2026-09-13T19:56:17-0400 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻（CBS News）
八月中旬，在弗吉尼亚州泰森斯角——华盛顿特区近郊——奢华的丽思卡尔顿酒店酒吧内，杰克·伯克曼与商业伙伴雅各布·沃尔正进行着他们最新的推销。他们与前科犯阿蒙·科维诺及其妻子克里斯托瓦尔同坐一桌。
“针对本届白宫，你必须从各个方向持续向总统施压，才能迫使他采取行动，”伯克曼解释道。作为说客与右翼煽动者，伯克曼和沃尔已成为一个利润丰厚的新兴小众行业的代表人物：这类掮客专门招揽那些寻求特朗普总统赦免的客户。
当时，他们正将目标锁定在有望成为新客户的科维诺身上。科维诺是一名水族馆经营者，因非法跨州运输鲨鱼和鳐鱼，已在联邦监狱服刑近两年。
科维诺此前已通过邮寄方式向拜登政府司法部提交了赦免申请，但今年7月被特朗普先生驳回。作为本届政府清理积压赦免申请行动的一部分，数千名赦免申请者均未获得宽大处理。
阿蒙与克里斯托瓦尔·科维诺 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻 摄
过去18个月来，特朗普先生在宽大处理方面采取了截然不同的方式。就职首日，他便通过赦免、减刑和撤销起诉的方式，赦免了1500多名因2021年1月6日国会山骚乱被指控或定罪的人员。此后，数十名白领罪犯——通常家境富裕、人脉广泛——也获得了宽大处理。
伯克曼和沃尔在丽思卡尔顿酒店的会面中，向科维诺推销了他们所谓的“赦免新途径”。“这需要更多行动，更少繁文缛节，”伯克曼说道，“……还有人脉。”
但他们也坦言，这需要付出代价。他们告诉科维诺，只需支付30万美元，就能确保他最早在10月获得赦免。他们不知道的是，科维诺并非真正的潜在客户。哥伦比亚广播公司新闻《60分钟》栏目正在调查赦免掮客行业。为彻底揭露该行业的运作方式，CBS新闻委托科维诺接触这些掮客，并全程使用隐藏摄像机拍摄。
行业硬通货
典型的赦免申请人本应是悔罪的求赦者，已为其行为向社会付出代价。长期以来，历届总统都曾打破这一惯例，也因此屡屡引发争议。
福特总统赦免了理查德·尼克松。卡特总统赦免了越南战争逃兵。在总统任期的最后一天，克林顿总统赦免了逃匿金融家马克·里奇——其妻子丹尼斯·里奇是克林顿总统图书馆的主要捐赠者。2024年12月，拜登总统因在卸任前最后时刻赦免盟友、捐赠者及家人而受到审查，其中包括因枪支罪名被定罪、且在另一案件中承认逃税的儿子亨特·拜登。拜登还提前赦免了安东尼·福奇。
然而，与CBS新闻交谈过的联邦检察官、辩护律师及其他消息人士一致认为：华盛顿当前从未出现过如此令人眼花缭乱的赦免经济——这片赦免“蛮荒西部”充斥着与“让美国再次伟大”（MAGA）运动相关的掮客与网红，旧有规则基本已被抛诸脑后。
此前，寻求宽大处理的申请人通常需通过司法部。由二十多名司法部律师组成的团队会考量诸多因素，包括申请人的悔意、改过自新的证据，并向总统推荐值得宽恕的对象。但据直接了解赦免流程的消息人士透露，这一程序已基本被搁置。
根据CBS新闻对司法部数据的分析，特朗普先生在第二任期内约70%的赦免行动未经过司法部审批（若计入国会山骚乱相关案件，这一比例高达92%）。
掮客们正设法通过各种途径影响特朗普先生——通过白宫人脉、动用MAGA网红影响力，或与总统身边人士合作。人脉便是行业硬通货。消息人士告诉CBS新闻，凭借提供此类人脉的承诺，掮客如今收取的费用最高可达300万美元。
“如今已有一个行业围绕着帮助人们接触本应向所有人开放的赦免体系而兴起，”明尼苏达大学圣托马斯分校法学教授马克·奥斯勒说道。他运营着一个公益诊所，为联邦定罪罪犯提供免费法律援助，帮助他们向司法部申请宽大处理。他表示，如今求赦者都在想：“如果我能找到能在海湖庄园见到总统的人，如果我能花百万美元付给白宫法律顾问的朋友，那我就有机会了。”
马克·奥斯勒 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻 摄
该行业中有一部分运作是公开的：说客需向国会披露赦免客户及收费情况。在特朗普先生就职的头两年，这份名单持续增加。
