How the Trump administration has undermined the fight against public corruption

President Donald Trump reacts to a question from a reporter after signing a series of executive orders, including, a pardon for former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, in the Oval Office at the White House in February 2025. Andrew Harnik/ hide caption toggle caption Andrew Harnik/ Stay up to date with our Politics newsletter, sent weekly . In 2024, a federal jury needed just two hours to return a guilty verdict for former Las Vegas councilwoman Michele Fiore for pocketing some $70,000 in donations to build a memorial for police officers killed in the line of duty — and spending it instead on herself, including rent and her daughter's wedding. Then, weeks before Fiore was scheduled to be sentenced in May 2025, President Trump granted her a full, unconditional pardon. Fiore is one of at least 15 former elected officials and their co-conspirators who were either charged with or convicted of corruption offenses — and then pardoned by Trump after he returned to office last year. Legal experts say the pardons are but one way the Trump administration has undermined the fight against public corruption. "There are all sorts of things that the administration has done that suggest an increasingly casual perspective on public corruption," said Dan Greenberg, a senior legal fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute. …