{"id":415454,"date":"2026-01-18T19:32:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T19:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/415454\/"},"modified":"2026-01-18T19:32:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T19:32:09","slug":"trump-pardon-of-former-puerto-rico-governor-failed-to-include-a-relevant-criminal-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/415454\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump pardon of former Puerto Rico governor failed to include a relevant criminal case"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 President Donald Trump\u2019s pardon <\/a>of former Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda V\u00e1zquez Garced did not include all of the criminal cases she\u2019s faced, and the White House is planning to make a fix out of an abundance of caution, an official said Sunday.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s pardon of V\u00e1zquez Garced says it applies<\/a> to \u201cthose offenses against the United States individually enumerated and set before me for my consideration: United States v. Vazquez-Garced, et al., 3:22-CR-342.\u201d<\/p>\n

The former Puerto Rico governor was initially indicted<\/a> by the Justice Department in 2022 on bribery charges related to the financing of her 2020 campaign. In August 2025, she pleaded guilty<\/a> to a reduced charge, a misdemeanor campaign finance violation, and that guilty plea and agreement were filed under a separate docket number, 3:25-cr-00296.<\/p>\n

The 2025 docket number is not listed in the pardon.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration believes the original document is sufficient for the pardon, but a White House official said an additional document will be signed out of an abundance of caution.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s somewhat common for a federal case to be brought under a new docket number when a plea agreement is reached. In this instance, the original 2022 case includes other defendants. Those co-defendants have been separately<\/a> pardoned<\/a>, but none of the cases have yet been dismissed.<\/p>\n

For now, the 2025 case against V\u00e1zquez Garced remains active, even after the pardon. On Saturday, Judge Silvia L. Carre\u00f1o-Coll denied a pending defense motion in that case related to V\u00e1zquez Garced\u2019s scheduled sentencing on Jan. 29. The defense team has not yet filed a motion about the pardon in either case that would seek to close them.<\/p>\n

The plea deal came about after attorneys for V\u00e1zquez Garced and her billionaire co-defendant Julio Herrera Velutini met with officials at Justice Department headquarters. The group included Chris Kise, who worked on Trump\u2019s legal team, alongside Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who defense attorneys said<\/a> \u201cwas not present and did not participate\u201d in the negotiations that day.<\/p>\n

V\u00e1zquez Garced\u2019s team said the plea agreement \u201cresulted from the government\u2019s professional evaluation of new compelling and exculpatory evidence uncovered through defense investigation and presented during good faith negotiations, not from any directive from Main Justice.\u201d Herrera Velutini\u2019s daughter, Isabela Herrera, had donated<\/a> $2.5 million to the pro-Trump super PAC MAGA Inc. in December 2024. Kise did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

Liz Oyer, a former Justice Department pardon attorney, told NBC News on Sunday that the \u201crecurring\u201d issues around Trump\u2019s pardons would have been avoided had the administration been following normal protocols.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere have been a number of clemencies that he\u2019s granted where the meaning or scope of the relief granted has been ambiguous, and in other cases, this has created a lot of work for courts<\/a> as well as the Justice Department<\/a> litigating what the intent of the president was,\u201d Oyer said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe saw that in the Jan. 6 pardon proclamation, which has generated litigation around the country about how far-reaching the pardon was intended to be,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s still ongoing in the case of the alleged pipe bomber<\/a>, who is now arguing that the pardon covered his conduct.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of these ambiguities and questions are completely avoidable if an orderly process is followed and the Office of the Pardon Attorney is consulted so that the paperwork can properly effectuate the president\u2019s intent,\u201d Oyer said.<\/p>\n

Ryan Crosswell, who was the lead prosecutor in the V\u00e1zquez Garced case and is now running for Congress as a Democrat in Pennsylvania, said Friday<\/a> that the pardon was a \u201csad day for the rule of law in America\u201d and that the \u201cpeople of Puerto Rico deserved to see this case go to trial.\u201d<\/p>\n

An attorney for V\u00e1zquez Garced did not immediately respond to NBC News\u2019 request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2014 President Donald Trump\u2019s pardon of former Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda V\u00e1zquez Garced did not include all…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":415455,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-415454","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415454","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=415454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}