但他们的具体运作方式——向求赦者承诺的内容、收费标准、如何推进流程——往往笼罩在 secrecy 之中。CBS新闻曾试图采访多名赦免掮客了解其工作，但他们要么拒绝，要么未回复采访请求。
其中包括数名与总统关系密切的有影响力掮客：前犹他州联邦检察官布雷特·托尔曼；律师、注册说客切斯·麦克道尔，他与小唐纳德·特朗普关系密切，曾帮助加密货币亿万富翁赵长鹏获得赦免——赵长鹏因违反美国反洗钱法被定罪；曾代表前纽约市市长鲁迪·朱利安尼的律师亚当·卡茨；以及前特朗普政府白宫官员斯特凡·帕桑蒂诺。
“我直接把请愿书送到白宫”
八月的一次电话通话中，托尔曼向科维诺介绍了赦免流程，当时CBS新闻的摄制组正陪同科维诺在场。
在通话中，托尔曼解释称，他从未将赦免申请提交给司法部，因为“那是狐狸看守鸡窝”。相反，他说，“我直接把请愿书送到白宫。”
据托尔曼自己透露，他预计在特朗普第二任期结束前将处理约“40到50起”赦免案件，并表示成功率将超过三分之二。他告诉科维诺，科维诺自行提交的申请——没有说客协助——根本没有成功的可能，因为“甚至从未在白宫得到过审议”。
CBS新闻向托尔曼发送了关于他与科维诺谈话的详细问题，但他并未回复。
白宫发言人劳伦·比斯在给CBS新闻的一份声明中表示，特朗普政府“拥有健全的赦免审查程序”，包括白宫法律顾问、司法部、爱丽丝·玛丽·约翰逊——这位白宫“赦免事务主管”曾在特朗普第一任期内因毒品定罪被终身监禁减刑——以及“作为最终决策者的总统本人”。
白宫法律顾问威尔·沙夫在一份声明中表示：“特朗普总统以合乎道德的方式履行宪法职责，否则的暗示要么是无知，要么是恶意。”
当被问及特朗普第二任期内的赦免游说问题时，比斯表示，任何“花钱游说赦免的人都是在愚蠢地浪费金钱，总统甚至都不知道这些所谓‘说客’是谁”。
随着特朗普先生大力动用总统赦免权，拥有MAGA背景的说客纷纷涌入市场，兜售他们的人脉——或人脉的假象。
伯克曼在华盛顿游说圈已活跃数十年，并在20世纪90年代成为有线电视新闻节目的常客。2017年，沃尔加入他的公司JM伯克曼联合事务所。不久后，两人便因针对民主党人的造势活动声名狼藉。
杰克·伯克曼（左）与雅各布·沃尔 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻 摄
2018年，他们召开新闻发布会，声称时任负责调查俄罗斯干预美国总统选举的特别检察官罗伯特·穆勒在数十年前曾性侵一名女性。他们未能提供任何证据，所谓的指控者也始终未现身。
2022年，伯克曼和沃尔因策划旨在压制黑人选民的非法机器人电话诈骗计划，在俄亥俄州认罪并被判缓刑。2025年，他们在密歇根州对恐吓选民的指控表示不认罪，再次被判缓刑。他们还因机器人电话事件面临联邦通信委员会超过500万美元的罚款。
两人在特朗普第一任期内曾代理过部分赦免客户。在第二任期伊始，他们便重新涉足该行业。
最初，伯克曼和沃尔未回复CBS新闻要求讨论赦免业务的采访请求。但在得知他们与科维诺的会面被摄像机拍下后，他们同意接受采访。
两人均否认自己参与了所谓的“花钱买赦免”的交易市场。他们表示，自己只是在帮助客户应对美国首都复杂的政治环境——是遵守法律的说客。
“我们为自己的工作感到自豪，”伯克曼说道，“如果有人聘请倡导者，当然会拥有优势。但这与所谓的‘花钱买赦免’完全是两码事。”
至于他们绕过长期存在的司法部程序的说法，沃尔表示，赦免流程完全由 Oval Office 里的掌权者决定。
“总统做出决定并非基于无名官僚的判断，他从来都不是这样，”沃尔说道。
CBS新闻曾联系多名被司法部驳回赦免申请的重刑犯，希望能借此了解赦免经济的运作方式。科维诺同意参与。
法庭记录显示，2013年，科维诺因非法贩卖海洋生物被判处一年监禁，2016年又因违反缓刑监管条件再次入狱11个月。善待动物组织（PETA）曾发布一份32页的文件，称科维诺家族的水族馆“长期存在动物福利问题、动物死亡、法律违规，以及员工和公众因直接接触动物而受伤的情况”。他在社交媒体上也常有争议性甚至冒犯性的言论。
