In his final hours in office former President Donald Trump reached back into San Diego’s ignominious political history and issued a partial pardon of former Republican Congressman Randall “Duke” Cunningham, who spent eight years in prison for accepting millions in what has been described as the largest congressional bribery scandal in history.
While the move by Trump gives Cunningham some legal rights that convicted felons lack, such as owning a firearm, it is not a clean slate. The pardon is “conditional,” and specifically says that Cunningham must still pay off all of the $3.6 million in restitution and forfeiture that were ordered levied as part of his sentence.
A full pardon would have eliminated all parts of the conviction, including the financial penalties, said Margaret Love, an attorney who served as the Department of Justice Pardon Attorney between 1990 and 1997.
“That is what happens with a traditional pardon,” she said. “Everything goes.”
The pardon of Cunningham marked the second time in a month that Trump used the sweeping power inherent in the presidential pardon for a San Diego GOP elected official.
On Dec. 22 he pardoned former Rep. Duncan Hunter, who pleaded guilty to illegally spending campaign contributions for personal expenses, and a few days later also pardoned wife Margaret Hunter who was involved in the illegal spending.
The Hunters never spent a day in prison, unlike the 79-year-old Cunningham, who has been living quietly in Arkansas since release from federal custody more than five years ago. He did not respond to a request for a comment on Wednesday morning, but in an interview with the Hot Springs Village Voice he said he welcomed the pardon.
“It makes life worth living when people look at you and accept you, and this pardon is another step forward,” Cunningham told the Arkansas newspaper.
A statement from the Trump White House said former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich supported the pardon. In the newspaper report, Cunningham credited Gingrich and said he had a lawyer who also helped get the pardon.
The partial pardon had been in the works for at least a week. The pardon document itself shows it was signed by Trump on Jan. 13.
Cunningham pleaded guilty in San Diego federal court in 2005 to conspiracy and tax evasion. He admitted receiving $2 million in bribes that included lavish meals, fancy trips and other gifts as well as cash from defense contractors. In return he used his position in Congress to steer government contracts their way.
It was a startling downfall for a man who was then a popular congressman and local icon, a former Top Gun Navy pilot and Viet Nam war hero who after a narrow victory in his first race in 1990, easily won re-election six more times before the scandal surfaced.
The former federal prosecutor who led the Cunningham investigation criticized Trump’s pardon.
Phillip Halpern prosecuted both Cunningham and the Hunters, and said that the pardons don’t erase the conduct or consequences of their crimes. He noted that both former congressmen were forced to resign their seats, admit their corruption and end their political careers.
“The criminal justice system prevailed as society saw that those who write the laws were not seen to be above the law,” he wrote in a statement.
But Halpern also said that as a private citizen, “I’m appalled by Trump rewarding Hunter, Cunningham, and other assorted political cronies while simply ignoring or excusing their brazen corruption.”
Jason Forge, a former federal prosecutor who worked with Halpern, said the fact that Cunningham is still required to pay the restitution for the bribes he accepted is telling. Restitution can only be ordered when someone is guilty of a crime, and while the popular perception of pardons can be they are meant to correct an injustice, that is not the case here, he said.
“By keeping that in place, (it) once again confirms he accepted that much in bribes,” Forge said.
After leaving the Department of Justice, Forge joined a private law firm in San Diego and in that role ended up being the lead lawyer in a civil lawsuit against Trump and his Trump University, butting heads repeatedly with Trump in depositions for the lawsuit. That case settled shortly after Trump’s election in 2016 with the then -president agreeing to pay $25 million to customers who said they were defrauded when signing up from Trump University real estate classes.
Forge said that partial pardon does not dilute the import of the case against Cunningham. “I think a Trump pardon is in many ways more ignominious than the initial conviction,” he said.
“Having served his full sentence and been run out of office in disgrace, now the cherry on top is the partial pardon from the most corrupt president in the history of the country. It is perfectly consistent with everything else.”
Others also condemned the pardon of Cunningham, one of more than 100 Trump issued in the final hours of his presidency. Ron Nehring, who was the chairman of the county Republican Party when Cunningham was prosecuted in 2005, blasted the move on Twitter.
“Providing a pardon to former Congressman Duke Cunningham is a total disgrace,” Nehring wrote. “I was San Diego GOP Chairman at the time. Cunningham sold his office in the sleaziest of ways, and lied about it to everyone. ‘Drain the Swamp.’ Yeah, right.”
Jon Fleischman, the former executive director of the California Republican Party and now the publisher of the website FlashReport, was also critical of the Cunningham pardon. “This SOB literally sold out America for cash, betraying his oath and our country,” he wrote on Twitter. “He didn’t deserve a pardon. He deserved to live in shame until the end of his days. Makes me sick to my stomach.”
A partial pardon does carry many benefits of a full pardon, said Love, the former pardons lawyer. In addition to allowing ownership of firearms, a pardon lifts bans on any professional licenses that may exist because of felony convictions, as well as any other legal restrictions that go along with felony convictions.
Trump also commuted the sentence of Adriana Shayota, who began serving a 26-month sentence in federal prison in December 2019. She, her husband and several others were convicted in a scheme to sell millions of bottles of fake 5-hour Energy shots across the country.
Records in federal court in San Francisco where she was tried show she was the accountant for a company involved in the scheme and while prosecutors said she had a minor role they argued she still knew of the scheme and was involved in helping it.
She has served a little more than half the sentence. The commutation noted she had no prior record and while in prison has mentored others. Her commutation was supported by Chula Vista Vice Mayor John McCann and others, the commutation noted.
McCann said Chayota was a deeply religious woman and a devoted mother, and he supported the commutation because Shayota “deserves as second chance.”
Staff writer Teri Figueroa contributed to this report.
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