On the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, a top White House official assured a Republican lobbyist that his client’s pardon application would be placed in the pipeline for consideration by President Trump before he left office.
Hours later, the administration was torn apart by Trump supporters’ attack on the Capitol. The lobbyist never heard back about the pardon, and his client remained imprisoned for his role in an insurance bribery scandal that shook North Carolina Republican politics and left thousands of retirees unable to obtain access to their annuities for years.
Four years later, the lobbyist is back, pushing for a presidential pardon for the same client, the insurance mogul Greg E. Lindberg.
But this time around is different. The new administration has a team of appointees focusing on the process early in Mr. Trump’s term, with a particular focus on clemency grants that underscore the president’s own grievances about what he sees as the political weaponization of the justice system.
Lawyers and lobbyists with connections to Mr. Trump have scrambled to take advantage. They have collected large fees from clemency seekers who would not be eligible for second chances through an apolitical system that was created by the Justice Department for granting mercy to those who have served their time or demonstrated remorse and a lower likelihood of recidivism.
Instead, clemency petitioners are mostly circumventing that system, tailoring their pitches to the president by emphasizing their loyalty to him and echoing his claims of political persecution.