伯克曼和沃尔在7分钟内就回复了科维诺的初始电子邮件 outreach。他们向科维诺吹嘘自己的成功率，称已为6名赦免申请人取得“胜利”，并认为科维诺的案件极具说服力。他们表示，科维诺的起诉显然是“奥巴马式的疯狂举动”，因为他2013年就已被定罪。
他们提到的一起案件涉及约瑟夫·施瓦茨，一名养老院经营者，在联邦法院承认未缴纳从员工工资中扣除的3800多万美元就业税，且未提交员工退休计划所需的财务报告。施瓦茨还在阿肯色州州法院承认试图逃税和医疗补助欺诈。
2025年11月，在入狱三个月后，施瓦茨获得特朗普先生的赦免。仅数月前，联邦游说记录显示，JM伯克曼联合事务所披露其从施瓦茨处获得了96万美元报酬。
两人告诉CBS新闻，这笔费用是合理的，因为他们认为施瓦茨是被错误定罪，且健康状况不佳。
“我们救了他的命，”伯克曼说道。
一名白宫官员表示，施瓦茨的案件是“过度起诉的典型”，其判决“对一名65岁健康状况不断恶化的老人来说格外残忍”。
施瓦茨倒闭的养老院帝国的受害者们却有不同看法。他们表示，赦免让他们崩溃。
梅利莎·库尔森的家人曾获得针对施瓦茨的近1900万美元 wrongful-death 判决，但从未拿到一分钱。她的母亲多丽丝·库尔森是一名退休心脏科护士，2016年9月在阿肯色州小石城的一家养老院被工作人员发现失去意识——该养老院是施瓦茨的公司在5个月前接管的。尽管医生要求只能通过鼻饲进食，但她在被喂食早餐后不久便去世。
库尔森在采访中表示，赦免让她感觉赦免系统背叛了她。“这完全看你能付多少钱，”她说，“如果我们的系统变成这样，那它无疑已经崩溃了。”
让特朗普陷入“钳形攻势”
八月在丽思卡尔顿酒店的会面中，伯克曼向科维诺介绍了他和沃尔如何招募网红与总统身边人士，从各个方向向特朗普施压，让他知晓客户的诉求。
“我们让他陷入钳形攻势，”伯克曼在谈到总统时说道。
这些掮客告诉科维诺，接触总统的行动是多层次且持续不断的。
“我们就是要把笔递到他手里，让他签字，因为他已经听够了这件事，”伯克曼说道。
CBS新闻获悉，白宫已对总统涉嫌售卖赦免的舆论感到敏感。在会面中，掮客建议科维诺不要进行政治捐款。
“人们必须明白关于总统的一件事，”伯克曼说道，“在这类事情上，他不是交易型的。他不需要钱，也不需要捐款。”
阿蒙与克里斯托瓦尔·科维诺 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻 摄
掮客们试图动用影响力人士的细节，体现在发给另一位客户托伦斯·哈奇——艺名Boosie Badazz的说唱歌手——的短信中。一条来自沃尔手机号的短信——沃尔否认发送过该短信——称，掮客将招募MAGA网红劳拉·卢默、众议院议长迈克·约翰逊和保守派活动人士埃丽卡·柯克，为其因枪支定罪寻求赦免进行“背书”。另一条短信承诺，沃尔将设法让卢默去说服娜塔莉·哈普——这位以对特朗普极为忠诚闻名的白宫官员，“将此事呈递给总统”。
伯克曼和沃尔后来表示，他们不仅没有发送过该短信，甚至在短信发送时都没听说过哈普。白宫发言人劳伦·比斯表示，哈普“从未与杰克·伯克曼和雅各布·沃尔有过任何交集”。
特朗普先生尚未赦免哈奇。哈奇于今年1月被判处三年缓刑、300小时社区服务及5万美元罚款。哈奇似乎已就赦免游说问题向伯克曼和沃尔提起仲裁索赔，要求退款——这是特朗普第二任期内首例已知的针对赦免说客的仲裁索赔。
哈奇在采访中表示，这些说客让他相信“只要你拿出这笔钱，就能获得赦免”。他表示，已预付60万美元，根据协议，如果未能获得赦免，将退还一半费用。伯克曼对此予以否认，称“最终协议从未签署，所以从法律上讲，我们只剩下口头合同”。
卢默告诉CBS新闻，她从未参与过赦免相关事务，也从未就赦免问题与伯克曼或沃尔交谈过。“关于施瓦茨的案子，我唯一公开说过的是，我认为法官和他的案件存在偏见，”卢默补充道，并提到了她2025年4月在社交媒体上发布的一条帖子，称施瓦茨是偏见法官的受害者。
“我确实认识沃尔，但我已经明确表示，我的名字似乎被未经我同意地用于造势，我公开说过我认为Boosie被骗了，”卢默说道。
Boosie Badazz 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻 摄
约翰逊和柯克所运营的“转折点美国”组织的发言人表示，他们也未参与赦免背书。
