Well, here’s a weird one for today. We got a press release in our inboxes claiming that Trevor Milton, who was convicted of fraud, has been issued a full pardon for his crimes. But no independent confirmation exists, and it sure does seem like some sort of publicity stunt.
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 did end up making electric and fuel cell semi trucks – we took multiple rides in them (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 today and we got a very weird press release in our inboxes – which we sat on for a few hours, since it feels sketchy.
The press release came from “Trevor Milton Media,” and is highly praiseful of Milton. It claims that Donald Trump, a fellow convicted felon just like Milton, 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 27, the day this supposed 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 25th.
Further, the pardon website even includes no pending cases for anyone named Trevor Milton, under the “search for a case” function.
And we can’t find any recent updates on the case against Trevor Milton – the last entry is a letter from March 14th about appropriate amounts of restitution for parties defrauded by Milton.
Finally, after sitting on this story for a couple hours, we see that (most) other outlets have reported this story with the caveat that “Milton says” he’s been given a pardon – with some hoping that it’s a hoax. And Reuters states that “The White House and Nikola did not immediately respond to requests for comment.”
Electrek’s Take
Suffice to say, there’s something sketchy going on here.
Clues as to what’s happening may exist in the text of the press release.
Much of it rails against the justice system in general, and against the Southern District of New York court in particular – the court which found Milton guilty, and the same court that found Mr. Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records.
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, with Milton trying to paint himself as an ally of his fellow fake billionaire.
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), calling out public servants and defenders of the law for doing their jobs in an apparent attempt to direct public hate at them or get them to back down or compromise for the benefit of their attacker.
So, despite us seeing no evidence yet that this pardon is actually real, maybe it’s an attempt to incept the idea of a pardon into the empty headcase of a vain ignoramus who for some reason has access to the pardon pen (despite there being a clear Constitutional remedy keeping insurrectionists like himself away from it).
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.
But then, in the last line of the press release, we get to what is perhaps the real point of this stunt – it ends with a link to a trailer for a documentary which purports to exonerate Milton. Kind of strange that someone would need to release a documentary making the case for exoneration when one has already been exonerated, isn’t it?
So, for these reasons, we think that this pardon didn’t actually happen. But I guess we’ll find out more tomorrow.
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