It is a perverse truth of our perverse age that a scandal involved old-style influence peddling and pay-to-play politics can seem like a relief simply because it isn’t an existential threat to the American republic. Stories about how the previous administration* used its power and influence for pecuniary gain come to sound like nursery rhymes. The New York Times popped one of these over the weekend that involved meddling, greed, the president’s power to pardon, Jared Kushner’s father, weed, predatory lending, and that also involved about how all of the above combined to blow up a DOJ investigation.
Jonathan Braun of New York had served just two and a half years of a decade-long sentence for running a massive marijuana ring, when Mr. Trump, at 12:51 a.m. on his last day in office, announced he would be freed. Mr. Braun was, to say the least, an unusual candidate for clemency. A Staten Islander with a history of violent threats, Mr. Braun had told a rabbi who owed him money: “I am going to make you bleed.” Mr. Braun’s family had told confidants they were willing to spend millions of dollars to get him out of prison. At the time, Mr. Trump’s own Justice Department and federal regulators, as well as New York state authorities, were still after him for his role in an entirely separate matter: his work as a predatory lender, making what judges later found were fraudulent and usurious loans to cash-strapped small businesses.
Nearly three years later, the consequences of Mr. Braun’s commutation are becoming clearer, raising new questions about how Mr. Trump intervened in criminal justice decisions and what he could do in a second term, when he would have the power to make good on his suggestions that he would free supporters convicted of storming the Capitol and possibly even to pardon himself if convicted of the federal charges he faces. Just months after Mr. Trump freed him, Mr. Braun returned to working as a predatory lender, according to New York State’s attorney general. Two months ago, a New York state judge barred him from working in the industry. Weeks later, a federal judge, acting on a complaint from the Federal Trade Commission, imposed a nationwide ban on him.
Swell fella, no doubt. An extortionate loan shark busted for running a massive drug ring who, it seems, was preparing to give up his fellow extortionate loan sharks to the Feds, and who used a grace period he was granted after his drug conviction during which he was supposed to finger other people in his marijuana business in order to set himself up in the loan-sharking business.
A New York Times investigation, drawing on documents and interviews with current and former officials, and others familiar with Mr. Braun’s case, found there were even greater ramifications stemming from the commutation than previously known and revealed new details about Mr. Braun’s history and how the commutation came about. The commutation dealt a substantial blow to an ambitious criminal investigation being led by the Justice Department’s U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan aimed at punishing members of the predatory lending industry who hurt small businesses. Mr. Braun and prosecutors were in negotiations over a cooperation deal in which he would be let out of prison in exchange for flipping on industry insiders and potentially even wearing a wire. But the commutation instantly destroyed the government’s leverage on Mr. Braun.
Enter the Kushner family.
In working to secure his release, Mr. Braun’s family used a connection to Charles Kushner, the father of Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and senior White House adviser, to try to get the matter before Mr. Trump. Jared Kushner’s White House office drafted the language used in the news release to announce commutations for Mr. Braun and others. In a telephone interview, Mr. Braun said he did not know how his commutation came about. “I believe God made it happen for me because I’m a good person and I was treated unfairly,” he said, adding that his supporters tried “multiple paths” to get him out of prison but he had no idea which one succeeded.
God works in mysterious ways, but using the Kushner family’s connection to secure a commutation from Jared Kushner’s father-in-law, who happened to be the president* who was more open for business than any president in history, to spring a convicted dope runner turned predatory lender is a doozy. And Braun’s adventures in the criminal-justice system doesn’t make the whole business any less weird.
When Mr. Braun found out about the raid, he rented a car and drove 25 hours straight from Florida to an Indian reservation in upstate New York where, dressed in all black, he was smuggled into Canada, according to court filings. He then fled to Israel. The Justice Department placed him on a special Interpol list that asked Israel to apprehend him. By 2010, he was back in New York, the Justice Department had charged him and he was behind bars.
Braun agreed to cooperate, and the Feds sprung him. He was free for 10 years which, according to the Times, was highly unusual for inmates in Braun’s situation. But Braun found a way to occupy his time.
The business Mr. Braun entered is known by many names: the merchant cash advance industry, predatory lending or, in the view of some law enforcement officials, loan sharking… An examination of court records by The Times found that between when the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn first let him out of prison in 2011 and when he reported to prison in 2020, Mr. Braun was accused of violently threatening eight people who owed him money. Another man accused Mr. Braun in a lawsuit of shoving him from the deck of a house in Staten Island in 2018.
Among those threatened was a real estate developer, who said Mr. Braun told him: “I will take your daughters from you,” according to court documents. Another borrower said in an affidavit Mr. Braun told him, “Be thankful you’re not in New York, because your family would find you floating in the Hudson.” Over that time, companies connected to Mr. Braun made 1,900 fraudulent and illegal loans, some with interest rates greater than 1,000 percent, according to the New York State attorney general…Mr. Braun threatened the rabbi of a synagogue that had borrowed money from him, according to New York’s attorney general. Mr. Braun told the rabbi he would beat and “publicly embarrass him,” adding: “I am going to make you bleed” and “I will make you suffer for every penny.”
As I said, swell fella. This is the criminal justice system that is even money to re-establish itself in 2025.
Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.