The White House has confirmed to United States media that President Donald Trump plans to pardon former Puerto Rico governor Wanda Vazquez Garced.
On Friday, CBS News broke the story that a pardon was imminent, and Trump administration officials linked the pardon to the president’s campaign which they consider “legitimate.”
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“This entire case is an example of political persecution,” a Trump official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
Since returning to office for a second term, Trump has pardoned right-wing officials and allies, including former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez – who was indicted on federal drug charges – and supporters who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, to protest his 2020 election loss.
With more than 1,700 pardons and pardons granted in the past year alone, Trump is on track to surpass his predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, for the most pardons. Biden, during his four years in office, has issued 4,245 pardons, the most of any president in modern history.
But news of Vázquez’s pardon sparked a rift among Puerto Rico’s political opponents, including Pablo José Hernández Rivera, who represents the island territory in the US House of Representatives.
“Impunity Protects and Promotes Corruption,” Hernandez wrote on social media.
“The pardon of former Governor Wanda Vazquez undermines public integrity, undermines trust in the justice system, and insults those of us who believe in honest government.”
Puerto Rico, as a territory, has only non-voting representation in the US Congress, and Trump has a tumultuous relationship with the island.
In August, Trump fired five Democratic members of Puerto Rico’s Federal Control Board, which oversees the island’s economy. And during his 2024 re-election campaign, Trump held a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York that featured a politician who called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.”
But Trump has used the pardon to try to protect political allies, often accusing the US justice system of being unfairly biased against conservatives.
He has also condemned what he called the “weaponization” of the Justice Department under his Democratic predecessor. Trump himself faced four criminal charges, two at the federal level, during his four years in office.
Only one state-level indictment resulted in a conviction and sentence in New York.
Vazquez identifies as a Republican and is a member of the New Progressive Party, which advocates US statehood for Puerto Rico.
She became governor of Puerto Rico after her predecessor, Ricardo Rosselló, stepped down in 2019 and served until January 2021.
Vazquez was arrested in 2022 after the US Department of Justice accused him of engaging in acts of corruption while in office, promising to fire the commissioner in exchange for campaign contributions.
The bribery case focuses on incidents that took place between December 2019 and June 2020 while he was in office.
At the time, Puerto Rico’s Office of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions was investigating a bank owned by Venezuelan financier Julio Martín Herrera Velutini for suspicious transactions.
According to prosecutors, Vazquez agreed to demand the commissioner’s resignation in exchange for promises of financial aid in the 2020 gubernatorial election. She eventually hired an associate of Herrera Velutini to replace the commissioner.
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) consultants and former agents Herrera Vellutini and Mark Rossini allegedly paid $300,000 to political consultants to boost Vazquez’s 2020 campaign. However, she lost in the preliminary round.
Vazquez initially denied any wrongdoing, but she agreed to a plea deal in August. She was the first Puerto Rican governor to face federal charges.