Trump's pardon abuse is quietly siphoning millions from violent crime victims

Much has been written about the damage being done by President Donald Trump's abuse of presidential pardon powers in his second term, but according to a new report from The Trace, the trend has been quietly obliterating millions in funds for the victims of violent crime, particularly shooting victims.

On Monday, The Trace released the findings of an investigation into Trump's impact on the Crime Victims Fund. This fund was created as part of the 1984 Victims of Crime Act and offers funding for "state and local programs including domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers and child abuse treatment programs." The fund is kept up predominantly "by criminal fines and penalties from convictions in federal cases, typically white-collar prosecutions." Shooting victims or their surviving family members, the outlet noted, "rely routinely on VOCA funding to reimburse medical expenses, funeral costs and lost wages."

While Trump's pardons can tend to wreck legal accountability for the perpetrators of these sorts of crimes, they also relieved them of the "fines, penalties and restitution" they might be required to pay out as part of their sentence, resulting in less money flowing into the Crime Victims Fund.

Analyzing each of Trump's second-term pardons, The Trace found that Trump's impact on the fund has been severe, removing $113 million that "would have gone into the fund absent a Trump pardon." Restitution payments were not included in the calculus, as those always go straight to victims.

The fund had already suffered notably in the first Trump administration as well. It peaked in the waning days of the Obama administration at around $13 billion, according to a graph created by The Guardian, and cratered to less than $2 billion partway through the Biden administration. By the end of Biden's tenure, however, it had begun to creep back up, reaching $3.5 billion by 2025.

The Trace noted that most of the damage done to the fund by Trump in his second term was the result of one pardon for the owners of a crypto exchange that was convicted of violating money laundering laws.

"Most of that figure is from a single case," the report explained. "Last year, Trump pardoned HDR Global Trading Limited, the owner and operator of the crypto exchange BitMEX, which had been ordered to pay $100m in fines for flouting anti-money laundering laws. Trump issued the pardon, the first for a corporation, just hours before the payment was due. Because the pardon calls for the 'remission of any and all fines, penalties, forfeitures, and restitution ordered by the Court,' that $100m will never make it to the Crime Victims Fund."

“What really drives the fund are these very large, very few cases, which are all corporate cases,” Steve Derene, a co-founder of the National Association of VOCA Assistance Administrators who helped craft the original 1984 bill, told The Trace. “Just a couple settlements can really mean the difference in keeping this fund afloat.”

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