![\"FILE](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/18417245_vazquez.png\"\/)
<\/a><\/p>\nFILE – Governor Wanda V\u00e1zquez speaks at a press conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico, May 21, 2020.<\/p>\n
AP Photo\/Carlos Giusti, File<\/p>\n
They noted that V\u00e1zquez had agreed to plead guilty to accepting a promise of a campaign contribution that was never received.<\/p>\n
Attorneys for V\u00e1zquez did not immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n
The official who confirmed the planned pardon indicated Trump saw the case as political prosecution and said the investigation into V\u00e1zquez, a Republican aligned with the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, had begun 10 days after she endorsed Trump in 2020. The official wasn’t authorized to reveal the news by name and spoke on the condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n
CBS News was the first to report the plan to pardon V\u00e1zquez.<\/p>\n
Pablo Jos\u00e9 Hern\u00e1ndez, Puerto Rico’s representative in Congress and a member of the island’s main opposition party, condemned a pardon for V\u00e1zquez.<\/p>\n
“Impunity protects and fosters corruption. The pardon … undermines public integrity, shatters faith in justice, and offends those of us who believe in honest governance,” said Hern\u00e1ndez, a Democrat with Puerto Rico’s Popular Democratic Party.<\/p>\n
V\u00e1zquez, an attorney, was the U.S. territory’s first former governor to plead guilty to a crime, specifically accepting a donation from a foreigner for her 2020 political campaign.<\/p>\n
She was arrested in August 2022 and accused of engaging in a bribery scheme from December 2019 through June 2020 while governor. At the time, she told reporters that she was innocent.<\/p>\n
Authorities said that Puerto Rico’s Office of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions was investigating an international bank owned by Venezuelan Julio Mart\u00edn Herrera Velutini because of alleged suspicious transactions that had not been reported by the bank.<\/p>\n
Authorities said Herrera and Mark Rossini, a former FBI agent who provided consulting services to Herrera, allegedly promised to support V\u00e1zquez’s campaign if she dismissed the commissioner and appointing a new one of Herrera’s choosing.<\/p>\n
Authorities said V\u00e1zquez demanded the commissioner’s resignation in February 2020 after allegedly accepting the bribery offer. She also was accused of appointing a new commissioner in May 2020: a former consultant for Herrera’s bank.<\/p>\n
V\u00e1zquez was the second woman to serve as Puerto Rico’s governor and the first former governor to face federal charges.<\/p>\n
She was sworn in as governor in August 2019 after former Gov. Ricardo Rossell\u00f3 resigned following massive protests. V\u00e1zquez served until 2021, after losing the primaries of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party to former Gov. Pedro Pierluisi.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
Associated Press reporter D\u00e1nica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico contributed.<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2026 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump plans to pardon former Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda V\u00e1zquez, a White House official…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411762,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[197528,4,450,451,3,452,453],"class_list":["post-411761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-197528","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}