伯克曼和沃尔坚称他们与哈奇的交易光明正大。
“我们不欠他任何东西。……我们鼓励他撤诉，这毫无根据。”伯克曼说道。哈奇的仲裁索赔最初由媒体机构NOTUS（现更名为《华盛顿太阳报》）报道。
寻求赦免的新方式：毫无悔意
曾于2025年5月至本月初离职的司法部赦免事务律师、特朗普忠实支持者埃德·马丁，否认存在交易型赦免经济。
“当人们说‘有掮客，有权钱交易’时，我从未见过这种情况。我没见过，也没听说过，”马丁在接受CBS新闻采访时说道。
马丁表示，赦免决策完全由总统说了算。“决定如何行使宽大处理是他的职责，”他说道，“唐纳德·特朗普比普通政客更频繁地践行宽大处理。”
马丁还驳斥了赦免系统偏向付费者的说法，并举出特朗普先生为2021年1月6日国会山骚乱相关的被指控或定罪人员提供宽大处理的例子。
“各行各业的人都有，”他说道，“无论贫富。”
埃德·马丁 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻 摄
马丁表示，特朗普先生的首要目标是为那些据称是政治迫害目标的人提供宽大处理。他接管赦免办公室时，总统告诉他“针对公民的政治武器化已经失控”，并指示他找出“被针对性打击的人”。
赦免作为美国刑事司法体系中已有250年历史的核心制度，是开国元勋赋予总统的最高权力之一。亚历山大·汉密尔顿曾称其为“仁慈的特权”，这一宪法规定的机制，旨在为 inherently inflexible 的刑事法律体系提供宽大处理的空间。
历史上，赦免申请的核心是悔罪：申请人承认罪行、表现出悔意，并证明已改过自新。但在新的操作手册中，一些申请人被鼓励毫无悔意。
“在这类案件中，申请赦免的方式略有不同，”沃尔在八月告诉科维诺。他补充道，承担罪责“并不是让申请获得通过的方式”。
相反，伯克曼和沃尔以及其他赦免掮客，都鼓励申请人援引特朗普先生本人对司法系统的不满。
“我的客户被拜登司法部武器化了，”这已成为他们的常用话术，一名处理赦免案件、要求匿名的律师说道。
多名赦免获得者都宣扬自己的清白。特雷弗·米尔顿因在其电动卡车公司尼古拉的问题上向投资者撒谎被定罪。在获得赦免后的一份声明中，米尔顿感谢特朗普先生授予他“这一神圣的无罪赦免”。据一位熟悉该邮件的消息人士透露，他甚至在一封邮件中向检察官通报了赦免消息，检察官认为该邮件“傲慢自大”。
米尔顿的发言人拒绝置评。
前洪都拉斯总统胡安·奥兰多·埃尔南德斯因共谋进口400吨可卡因和枪支罪名被定罪，在特朗普先生去年赦免他后声称自己“被拜登哈里斯政府和深层国家陷害”。
“这表明我们已经偏离了多么远的道路——过去我们以认罪和承担责任为核心，以对犯罪造成的伤害表示悔意为重，”奥斯勒说道，“如今，赦免之后竟变成了对检察官的嘲讽。”
科维诺表示，他同意在摄像机拍摄下接触掮客，是因为他想“揭露不公平现象”。但他也承认，这套体系恐怕几乎无法避免。
“我不喜欢必须花这么多钱、还要看人脉关系的事实，”他说道，“但如果这就是游戏规则，那这就是游戏的玩法。”
哥伦比亚广播公司新闻调查数据记者史蒂夫·赖利、《60分钟》制片人沙哈尔·巴伦、《60分钟》助理制片人金索尔·郑以及副调查制片人考利·泰特尔鲍姆为本报道做出了贡献。
Pardon brokers offer to “put pressure on the president” — at sky-high costs
2026-09-13T19:56:17-0400 / CBS News
It was mid-August at the bar inside the plush Ritz-Carlton hotel in Tysons Corner, Virginia, just outside Washington, and Jack Burkman and his business partner Jacob Wohl were making their latest sales pitch. They were seated at a table with Ammon Covino, a convicted felon, and his wife, Crystal.
