Trump pardons Nikola founder Trevor Milton

President Donald Trump has forgiven the founder of Nikola Corp., Trevor Milton investors With false claims on the success of the manufacturer of electric and hydrogen trucks.

Milton, 42, was sentenced in December 2023 to four years prisonBut he has been free since then while waiting for a call to the criminal conviction of the former CEO on securities and wire fraud in charge in American district court in Manhattan.

Pardon occurred two weeks after the federal prosecutors urged the judge of the district court Edgardo Ramos to order Milton to pay restitution From $ 680 million to Nikola shareholders, and an additional $ 15.2 million in Peter Hicks, victim of his wire fraud.

Due to forgiveness, Ramos could not order the restitution of any kind.

“Oh my god, oh, you don’t think what just happened,” Milton said in a Instagram Video published on his personal account Thursday. “Probably the best day I had in five years.”

“I just received a call from the President of the United States, on my phone, and he signed my complete and unconditional forgiveness of innocence,” said Milton, who seemed to drive a vehicle in the video.

“I am free. Prosecutors can no longer hurt me,” he said. “They can’t destroy my family, they can’t tear everything from me, they can’t spoil my life.”

The White House confirmed forgiveness.

Trump later Friday, he was asked why he had given Milton a forgiveness.

“I think he was exempt,” Trump told journalists in the White House. “And then they brought him to New York, he had an accident and accidental route and … he was exempt. It was a great celebration.”

Milton was sentenced to trial in October 2022.

“They say what he was doing wrong was that he was one of the first people who supported a gentleman named Donald Trump for the president,” said Trump. “He supported Trump. He loved Trump. I didn’t know him, but he loved him.”

Trump continued by saying Milton: “They persecuted, they destroyed five years of his life. He … fought for five years of his life, and he did nothing wrong.”

“And it’s a good person.”

Defense lawyers for Milton did not immediately respond to requests for comments.

A spokesman for the Manhattan American lawyer’s office, who continued Milton, refused to comment on forgiveness.

The office of the United States lawyer in Manhattan, when he obtained an indictment against Milton in 2021, said that some investors had fraudded by his program “suffered tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses, including, in some cases, the loss of their savings or retirement funds they had borrowed to invest in Nikola.”

In a press release Milton said on Thursday: “This forgiveness does not only concern me – it is all the Americans who have been closed by the government, and unfortunately, it’s a lot of people.”

Milton said there were “striking similarities” between his case “and those brought against President Trump”.

The president was charged in four criminal cases between his first and second mandates in the White House.

After Trump was elected in November, the United States Ministry of Justice asked for the rejection of the two federal affairs, citing a policy of the ministry which prohibits the federal prosecution of the presidents in office.

After the Milton’s conviction in 2023, the former CEO of Nikola made important political gifts to Trump and his allies. It understood $ 920,000 at the Trump 47 committee in October 2024, and $ 750,000 In September to the political action committee of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Kennedy, a former independent presidential candidate in 2024, was recently confirmed as Secretary of Trump Health and Social Services.

Federal campaign funding files indicate that 2024 was the first year that Milton has ever made six -digit political contributions.

Friday at noon, there was no file before the Manhattan Federal Court or the American court of appeal of the 2nd circuit indicating that the criminal case against Milton had been terminated due to forgiveness.

However, it is not uncommon for the opinions of presidential pardons to be filed with the court several days after the publication of the Pardons.

“It is not surprising that confidence and confidence in the Ministry of Justice has not been eroded with nothing,” Milton said in the press release.

“I hope that the judges stop believing that prosecutors feed them so that the Americans can once again trust the justice system,” he said. “Until it happens, our judicial system will continue to erode until nothing left.”

The forgiveness of Milton Trump, if he was confirmed, would erase his criminal conviction and the sentence, which included a fine of $ 1 million.

Earlier this month, Trump forgave the former senator from the state of Tennessee, Brian Kelsey, who had just started to serve a sentence of 21 months in prison after pleading guilty in a matter of conspiracy of the federal campaign.

In this case, it took a week after Kelsey was released from prison for the advice of forgiveness to be filed with the Federal Court.

Earlier this week, Trump signed a complete and unconditional forgiveness for Devon Archer, a single trading partner Hunter Biden, son of former president Joe Biden.

Like Milton, Archer had also been sentenced in a fraud case.

Just after its inauguration of January 20, Trump notably forgiven around 1,500 people who were charged or recognized as guilty of crimes linked to January 6, 2021, attack against the American Capitol by a crowd of supporters of the president.

During his second day in power, Trump forgave Ross Ulbricht, who was serving a life imprisonment for crimes related to his Dark Web Marketplace Silk Road.

In February, the former governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, received a presidential pardon. Blagojevich had served eight years in prison after being convicted of having tried to sell the headquarters of the Senate canceled by Barack Obama, after the senator of the first mandate was elected president in 2008.

In February, Nikola filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection In the American bankruptcy court in Delaware.

The company said in a file that it had liabilities between $ 1 and $ 10 billion and assets between $ 500 and 1 billion dollars. He also asked for the approval of the court to continue a sale of the company, saying that it had about $ 47 million in cash.

Nikola, which mainly manufactures fully electric and fuel cells, has experienced difficulties in recent years. The company had sold only 600 vehicles since 2022, from its last recent quarter.

While the capital of the company has shrunk, many of its trucks were recalled as a result of faults. At its conference in the third quarter, the company warned investors that it had enough liquidity to finance operations in the first quarter of 2025, but not beyond.

Nikola’s collapse occurs only five years after reaching a market capitalization of $ 30 billion in 2020, exceeding that of Ford at the time.

The evaluation was fed by misleading by Milton, which was charged in July 2021.

According to prosecutors, from November 2019 to September 2020, Milton encouraged non -professional investors to invest in Nikola “through false and deceptive statements regarding the development of Nikola products … through interviews on social and television, printed and podcast networks”.

“Milton made false complaints concerning almost all aspects of Nikola’s affairs,” said Manhattan’s American prosecutor’s office at the time of his indictment.

These included false affirmations “according to which the company managed to create a semi-camon prototype” fully functional known as “Nikola One”, when Milton knew that the prototype was inoperable “.

The office also said that Milton had made “false and misleading statements that Nikola had designed and built an electric and hydrogen van known as” badger “of the` land “using Nikola’s parts and technology, when Milton knew it was not true. “”

Last fall, a judge confirmed an arbitration scholarship of nearly $ 168 million against Milton for his deceptive statements on Nikola.

– CNBC Eamon Javers contributed to this story.