Ever since Donald Trump issued a series of pardons and commutations as he left office, he and his allies have defended his administration’s vetting of clemency candidates, claiming that they went through a vigorous screening process.
But the case of one of those convicts — a New York drug dealer and predatory lender named Jonathan Braun, who had a history of violence and faced an array of other legal problems — has stood out and raised doubts about how rigorous the vetting was.
On Tuesday, police on Long Island arrested Braun after he allegedly punched his 75-year-old father-in-law in the head. Braun struck his father-in-law twice as he tried to protect his daughter from Braun, who was chasing after her while the couple had an argument in their home, according to the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office.
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Braun’s wife, according to court documents, told police that Braun had assaulted her twice in the past five weeks. On July 17, the court documents said, Braun threw his wife off a bed onto the floor, “causing her substantial pain and bruising her legs.”
On Aug. 12, Braun threw her to the floor and punched her in the head multiple times “causing her substantial pain, bruising” to her arms, legs and head and causing her to feel dizzy, the documents said.
Braun pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors asked for bail but a judge released him without it.
“He was released on his own recognizance after pleading not guilty and will address the allegations judicially,” said Braun’s lawyer, Marc Fernich.
Asked about the arrest, Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for Trump, said the former president “wants criminals to spend time behind bars.” She did not respond to a follow-up question about whether Trump regretted giving Braun clemency.
The arrest adds to a list of legal troubles Braun has faced since he was released from federal prison Jan. 21, 2021.
Beyond any penalties he might face from the state assault charges lodged against him Wednesday, the arrest creates the risk for Braun of being returned to federal prison because despite the commutation, he remained on a program of supervised release requiring him to stay out of trouble.
His arrest will likely be reported by a probation officer or prosecutor to the federal judge in Brooklyn who oversaw his original conviction tied to his smuggling and distributing large quantities of marijuana. The judge would then have to decide whether there was enough evidence that Braun did indeed violate the supervised release and make a decision about whether to send him back to prison.
Braun was among a parade of convicts who used connections, money and influence to seek pardons from Trump, who ran an often ad hoc process for considering clemency requests, largely bypassing an established Justice Department system.
In the final months of the Trump administration, while Braun was in a federal prison in New York state, Braun’s family made contact with the father of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior White House adviser, to try to get a commutation request before Trump. Kushner’s White House office ultimately drafted the language used in the news release to announce the commutation of Braun and others.
The commutation surprised many legal experts and local and federal prosecutors and investigators who had dealt with Braun over the years. Braun had a history of violence — including throwing a man off a deck in 2018 and years earlier, beating an underling with a belt — and had recently been sued by New York state and the Federal Trade Commission for his role as a predatory lender.
The commutation also dealt a major blow to an ambitious criminal investigation being conducted by the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan that was trying to hold predatory lenders who were fleecing small businesses accountable.
In the days before Braun received his commutation, prosecutors and his lawyer were in negotiations over a deal in which he would be let out of prison in exchange for flipping on industry insiders and potentially even wearing a wire. But the commutation instantly destroyed the government’s leverage on Braun and the investigation sputtered out.
After being released Braun quickly went back to working as a predatory lender, but faced civil actions by New York state and the FTC asserting that he was fleecing small businesses through excessive interest rates and fees. At one point he had threatened a rabbi who owed him money, saying, “I am going to make you bleed.”
In February, Judge Jed S. Rakoff of U.S. District Court in Manhattan excoriated Braun and imposed $20 million in fines on Braun after finding him liable for the accusations made by the trade commission. Rakoff described Braun as a craven man who “gleefully, with little remorse,” boasted about his illegal conduct and treated it as a “laughing matter” as he threatened the business owners he gouged.
In May, Resorts Casino in Las Vegas paid for Braun, his cousin and others to fly from New York to Nevada on a private plane to gamble as high rollers. On the flight, an attendant saw evidence that passengers had been using narcotics and notified the pilot, according to a police report. Police met the plane when it landed, and an officer confiscated a small bag with white powder from the plane but did not arrest Braun or any other passengers, according to the report.
Resorts Casino kicked Braun out of the hotel, according to a person briefed on the matter.
Along with being charged Wednesday with second- and third-degree assault, prosecutors accused him of failing to pay $160 in tolls as he drove his white Lamborghini and black Ferrari convertible across a bridge on Long Island — and said he had been driving the cars without having any license plates on them.
At a news conference this month at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, Trump was asked about how his criticism of Vice President Kamala Harris’ record on crime as a former district attorney squared with the commutation of Braun.
Trump claimed that he had set up a commission as president to have clemency applications vetted.
“I had a commission, it was a very important commission to me and highly respected people, and frankly, they came up with some decisions that I wouldn’t necessarily agree with, but I did it,” Trump said.
It was unclear what commission he was referring to. Trump repeatedly circumvented the Office of the Pardon Attorney and relied on recommendations for clemency from friends, allies and family members.
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