“With this particular White House, you have to put pressure on the president from all directions in a consistent way to force his hand,” Burkman explained. He and Wohl, lobbyists and right-wing provocateurs, had become avatars of a lucrative new cottage industry of brokers courting those seeking pardons from President Trump.
Now, they were zeroing in on the man they hoped would be their next client: Covino, an aquarium operator who served nearly two years in federal prison for illegally transporting a shark and a stingray across state lines.
Covino had already filled out and submitted a pardon application form by mail to the Biden Justice Department. But his request was rejected in July by Mr. Trump, one of thousands of pardon-seekers denied clemency as part of the administration’s effort to clear its backlog of applicants.
Ammon and Crystal Covino. CBS News
Mr. Trump has employed a different approach to clemency over the last 18 months. On his first day in office, he cleared more than 1,500 people charged or convicted in relation to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot through pardons, commutations and dropped prosecutions. Dozens of clemency grants for white-collar criminals, often wealthy and well-connected, have followed.
Burkman and Wohl’s pitch at the Ritz-Carlton meeting leaned into what they described as a new path to a pardon. “It’s more energy and less process,” Burkman said. “…And contacts.”
But it would come with a price, they told Covino. For $300,000, they predicted, they could secure him a pardon by as early as October. What they didn’t know was that Covino wasn’t a real prospective client. CBS News’ 60 Minutes was investigating the world of pardon brokers. To uncover exactly how this business operated, CBS News asked Covino to approach the brokers — with hidden cameras in tow.
The coin of the realm
The archetypical pardon recipient is a repentant mercy-seeker who has paid his due to society. Presidents have long deviated from that formula, and long courted controversy.
President Ford pardoned Richard Nixon. President Carter pardoned Vietnam draft-dodgers. On his final day in office, President Clinton pardoned Marc Rich, a fugitive financier whose wife, Denise Rich, was a major donor to the Clinton presidential library. In December 2024, President Biden faced scrutiny for 11th-hour pardons of allies, donors and family, including his son, Hunter Biden, who was convicted on firearms charges and pleaded guilty to tax evasion in a separate case. Biden also preemptively pardoned Anthony Fauci.
Yet there is near-unanimity among the federal prosecutors, defense attorneys and other sources who discussed the clemency process with CBS News: There has never been such a dizzying pardon economy as there is in Washington right now — a Wild West of clemency populated by MAGA-connected brokers and influencers — where the old norms have been largely tossed aside.
Previously, those seeking clemency typically went through the Justice Department. More than two dozen DOJ lawyers weighed factors that often included an applicant’s remorse and evidence of rehabilitation, and recommended worthy recipients to the president. That process has been largely sidelined, according to sources with direct knowledge of the clemency process.
About 70% of Mr. Trump’s clemency actions in his second term were not routed through the Justice Department (and that number is 92% when including the Jan. 6 cases), according to a CBS News analysis of Justice Department data.
Brokers seek out ways to influence Mr. Trump – through contacts in the White House, by deploying MAGA influencers, or by working with others close to the president. Access is the coin of the realm, and on the promise of delivering that access, brokers now charge fees that can reach as high as $3 million, sources told CBS News.
