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.
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.'”
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.
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.”
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.
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.”
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.
Read a full transcript of the “60 Minutes” piece.
