has issued a full pardon to Milton. Milton also made a social media post announcing that he had gotten a personal phone call from Mr. Trump telling him about the pardon.

However, the Justice department operates a handy website cataloguing pardons – and weirdly enough, Milton isn’t on there. The website does mention an action from March 25th, so it *is* possible that it’s not updated and this will be added later – we would not be surprised by a lack of organization from anything associated with Mr. Trump.

But, whitehouse.gov also has a list of executive actions, and that’s been updated all the way to today, March 28, the day after this pardon happened. It includes an item from March 26, a pardon of Devon Archer, which is also listed on the Justice department’s pardon website as having happened on March 25.

Further, the pardon website includes no acknowledgement of pending cases for anyone named Trevor Milton, under the “search for a case” function.

And the last entry on the case against Trevor Milton is a letter from March 14th detailing the appropriate amounts of restitution – totaling at least ~$676 million – for parties defrauded by Milton.

Then, after sitting on the story for a couple hours, we saw that other outlets had reported it with the caveat that “Milton says” he’d been given a pardon – with some hoping that it’s a hoax. Reuters stated at the time that “The White House and Nikola did not immediately respond to requests for comment,” but all of this happened well past end of day, when people weren’t around to comment (nobody picked up the one call we made, either).

Finally, today New York Times, AP and others now say that the White House has confirmed this, but it still has not been posted to any official catalogue of pardons. It has also been reported that Trevor Milton gave $920,000 to Mr. Trump’s political campaign (or $1.8 million combined with his wife) and was represented in this case by Pam Bondi’s brother.

Update: Mr. Trump was asked what was his reasons were for the pardon in a press conference, and instead of stating his own thoughts (because, as usual, he doesn’t have any), he said that the pardon was “highly recommended by many people,” but further said that “I don’t know [Milton].” Mr. Trump also acknowledged that one of the reasons was because “they say the thing that [Milton] did wrong was he was one of the first people that supported a gentleman named Donald Trump for President. He supported Trump, he liked Trump, I didn’t know him but he liked him,” which certainly sounds like an admission of the rather obvious quid pro quo happening here.

Electrek’s Take

Well, we were right to think this was sketchy, but while we originally thought it could have been a weird publicity stunt of some sort, it looks like this is just the standard pay-for-play sketchiness that happens when a convicted fraudster is squatting in the White House.

The weirdness of the press release we got, which reads like a parody of itself, does warrant examination, though.

Much of it rails against the justice system in general, and against the Southern District of New York in particular – the district in which Milton was found guilty of federal crimes, and the same state where Mr. Trump was found guilty of falsifying business records, violating state law.

Milton’s press release argues that his case is similar to Mr. Trump’s, with both of them being victimized by the court system. It states “The striking similarities between Milton’s case and those brought against President Trump highlight systemic issues within the justice system, particularly within the Southern District of New York.” This seems like clear angling at Mr. Trump’s vanity.

The press release also name drops specific US attorneys and claims that their prosecution was flawed. This could be similar to a tactic which Mr. Trump has used before (and his ally Elon Musk), where they have publicly called out defenders of the law for doing their jobs in an apparent attempt to get them to back down or compromise their efforts.

It also seems quite similar to a proposed tactic by another corporate criminal, Sam Bankman-Fried. Fried had planned to “Go on Tucker Carlsen [sic], come out as a republican” in an attempt to angle for a pardon, again playing on the vanity, credulousness and love of fraud shown by the idiot-in-chief. Too bad Fried’s timing was off, but Milton has been luckier in that respect.

And then, in the last line of the press release, we get to a pretty funny statement – it ends with a link to a trailer for a documentary which purports to exonerate Milton, thus trying to use this news to get publicity for the upcoming video. Kind of strange that someone would need to release a documentary making the case for exoneration when one has supposedly already been exonerated, isn’t it?

So, for these reasons, we initially thought that this pardon didn’t actually happen. And it still isn’t mentioned on the pardon site, but then again disorganization is just as unsurprising as corruption when it comes to the convicted fraudster who is currently squatting in the White House (despite the Constitution having a clear legal remedy for this national crisis).

And now, in exchange for just $1.8 million in bribes, Milton might be able to skip out on the hundreds of millions in restitution he owes to regular people – or at least delay it for a while until civil cases happen. What a return on investment. We’ve crossed the Rubicon, people.

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