“There’s an industry that’s built up around helping people get access to this system that should be free, that should be available to everybody,” said Mark Osler, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. He runs a pro bono clinic for people convicted of federal crimes to help them apply to the Justice Department for clemency. Now, he said clemency-seekers think: “‘If I can get to this person who can find the president at Mar-a-Lago, if I can pay a million dollars to this friend of a White House counsel, then I will have a shot.’”
Mark Osler. CBS News
Part of this industry operates in full view: Lobbyists disclose clemency clients and fees to Congress. That list has grown steadily over Mr. Trump’s first two years in office.
But how they work — what they promise to clemency-seekers, how much they charge and how they navigate the process — is often shrouded in secrecy. CBS News sought interviews with a number of clemency brokers about their work, and they either declined or did not respond to our requests.
Among those were several influential brokers with ties to the president, including Brett Tolman, a former U.S. attorney in Utah; Ches McDowell, a lawyer and registered lobbyist who is close to Donald Trump Jr. and helped secure a pardon for Changpeng Zhao — a cryptocurrency billionaire who was convicted of violating U.S. anti-money laundering laws; Adam Katz, an attorney who previously represented former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani; and Stefan Passantino, a former Trump White House official.
“I just send my petitions directly to the White House”
CBS News was with Covino when Tolman described the clemency process to him in an August phone call.
In the phone call, Tolman explained he never sent clemency applications to the Justice Department because “it’s the fox watching the hen house.” Instead, he said, “I just send my petitions directly to the White House.”
By his own account, Tolman expects to work on roughly “40 or 50” clemency cases before Mr. Trump’s second term is over, and said he expects to be successful in more than two-thirds of the cases. The application Covino submitted by himself — without a lobbyist — never stood a chance, Tolman told him, because it “never even got considered in the White House.”
CBS News sent Tolman detailed questions about his discussion with Covino. He did not respond.
In a statement to CBS News, White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said that the Trump administration “has a robust pardon review process” that includes White House counsel, the Justice Department, Alice Marie Johnson — the White House “pardon czar” who had her sentence commuted for life imprisonment over a drug conviction by Mr. Trump in his first term — and “the president himself as the final decider.”
In a statement, White House Counsel Will Scharf said “President Trump performs his constitutional duties in an ethically sound manner and to suggest so otherwise is either ill-informed or malicious.”
Asked about pardon lobbying during Mr. Trump’s second term, Bis said that anyone “spending money to lobby for pardons is foolishly wasting their money and the president doesn’t even know who these so-called ‘lobbyists’ are.”
As Mr. Trump has embraced his presidential pardon power, lobbyists with MAGA bona fides have rushed to sell their access — or the appearance of it.
Burkman had been a fixture of the Washington lobbying scene for decades and a regular guest on cable TV shows in the 1990s. In 2017, Wohl joined his firm, JM Burkman and Associates. Soon after, the pair became known for stunts aimed at Democrats.
Jack Burkman, left, and Jacob Wohl. CBS News
In 2018, they called a press conference alleging that Robert Mueller, then the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the presidential election, had sexually assaulted a woman decades earlier. They offered no evidence, and the alleged accuser never materialized.
In 2022, Burkman and Wohl pleaded guilty in Ohio to fraud after orchestrating an illegal robocall scheme aimed at suppressing the Black vote. They were sentenced to probation. In 2025, they pleaded no contest in Michigan to charges of intimidating voters and again received probation. They faced a more than $5 million fine from the Federal Communications Commission for robocalls.
The two represented some clemency clients in Mr. Trump’s first term. They reentered the business at the start of his second.
Initially, Burkman and Wohl did not respond to CBS News requests to discuss the pardon work. They agreed to be interviewed later, after learning that their meeting with Covino had been captured on camera.
Both rejected any suggestion that they are participants in a new pay-to-play marketplace. They said they are merely helping people navigate the complexities of the nation’s capital — lobbyists who are adhering to the law.
“We’re proud of the work we do,” Burkman said. “If people hire advocates, of course they have an advantage. But that’s a very different question than saying something is pay-to-play.”
As for the notion that they were sidestepping the longstanding Justice Department process, Wohl said that the process is entirely in the hands of whoever sits in the Oval Office.
“The president doesn’t make decisions based on the judgment of nameless, faceless bureaucrats. He never has,” Wohl said.
