Trump pardons Trevor Milton, who was accused of fraud related to bankrupt truck maker Nikola
Trevor Milton
By Kevin Liptak, CNN
(CNN) — President Donald Trump says he pardoned Trevor Milton, the CEO of now-defunct hydrogen and electric truck firm Nikola, in part because he believed Milton was persecuted for supporting Trump’s political ambitions.
In October 2022, a New York jury convicted Milton on federal charges of securities fraud and wire fraud.
Prosecutors in the US Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York had accused Milton of making false and misleading statements about “nearly all aspects of the business” as it pertained to developing electric and hydrogen-powered trucks, as well as defrauding the public through social media and podcast interviews.
He was sentenced in 2023 to four years in prison. He had been free on bail as he appealed the conviction.
On Thursday evening, Milton posted on X that he’d received a phone call from Trump, who informed him he’d been granted a “full and unconditional pardon.”
“This pardon is not just about me—it’s about every American who has been railroaded by the government, and unfortunately, that’s a lot of people,” Milton wrote.
The pardon, which will spare Milton from serving time in prison, would also allow him to avoid court-ordered payments to compensate shareholders.
In his remarks Friday, Trump suggested Milton’s case was unfairly moved to New York from Utah. And he alleged — without evidence — that he was targeted for being a Trump supporter.
“They say the thing that he 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,” he said during an otherwise unrelated event.
“There are many people like that,” he added later. “They support Trump, and they went after him.”
Trump commutes sentence of another businessman accused of fraud
Also on Friday, Trump commuted the sentence of Ozy Media founder Carlos Watson, just hours before he was set to surrender to prison, two people familiar with the matter confirmed to CNN.
Watson was convicted last summer for defrauding investors and lying about his company’s finances. He’s a former cable news anchor and investment banker who was accused of lying to investors about the now-defunct startup’s finances and sham deals with Google and Oprah Winfrey.
In December, Watson was sentenced to nearly a decade in prison.
As CNN reported at the time, Ozy imploded in 2021 after news reports questioned its audience numbers and revealed that a top executive had impersonated a YouTube executive during a call with Goldman Sachs bankers in which he claimed the streaming site agreed to pay for exclusive rights to an Ozy show.
The White House declined to comment.
This story has been updated with additional reporting.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins contributed to this report.
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