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★ Government Action

Trump pardons Nikola founder Milton, wiping $676M restitution

MAGA Inc. Pay-to-PlayPresidential Self-DealingTrump Pardons

Filed March 2025

★ The Brief

What happened

Trump pardoned Trevor Milton in March 2025, erasing the four-year prison sentence he was appealing for defrauding investors in his hydrogen-truck company, Nikola, partly through a staged 2018 video of a truck rolling downhill to look self-powered.

Who enabled it

Who benefits

Deal or steal?

Milton and his wife gave more than $3 million to Trump and allied committees while he was facing prison; Attorney General Pam Bondi's brother served as one of Milton's lead defense lawyers, a conflict at the department that had prosecuted him.

In March 2025, President Donald Trump signed a full and unconditional pardon for Trevor Milton, founder of bankrupt hydrogen-truck company Nikola Corporation. Milton was convicted in 2022 of defrauding Nikola's investors — most memorably through a 2018 YouTube video that appeared to show a Nikola truck driving down a desert highway when, the company later admitted, it had simply been towed to the top of a hill and allowed to roll down. He was sentenced in 2023 to four years in prison, was free on appeal, and federal prosecutors were seeking roughly $676 million in restitution. The pardon wiped both.

Actors

Who pushed it · 1

Who initiated, paid, or pushed the action.

  • Donald Trump
    Donald Trump

    Signed and announced a full and unconditional pardon of Trevor Milton in March 2025, wiping the four-year prison term and the roughly $676 million in restitution federal prosecutors were seeking. Publicly framed the conviction as wrongful by saying "the thing that he did wrong was he was one of the first people that supported a gentleman named Donald Trump for president." Per WSJ, told Milton on the pardon call that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had said "great things" about him.

Beneficiaries

Who gained · 1

Who stood to gain.

  • Trevor Milton

    Received a full and unconditional presidential pardon, wiping his 2022 federal fraud conviction, the four-year prison term he was appealing, and roughly $676 million in restitution federal prosecutors were seeking. Civil liability is unaffected: Nikola's bankruptcy trustee holds a judgment for more than $100 million against him and continues to pursue collection. Milton and his wife had donated at least $3.2 million in 2024 to Trump-aligned committees and to PACs raising funds for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., captured in a separate action; Milton has said the donations were unrelated to the pardon.

    Trevor Milton has paid into Trump’s orbit:

Sources

Further reading