CBS News reached out to a number of felons who had been denied pardons by the Justice Department to ask if they could help open a window into the pardon economy. Covino agreed.
In 2013, Covino was sentenced to a year in prison for illegal trafficking of marine life, then violated the conditions of his supervised release in 2016 and spent another 11 months in prison, court records show. The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, also known as PETA, has published a 32-page document that said the Covino family’s aquariums have “a lengthy history of animal welfare issues, animal deaths, legal violations, and injuries to employees and the public from direct contact with animals.” He also has a history of sharing controversial and at times offensive posts on social media.
Burkman and Wohl responded to Covino’s initial email outreach in seven minutes. They touted to Covino a success rate that included “six victories” on behalf of pardon-seekers and said they believed Covino’s case was strong. They said Covino’s prosecution was clearly “Obama craziness,” since he was convicted in 2013.
One case they noted involved Joseph Schwartz, a nursing home operator who pleaded guilty in federal court to failing to pay more than $38 million in employment taxes withheld from his workers and to failing to file a required financial report for his employees’ retirement plan. Schwartz also pleaded guilty in Arkansas state court to attempting to evade taxes and Medicaid fraud.
Schwartz received a pardon from Mr. Trump in November 2025, three months into his three-year prison sentence. Just months earlier, the lobbying firm JM Burkman and Associates disclosed that it earned $960,000 from Schwartz, federal lobbying records show.
The two men told CBS News the fee was justified because they believed Schwartz had been wrongly convicted and was in poor health.
“We saved his life,” Burkman said.
A White House official said that Schwartz’s case was “an example of over prosecution” and that his sentence was “exceptionally harmful to a 65-year-old man already in deteriorating health.”
Victims of Schwartz’s collapsed-nursing home empire have a different view. They said they were devastated by the pardon.
Melissa Coulson’s family won a nearly $19 million wrongful-death judgment against Schwartz but never collected a dollar. Her mother, Doris Coulson, a retired cardiac nurse, was found unresponsive in September 2016 by staff at a Little Rock, Arkansas, nursing home — a facility Schwartz’s company had taken over five months earlier. She later died after being fed her breakfast by mouth, despite orders that she be fed only by tube.
Coulson said in an interview that it felt like the pardon system betrayed her. “It’s about how much you can pay for it,” she said. “And if our system is getting like this, then it’s definitely broken.”
Putting Trump in “a pincer movement”
During the meeting in August at the Ritz-Carlton, Burkman described to Covino how he and Wohl enlist influencers and presidential insiders to come at Mr. Trump from all directions, so he becomes aware of their clients’ stories.
“We put him in a pincer movement,” Burkman said of the president.
The brokers told Covino the effort to reach the president is multi-layered and relentless.
“We literally want to put the pen in his hand and get him to sign it because he’s tired of hearing about it,” Burkman said.
CBS News has learned that the White House has become sensitive to the perception that the president is selling pardons. During the meeting, the brokers advised Covino against making a political contribution.
“People have to understand something about the president,” Burkman said. “When it comes to these things [he’s] not transactional. He doesn’t need the money; he doesn’t need the contributions.”
Ammon and Crystal Covino. CBS News
How the brokers attempt to deploy influential people on their behalf was detailed in text messages sent to another client, Torence Hatch, a rapper known by the stage name Boosie Badazz. A text from Wohl’s number — which he has denied sending — said the brokers would enlist people like MAGA influencer Laura Loomer, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and conservative activist Erika Kirk to “endorse” the pardon he sought after a federal gun conviction. Another text message promised that Wohl would see if Loomer would ask Natalie Harp, a White House official known to be one of Mr. Trump’s most loyal aides, “to bring it in to POTUS.”
Burkman and Wohl later said they not only did not send the text, but had not even heard of Harp at the time the message was sent. Lauren Bis, a White House spokesperson, said that Harp “has never even interacted with Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl.”
Mr. Trump has not pardoned Hatch, who was sentenced in January to three years of supervised release, 300 hours of community service, and a $50,000 fine. Hatch has filed what appears to be the first known arbitration claim against pardon lobbyists during Mr. Trump’s second term, seeking a refund from Burkman and Wohl.
