The White House has confirmed to US media that President Donald Trump plans to pardon former Puerto Rico Governor Wanda Vázquez Garcedo.
On Friday, CBS News reported that a pardon was imminent, but Trump administration officials have since tied it to the president’s campaign and what he deems “illegal activity.”
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“This whole incident is an example of political persecution,” a Trump official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
Since returning to office for a second term, President Trump has granted pardons to a series of right-wing officials and their allies, including former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted on federal drug charges, and his supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, to protest his loss in the 2020 presidential election.
With more than 1,700 pardons and pardons granted last year alone, President Trump is on track to surpass his predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, for the most pardons granted. Biden announced 4,245 pardons during his four-year term, more than any president in modern history.
However, news of Vázquez’s pardon sparked dissent among Puerto Rico’s political opposition, including Pablo José Hernández Rivera, who represents the island territory in the U.S. House of Representatives.
“Impunity protects and promotes corruption,” Hernandez wrote on social media.
“The pardon granted to former Governor Wanda Vázquez undermines public integrity, undermines confidence in our justice system, and angers those of us who believe in honest government.”
As a territory, Puerto Rico only has non-voting representation in the U.S. Congress, and President Trump’s relationship with the island has been rocky.
In August, President Trump fired five Democratic members of the Federal Administrative Board, which controls Puerto Rico’s finances. And during his 2024 re-election campaign, Trump held a rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden that featured politicians calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of trash.”
But Trump has sought to use pardons to protect political allies and has often accused the U.S. judicial system of being unfairly biased against conservatives.
He also denounced what he called the “weaponization” of the Justice Department under his Democratic predecessor. Trump himself faced four criminal indictments during the four years of his two terms, two of them at the federal level.
Only one state-level prosecution resulted in a conviction and sentence, in New York.
Vázquez identifies as a Republican and is a member of the New Progressive Party, which advocates for U.S. statehood for Puerto Rico.
She became Puerto Rico’s governor after her predecessor, Ricardo Rosselló, resigned in 2019, serving until January 2021.
Vázquez was arrested in 2022 after being accused by the U.S. Justice Department of engaging in corrupt practices while in office after allegedly promising to fire the secretary in exchange for campaign contributions.
The bribery case focused on incidents that occurred during her tenure from December 2019 to June 2020.
At the time, Puerto Rico’s Office of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions was investigating a bank owned by Venezuelan investor Julio Martín Herrera Vertini for suspicious transactions.
Prosecutors said Vázquez agreed to ask for the governor’s resignation in exchange for a promise of financial support in the 2020 gubernatorial election. Ultimately, she hired a colleague of Herrera Bertini to replace her as commissioner.
Herrera-Vertini and consultant and former FBI agent Mark Rossini allegedly paid a political consultant $300,000 to boost Vazquez’s 2020 campaign. However, she continued to lose in the primaries.
Vazquez initially denied wrongdoing, but agreed to a plea deal in August. She became the first former Puerto Rican governor to face federal charges.
