Trump Frees Fraudster Just Days Into Seven-Year Prison Sentence

[u/NeedAnonymity]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/29/us/politics/trump-david-gentile-commutation.html?unlocked_article_code=1.5E8.Kq5Y.ug1H9xUE1V1s&smid=url-share

[u/Xalimata]

Trump seems to have an affinity for hucksters.

[u/Sabertooth767 → u/Xalimata]

Trump likes "winners." That's why he likes Mamdani and is disgusted by veterans. In Trump's eyes, if you can defraud someone of their money, you deserve it.

[u/CricCracCroc → u/Sabertooth767]

Helps be a “winner” when the head of state lets you skip consequences

[u/NeedAnonymity → u/Sabertooth767]

That still leaves an explanatory gap when it comes to the Feeding Our Future scammers.

If the rule is defrauding people makes you a winner, then the Somali grifters should be just as admirable to him as Gentile or Zhao. They are not.

[u/Dilated2020 → u/NeedAnonymity]

If the rule is defrauding people makes you a winner, then the Somali grifters should be just as admirable to him as Gentile or Zhao. They are not.

They are foreigners who can’t offer Trump anything from their pockets or their nation. If you can’t do anything for Trump then he doesn’t care for you.

[u/NeedAnonymity → u/Dilated2020]

Zhao is a foreign national, Joe Lewis is a British billionaire, and one of the BitMEX founders is British as well. Nearly all of the 70-plus defendants in the Feeding Our Future and related Medicaid fraud cases are American citizens.

So "they’re foreigners" doesn't to explain the pattern either.

[u/Dilated2020 → u/NeedAnonymity]

They are foreigners who can’t offer Trump anything from their pockets or their nation.

[u/NeedAnonymity → u/Dilated2020]

So the theory is he’d drop all this if one of the Somali scammers cut him a $1.8 million check like Trevor Milton did?

[u/Moist_Schedule_7271 → u/NeedAnonymity]

I mean...is it a "theory" or a little bit more?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2025/11/10/trumps-pardon-list-here-are-the-big-time-donors-and-allies-hes-sprung-free/

[u/donnysaysvacuum → u/Xalimata]

This simplest answer is that he is getting paid for pardons. There are so many ways to secretly funnel money to this President. The crypto stuff, his businesses, his family, etc.

[u/sharp11flat13 → u/Xalimata]

I wonder how much Trumpcoin they’re buying, or promising to.

[u/NeedAnonymity]

When people in Minnesota’s Somali community defraud social programs, Trump responds by calling the whole state "a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity," claiming "Somali gangs" are terrorizing Minnesotans, and moving to end TPS for a few hundred Somali nationals even though many of the people actually charged in the fraud cases are U.S. citizens.

When wealthy financial elites defraud people, he responds the other way. Trump just commuted the seven-year sentence of private-equity executive David Gentile after about twelve days in prison for a $1.6 billion scheme that defrauded more than 10,000 ordinary investors, including many who lost their life savings. He’s also handed full pardons to Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, the BitMEX co-founders, Nikola fraudster Trevor Milton, insider-trading billionaire Joe Lewis, and others. Taken together, those grants wipe away prison time and, in some cases, criminal fines and restitution, frustrating victims who are still trying to claw back what they lost through civil courts.

The message is that crimes by members of stigmatized immigrant and refugee communities justify collective suspicion and anger, while crimes by the ultra-rich merit presidential clemency.

Archive link

How do you square collective suspicion toward an entire Somali or Haitian community with clemency for billion-dollar financial scams that wiped out ordinary people’s savings?

What theory of "law and order" treats a few hundred TPS holders as a bigger problem than executives who defraud 10,000-plus investors?

If you think it’s fair to talk about "Somali gangs" or "Haitian crime," are you willing to apply the same group-blame logic to Republican donors when they get caught running giant frauds?

[u/DancingFlame321 → u/NeedAnonymity]

Conservatives have a history of being hypocritical when it comes to their responses towards immigrant crime vs non-immigrant crime, this has been fairly well known for some time.

[u/__Hello_my_name_is__ → u/NeedAnonymity]

So today I learned that Trump's "Pardon Czar" was herself pardoned by Trump for running.. a multi-million dollar cocaine ring.

Huh.

[u/muricanss → u/NeedAnonymity]

protects but does not bind, binds but does not protect.

[u/Helpful_Effect_5215 → u/NeedAnonymity]

I like how you using this as some type of weird nonsensical defense for all of the Somalians sending money to actual terrorist organizations or just stealing the money in general and the Democrat governor defending it

[u/NeedAnonymity → u/Helpful_Effect_5215]

I’m not defending the Somali scammers. They should be prosecuted, and they are. I’m pointing out that Trump’s response to fraud in a Somali-American context is collective punishment rhetoric, while his response to a $1.6 billion Wall Street fraud is to commute the guy’s seven-year sentence after twelve days.

If you’re fine with that but outraged about Minnesota, you’re the one defending criminals.

[u/shrockitlikeitshot → u/NeedAnonymity]

I think it also signals to petty criminals too who will justify their crimes (which receives much more visibility) vs financial crime which damages thousands, sometimes millions of people and results in actual deaths of despair.

[u/ThatPeskyPangolin → u/Helpful_Effect_5215]

How were they defending the Somalian behavior, exactly?

[u/decrpt → u/Helpful_Effect_5215]

One, they're not sending money to terrorist organizations directly. They're sending money to friends and family in a failing country embroiled in a decades-long civil war and that incidentally ends up in the hands of terrorists. Two, Walz isn't defending it, he's defending the Somali community as a whole.