Hatch said in an interview that the lobbyists led him to believe “that if you come with this money, you will get a pardon.” He said he paid $600,000 up front, under an agreement that half would be returned if no pardon came. Burkman disputed the claim, saying “the final agreement was never signed, so all you’re left with legally speaking is oral contract.”
Loomer told CBS News that she does not get involved with pardons and has never spoken to Burkman or Wohl about clemency. “The only thing that I publicly said was that I felt that the judge and his case was biased,” Loomer added about the Schwartz case, pointing to a social media post from her account in April 2025 that claimed Schwartz was a victim of a biased judge.
“I do know [Wohl] personally but I have made it very clear that my name appears to be used for clout without my consent and I’ve publicly said I think Boosie was scammed,” Loomer said.
Boosie Badazz. CBS News
Spokespeople for Johnson and Turning Point USA, the group that Kirk runs, said they did not endorse the pardon, either.
Burkman and Wohl maintained their dealings with Hatch were above board.
“We don’t owe him anything. … We encourage him to drop the suit. It’s without merit.” Burkman said. Hatch’s arbitration claim was first reported by the media outlet NOTUS, now called The Washington Sun.
A new approach to seeking clemency: Show no remorse
Ed Martin, a Trump loyalist who served as the Justice Department’s pardon attorney from May 2025 until his departure earlier this month, denied the existence of a transactional pardon economy.
“When people say ‘there’s brokers, there’s quid pro quo,’ I’ve never seen it. I haven’t seen it. I haven’t heard it,” Martin said in an interview with CBS News.
Martin said clemency decisions are within the sole purview of the president. “It’s his obligation to decide how to do mercy,” he said. “And Donald Trump has over and over again, much more than normal politicians, sought to give mercy.”
Martin also rejected the idea that the system favors those who can pay, citing Mr. Trump’s acts of clemency for those who were charged or convicted in connection to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
“There are people all across the spectrum,” he said, “whether they’re wealthy or poor.”
Ed Martin. CBS News
Instead, Mr. Trump’s overriding goal, Martin said, was mercy for people who were allegedly the targets of political prosecutions. When he took over the pardon office, Martin said, the president told him that “the political weaponization against citizens is out of hand” and directed him to find “people that were targeted.”
Clemency, a 250-year-old mainstay of the American criminal justice system, is the most regal of powers bestowed on the president by the founding fathers. Alexander Hamilton called it a “benign prerogative,” a constitutionally enshrined method of allowing for mercy in a system of criminal laws that are inherently inflexible.
Historically it was rooted in contrition: a petitioner admitted the crime, showed remorse and demonstrated a changed life.” Under the new playbook, some applicants are encouraged to show no remorse.
“There’s a little bit of a different way that you do pardon applications in cases like this,” Wohl told Covino in August. He added that taking responsibility for a crime is “not the way you get these things approved.”
Instead, Burkman and Wohl, as well as other pardon brokers, have encouraged applicants to invoke Mr. Trump’s own grievances against the justice system.
“My client was persecuted by the weaponized Biden Justice Department” has become common lingo for them, according to one lawyer who works on clemency cases and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
A number of pardon recipients have trumpeted their innocence. Trevor Milton was convicted of lying to investors about his electric truck company, Nikola. In a statement after his pardon, Milton thanked Mr. Trump for granting him “this sacred pardon of innocence.” He even broke the news of the pardon to the prosecutors in an email that they considered “cocky,” according to a source familiar with the email.
A spokesperson for Milton declined to comment.
Juan Orlando Hernández, the former Honduras president who was convicted for conspiring to import 400 tons of cocaine and firearms offenses, claimed after Mr. Trump pardoned him last year that he was “set up by the Biden Harris administration and the deep state.”
“It shows you how far we’ve strayed from the days when we centered acceptance and responsibility, a sense of remorse over the harm done by the crime,” Osler said. “We’re to the point now where pardons are followed by the taunting of the prosecutor.”
Covino said he agreed to reach out to brokers with cameras rolling because he wanted to “expose unfairness.” But he conceded that the system is probably all but inescapable.
“I don’t like the fact that you have to pay such a huge amount of money because of who you know,” he said. “But if that’s how the game’s played, then that’s how the game’s played.”
CBS News investigative data reporter Steve Reilly, 60 Minutes Producer Shachar Bar-On, 60 Minutes Associate Producer Jinsol Jung, and Associate Investigative Producer Callie Teitelbaum contributed to this report.