US President Donald Trump has issued a pardon to a former Virginia sheriff who was convicted on fraud and bribery charges.
A jury found former Culpeper County Sheriff Scott Jenkins guilty of accepting more than $75,000 (£55,000) in bribes last December, in exchange for making several businessmen into law enforcement officers without them being trained.
Jenkins, a long-time supporter of Trump, was sentenced in March to 10 years in prison. He was set to report to jail on Tuesday, but due to Trump’s pardon, he will not spend a single day behind bars.
“Sheriff Scott Jenkins, his wife Patricia, and their family have been dragged through HELL,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social network.
Trump said Jenkins was the “victim of an overzealous Biden Department of Justice”. The judge who presided over Jenkins’s case, Robert Ballou, was appointed by former President Joe Biden, but it was a jury trial.
Trump called Jenkins a “wonderful person” who was persecuted by “Radical Left monsters” and “left for dead”.
Jenkins was found guilty of one count of conspiracy, four counts of honest services fraud and seven counts of bribery concerning programmes receiving federal funds.
Prosecutors said he accepted bribes from eight people, including two undercover FBI agents. These were in the form of cash and campaign contributions. Jenkins’s position was an elected one.
The men who bribed Jenkins paid for auxiliary deputy sheriff positions so they could avoid traffic tickets and carry concealed firearms without a permit, the prosecutors said.
Although auxiliary deputy sheriffs are volunteer positions, they can have law-enforcement powers equivalent to those of paid officers.
Trump said Jenkins tried to offer evidence in his defence, but Judge Ballou “refused to allow it, shut him down, and then went on a tirade”.
The acting US attorney for Virginia said at the time of Jenkins’s sentencing that the ex-sheriff violated his oath of office. He said the case proved that officials who used their positions for “unjust personal enrichment” would be held accountable.
But Jenkins appealed to Trump for help after his conviction.
“I believe if he heard the information, I know he would help if he knew my story,” he reportedly said in April on a webinar hosted by the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association.
Jenkins was elected sheriff of Culpeper County in 2011 and took office in January 2012. He was re-elected in 2015 and 2019.
The former policeman is the latest in a long line of Trump supporters to receive a pardon.
In January, the president issued almost 1,600 pardons or commutations to people charged over the 2021 US Capitol riots.
The US Constitution says that a president has the “power to grant reprieves and pardons for offences against the United States, except in cases of impeachment”.
A pardon represents legal forgiveness, ends any further punishment and restores rights such as being able to vote or run for public office.
