In 2024 a federal jury in Las Vegas deliberated for just two hours before convicting former councilwoman Michele Fiore of stealing roughly $70,000 in charitable donations intended for a memorial for fallen officers — money prosecutors say she spent on personal expenses, including rent and a family wedding. Weeks before Fiore was to be sentenced in May 2025, President Trump issued her a full, unconditional pardon.
Fiore is one of at least 15 former elected officials and their associates who were charged with or convicted of corruption-related offenses and then pardoned after Trump returned to the presidency. Legal scholars and former prosecutors say those clemency decisions are only one visible element of a broader pullback in the government’s effort to investigate and prosecute public corruption.
Observers point to two linked developments: a surge of politically sensitive pardons and a dramatic reduction in capacity at the Justice Department’s unit charged with policing public corruption. The Public Integrity Section, created after Watergate to pursue election crimes and official misconduct at the federal, state and local levels, has been hollowed out under the current administration.
Experts say the combined effect is to signal that corruption will not be treated as a serious threat. Dan Greenberg, a senior legal fellow at the Cato Institute, says the administration’s pattern suggests an increasingly casual attitude toward public corruption and that the pardons are an important part of that pattern. Columbia Law School scholar Richard Briffault similarly warns that the cumulative message is one of indifference or even hostility toward the idea that corruption is a problem.
A steady stream of pardons has intensified those concerns. The president used clemency powers early and frequently in his second term, including a mass set of pardons for Jan. 6 defendants on his first day back in office. Among those later pardoned for corruption-related convictions were a Virginia sheriff found guilty of taking $75,000 in bribes in exchange for appointing businessmen as deputies and a former Tennessee state House speaker and his aide convicted in a taxpayer-funded kickback scheme involving mailer services. The former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich and U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, both Democrats, also received pardons.
More than half of the public-corruption-related pardons went to Republicans or Trump allies, and officials involved in the pardon process publicly signaled partisan loyalty. Critics say that pattern fuels the perception that clemency is being used to shield political allies rather than to correct genuine miscarriages of justice.
Defenders of the administration argue the president is using constitutional authority to provide relief to people they view as victims of politically motivated prosecutions under the previous administration. The White House framed many of the clemencies as remedies for what it calls a “weaponized” justice system, and compared its actions to controversial pardons issued by past presidents.
Beyond clemency, the operational changes at the Justice Department have had immediate effects on enforcement. Career prosecutors who once pursued long-running public corruption investigations say they became reluctant to press forward after the 2024 election, fearful their work would conflict with the incoming administration’s priorities. That hesitancy, combined with widespread turnover and budgetary strains across the department, has reduced the number of cases moving forward.
Sources inside the department say the Public Integrity Section went from roughly 40 full-time staff when the administration began to just two full-time attorneys. The caseload fell from about 175–200 open matters to roughly 20. Many investigations and prosecutions that once relied on the section’s experience and resources have been declined, reassigned to U.S. attorney offices, or quietly dropped.
Former acting chief John Keller, who led the section until his resignation in February 2025, says the changes create a ‘‘chilling effect’’: prosecutors are less willing to pursue politically sensitive cases, and the few who remain face practical obstacles that make complex corruption prosecutions harder to bring to fruition. Keller left after being ordered by department leadership to dismiss a corruption case involving then-New York City Mayor Eric Adams; that episode prompted a wave of resignations and marked the beginning of the section’s rapid decline, according to current and former officials.
Legal experts warn that the consequences will be felt unevenly across the country. Big-city U.S. attorney offices in places such as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles have the personnel and resources to carry major corruption cases on their own. Smaller, more rural jurisdictions — where local offices often lack the staff or expertise — have relied on the Public Integrity Section to step in. With that federal backstop weakened, cases that once held state and local officials accountable may no longer be pursued.
Keller and others point to concrete examples. A successful prosecution of a small-town Pennsylvania police officer for bribery and other crimes — including abusing his position to obtain sex in exchange for prosecutorial favors — illustrated the kind of work the section used to support in places without robust local capacity. Those prosecutions, officials say, are now at greater risk of never being brought.
The longer-term risk, experts say, is degradation of public institutions: without enforcement, corrupt behavior can become more common and normalized, eroding public trust and undermining government effectiveness. “If enforcement fades, over time the corroding effect of public corruption can produce a system where officials serve themselves before the public,” one former prosecutor warned.
Justice Department officials did not comment for this report. The administration maintains that its actions are consistent with presidential authority and necessary to correct perceived injustices. But critics contend that the combination of partisan-friendly pardons, social-media signaling by officials involved in clemency decisions, and the gutting of the Public Integrity Section together amount to a significant retreat from long-standing federal efforts to combat public corruption — with potentially lasting consequences for accountability and the rule of law.