WASHINGTON — As former California congressional candidate Omar Navarro began quietly sounding out Republican contacts about securing a presidential pardon, he says he quickly encountered an eye-popping price tag.
“I talked to people that were in the Republican Party, and people that supported me in the past, and they made insinuations that you have to pay this law firm $2 million, $3 million and they’ll help you get a pardon,” Navarro told The Post from the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles.
Navarro, 37, was sentenced in February to four years in federal prison after pleading guilty to embezzling $250,000 from his campaign. He refused to identify the people he says discussed the pardon process with him, saying only: “The person that told me this is pretty powerful in the government, in the government agencies, like in the military and stuff like that, and so I’m very scared to even say anything about that.”
There is no indication that such payments amount to illegal conduct, including by President Trump or anyone working in the White House. Still, the sums paid by people seeking clemency to law firms, lobbyists and political intermediaries can be extraordinary.
“President Trump takes his absolute constitutional power to issue pardons and commutations seriously,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt told The Post Thursday. “That’s why we have a rigorous review process involving the Department of Justice and the White House Counsel’s Office — a team of elite lawyers who carefully evaluate every request before it reaches the President’s desk, and he serves as the final decision-maker.
“The President finds it detestable that anyone would even attempt to profit off pardons.”
Even so, a growing line of applicants seeking presidential clemency appears willing to spend massive amounts in what has become one of Washington’s most lucrative niches: the lobbying world’s polished term for it is “executive relief.”
One example is nursing home owner Joseph Schwartz, who received a Trump pardon in November 2025 after admitting he failed to turn over $39 million in payroll taxes to the federal government. Disclosure filings reviewed by The Post show Schwartz paid three separate firms a combined $1.1 million to press his case.
Binance founder Changpeng Zhao and his firm spent $2 million on “executive relief” efforts. The controversial crypto CEO was pardoned by Trump in October 2025 after pleading guilty to violating US anti-money laundering laws.
Zhao — or “CZ” as he is known — served a four-month prison sentence before being sprung, but not before paying $30,000 to the law firm of Baker & Hostetler LLP, while Binance paid the same firm $70,000 for the same work. Binance also paid another DC firm, Checkmate Government Relations, $1.9 million for “executive relief” and other issues related to cryptocurrency.
The Vogel Group — founded by former Republican Senate staffer Alex Vogel — brought in $270,000 on behalf of four clemency clients in Trump’s first term, according to lobbying disclosure reports, including “scam PAC” operator William Tierney, who pleaded guilty to defrauding thousands of donors; and New York stockbroker Ron Bauer, who is serving 20 months in prison for manipulating seven different stocks in a “pump-and-dump” scheme. Both have not been pardoned.
Anne Pramaggiore, the former Exelon Utilities CEO convicted in May 2023 for her role in a nearly decade-long scheme to bribe then-Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, shelled out $600,000 to two different firms seeking a pardon. She was released on bail this past April with a new trial ordered.
Of Pramaggiore’s money, $280,000 went to former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s RRB Strategies. Blagojevich can claim expertise after Trump commuted his 14-year prison sentence for corruption in 2020 and followed that up with a full pardon in February 2025.
University of St. Thomas (Minn.) School of Law professor Mark Osler, who also runs a clemency clinic, told The Post that the going rate for services that amount to the promise to use connections to get a person’s name and case in front of Trump is “shocking.”
Top lawyers in Washington, D.C., charge an average of $600 to over $1,000 per hour. Partners at top firms can charge up to $1,500 per hour for specialized services, according to Clio, a legal management service.
Margaret Love, an attorney who’s worked on more than 100 pardon applications, said she charged an average of $7,500 to help clemency applicants file with the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney.
Once an application is received, the DOJ recommends waiting until five years after a prisoner’s sentence is completed and contrition is displayed before even considering a pardon.
But Trump, according to Love, has “abandoned the regular process” and turned executive clemency into a free-for-all.
“Everybody’s crowding around and paying money to fixers and trying all kinds of stuff, which never ever happened before,” said Love, who ran the DOJ’s Office of the Pardon Attorney from 1990 to 1997.
“The majority of the people paying big bucks are not getting what they want. A lot of them are scammers being scammed,” Osler warned.
“They say don’t play a player. A lot of them seem to be getting played right now.”
Louisiana rapper Boosie BadAzz claims to have learned that lesson the hard way.
Facing jail time on a felony gun possession charge, BadAzz — whose legal name is Torence Hatch Jr. — hired lobbyists Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman to help him obtain clemency from the president, paying them $600,000 for their services.
When the pardon never materialized, the rapper sued, saying the contract he signed entitles him to at least half his money back. Wohl and Burkman dispute that claim.
“In 25 years, we cannot think of a single client for whom our firm has done more work than Boosie,” their firm, JM Burkman & Associates, said in a statement. “No provision to return half the fee was ever actually agreed to.”
“This contract was prepared by and signed by Burkman & Associates, including the return of funds provision,” Boosie’s Baton Rouge-based lawyer, Jill Craft, told The Post last week. “We expect them to live up to their end of the signed contract.”
Like Blagojevich, Wohl and Burkman have bitter experience with criminal issues. The duo pleaded guilty in October 2022 to telecommunications fraud in connection with a robocall scheme designed to deter minorities from voting by mail in the 2020 election.
The pair — who were sentenced by an Ohio judge to two years of probation, six months of monitoring with a GPS ankle bracelet, $2,500 each in fines and 500 hours of registering voters as community service — also pleaded no contest in Michigan and agreed to pay up to $1.25 million in fines under an agreement with New York AG Letitia James in connection with the scheme.
Burkman and Wohl are not the only figures on the periphery of Trump World who are cashing in.
Keith Schiller, Trump’s former bodyguard, and his firm, Javelin Advisors, received $1 million to lobby for “executive relief” for New Jersey real estate developer Fred Daibes, who was convicted in 2024 of bribing former Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and his wife with gold bars in exchange for Menendez’s assistance with a bank fraud case. Daibes was sentenced in January 2025 to seven years in federal prison. He has not been pardoned.
Such resources are beyond the reach of Omar Navarro, who remains in the notorious downtown LA jail — where he goes without his diabetes medication and other care — while he awaits a permanent prison assignment.
“I don’t come from a political family. I don’t come from money,” he said. “I’m just a regular person, you know?”