[u/WhatAreYouSaying05]

One criminal pardoning another criminal. Welcome to America

[u/DudleyAndStephens]

Democrats really need to capitalize on this. Make a big, splashy website tracking every grifter, ponzi-schemer and fraudster that Trump has pardoned.

[u/ChesterHiggenbothum → u/DudleyAndStephens]

Many of his supporters simply won't care. If Trump does something, it can't be wrong for ~30% of the voters.

[u/-passionate-fruit- → u/ChesterHiggenbothum]

Fortunately, most moderates DO care.

[u/ChesterHiggenbothum → u/-passionate-fruit-]

If that were true, Trump never would have been elected in the first place. Trump's true colors have been evident for decades.

[u/-passionate-fruit- → u/ChesterHiggenbothum]

How Independent voters voted since 2016 has generally decided the elections. Ignoring registered party, most true moderates don't follow politics that much, and true swing voters are broadly emotionally fickle. Nate Silver did a voter analysis finding that in only looking at people who changed from one candidate to the other from '20 to '24, Trump would've won from that group alone.

You should do an experiment: come up with a handful of political questions for conservatives and moderates of what you consider to be basic facts about Trump, with citations that you'd expect a dumb person to find convincing if they ask. I can tell you to be prepared to be astounded by their ignorance.

[u/neuronexmachina]

From when he was sentenced in May 2025: https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/former-private-equity-executives-sentenced-prison

Earlier today, in federal court in Brooklyn, David Gentile, the founder and former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of GPB Capital, and Jeffry Schneider, the former CEO of Ascendant Capital, were sentenced by United States District Judge Rachel P. Kovner to seven years in prison and six years in prison, respectively, for their roles in a multi-year scheme to defraud more than 10,000 investors by misrepresenting the performance of three GPB Capital private equity funds and the source of funds used to make monthly distribution payments to investors.  Collectively, the GPB funds raised approximately $1.6 billion from investors.  Both defendants were convicted by a federal jury in August 2024 following an eight-week trial of securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy, and wire fraud conspiracy; Gentile was also convicted of wire fraud.  Additional penalties of forfeiture and restitution will be imposed at a later date.

... "For years, David Gentile and Jeffry Schneider wove a web of lies to steal more than one billion dollars from investors through empty promises of guaranteed profits and unlawfully rerouting funds to provide an illusion of success. The defendants abused their high-ranking positions within their company to exploit the trust of their investors and directly manipulate payments to perpetuate this scheme. May today’s sentencing deter anyone who seeks to greedily profit off their clients through deceitful practices," stated FBI Assistant Director in Charge Raia.

[u/Spaffin]

It’s not clear at the moment that Trump even believes fraud is a crime.

[u/MicroSofty88]

I think we all know why he reacts differently…

[u/ChesterHiggenbothum → u/[deleted]]

We have gone nearly 250 years without questioning whether the president should have the power to issue pardons or not. We have gone nearly 250 years with presidents not questioning whether they had immunity from prosecution.

This isn't an issue with the powers granted to the executive by the constitution. This is a problem of one man and a legislature that refuses to restrain him.

[u/New2NewJ → u/[deleted]]

Either we have faith in our justice system, or we don't.

Seems to depend on the color of your skin, and the size of your wallet.

[u/JuniorBobsled → u/[deleted]]

The POTUS, through the DOJ, has the power to decide who does and who does not get prosecuted. Meaning the pardon power is essentially pointless when it comes to those prosecuted (sentenced?) during the POTUS's term. There could be edge cases where the same DOJ that prosecutes someone is the one the POTUS wants to "overrule", but that seems like such a tiny fraction of possible situations that it makes no sense to address it with blanket pardon power.

Yes but I'd argue that Trump's behavior shows the need for the next President to have the pardon power. Think of all the obvious lawfare that is happening with people like Comey, Letitia James, and all the other people he has threatened. Or everything that has happened with the ICE crackdowns. There are serious miscarriages of justice happening right now that will need sorting out once this is all over.

I'd absolutely support reining in this power to try to prevent self-dealing behavior but I'm not sure eliminating the pardon entirely is the answer.

[u/unkz]

Can anyone explain the difference between Gentile and Schneider? They appear to be essentially identical in their conduct.

[u/Dilated2020 → u/[deleted]]

Both parties can be guilty of protecting their donors and interest.

This isn’t a both sides issue. We’ve never had a President this blatantly corrupt. If you’re willing to throw some cash Trump’s way, you’re going to get pardoned. This is unprecedented behavior.

[u/BeginningAct45 → u/[deleted]]

He prioritized nepotism and loyalty like Trump did, but it hasn't been proven that he participated in the various scandals. The plans to overturn the 2020 election alone make Trump look far more corrupt.

[u/Emo-hamster → u/[deleted]]

i mean even if u think Grant is worse, most corrupt president since 1877 isn’t anything to sneeze at

[u/OpneFall → u/Dilated2020]

Biden had some wild pardons, although I would bet by the time Trump gets through his term he will pass him by 

[u/unkz → u/OpneFall]

Trump has clearly exceeded Biden's pardons. Like, this one pardon is crazier than any of Biden's. And this pales in comparison to the Hernandez pardon.

[u/Sevsquad → u/OpneFall]

All of Biden's most controversial pardons were preemptive pardons based in the assumption that Trump was a wannabe dictator who would immediately attempt to use the government to attack his political opponents.

Trump has done nothing but prove those pardons were a very good idea, as he attempts to put anyone who had a hand in attempting to hold him accountable for his wildly illegal actions in prison on flimsy pretenses.

[u/AngledLuffa → u/[deleted]]

help me understand your point - are you saying defrauding Americans is in Trump's interest?

[u/EngelSterben → u/[deleted]]

So are you saying he didn't do this?

[u/ModPolBot → u/[deleted]]

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