President Donald J. Trump’s late-night commutation of a 10-year prison sentence being served by a drug smuggler named Jonathan Braun made the action sound almost routine. The White House said only that upon his release, Mr. Braun would “seek employment to support his wife and children.”
What the White House did not mention is that Mr. Braun, a New Yorker from Staten Island who had pleaded guilty in 2011 to leading a large-scale marijuana smuggling ring, still faces both criminal and civil investigations in an entirely separate matter, and has a history of violence and threatening people.
According to lawsuits filed in June against Mr. Braun and two associates by the New York State attorney general, Letitia James, and the Federal Trade Commission, Mr. Braun helped start and worked as a de facto enforcer for an operation that made predatory loans to small-business owners, threatening them with violence if they refused to pay up.
Federal prosecutors for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan also have a continuing investigation into that operation, a person with knowledge of the investigation said Friday.
As recently as two and a half years ago, Mr. Braun was accused of throwing a man off a deck at an engagement party. Federal prosecutors said in a court proceeding that he threatened to beat a rabbi who borrowed money to renovate a preschool at his synagogue. “I am going to make you bleed,” he told the rabbi, according to court documents, adding, “I will make you suffer for every penny.”
How much Mr. Trump and his aides knew about Mr. Braun’s past and his current legal troubles is not clear. In its announcement of the pardon this week, the White House appears to have substantially overstated how much of his 10-year sentence Mr. Braun had completed, saying he had served five years when he had only reported to prison a year ago. (The White House announcement also misspelled his first name, calling him Jonathon.)
Mr. Braun’s family had told people it was willing to spend millions of dollars for lawyers and others to try to get him out of prison, according to two people who have been in contact with the family members in recent months.
No one registered under federal lobbying laws to make Mr. Braun’s case to the Trump administration, though registration would not necessarily be required for legal representation. The White House announcement of the wave of 143 pardons and commutations early Wednesday, just hours before Mr. Trump left office, did not cite anyone who had backed the commutation of Mr. Braun’s sentence.
The lawyer Alan M. Dershowitz, who represented Mr. Trump in his first impeachment trial, said he “played a very limited role” in Mr. Braun’s clemency push, “almost exclusively” advising his father about the clemency process, and was paid “a very small amount of money” for his assistance.
Mr. Dershowitz said he believed Mr. Braun’s argument for clemency was “meritorious,” because Mr. Braun cooperated with prosecutors “for a good many years, and was told that his cooperation would be recognized and he didn’t get that recognition.”
His case is the latest evidence of how far the pardon process under Mr. Trump had strayed from the rigorous Justice Department guidelines and screening that previous presidents had largely relied on for clemency recommendations.
“Jonathan Braun has threatened small-business owners with violence, death and even kidnapping,” Ms. James said. “A federal commutation will not protect Mr. Braun from being held accountable in New York for the civil charges against him.”
Interviews and court documents paint a portrait of Mr. Braun as a major drug smuggler who once beat one of his underlings so badly with a belt that Mr. Braun told others he had left the victim “black and blue.” In another instance, he threatened violence against a woman who worked for him who was threatening to cooperate with prosecutors.
In response to questions about the pardon, Mr. Braun’s lawyer, Marc Fernich, declined to discuss how Mr. Braun had gotten his case in front of White House officials or who had represented him. But Mr. Fernich praised Mr. Trump’s action.
“Mr. Braun’s 10-year sentence was grossly unreasonable — an extreme statistical outlier — on the facts and circumstances of his case,” Mr. Fernich said in an email message. He said he applauded Mr. Trump’s “courage in correcting what was a grave injustice.”
A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not return an email message seeking comment.
Mr. Braun was indicted in 2010 and entered a plea deal in the drug case the next year after initially fleeing the country for Canada and Israel before turning himself in. He was not sentenced until 2019 and did not have to report to prison until last January.
While free on bail after his guilty plea but before reporting to prison, he plunged into a new enterprise, helping run an operation that made loans to small-business owners at extremely high interest rates. According to the suits filed last year by Ms. James, the New York State attorney general, and the Federal Trade Commission, Mr. Braun regularly threatened those who had trouble repaying the loans.
“I know where you live.” Mr. Braun told a small-business owner who he claimed owed him money, according to court documents filed by Ms. James.
Mr. Braun told the business owner he knew where his mother lived.
“I will take your daughters from you,” he said, according to the suit.
Mr. Braun is accused in the suit of telling another business owner: “Be thankful you’re not in New York, because your family would find you floating in the Hudson.”
Previous presidents relied on a Justice Department screening process for pardons that ensured they were being given in an evenhanded way and that those with money and connections were not receiving preferential treatment. But Mr. Trump largely disregarded that process and wielded his clemency powers unlike any previous president.
The Constitution gives presidents the ability to issue pardons and commutations, a brake on the criminal justice system and a way to show grace and mercy. But Mr. Trump doled out clemency to friends, allies, donors, witnesses who did not cooperate with investigations that involved him and his campaign, and those who could help him politically.
“When the Justice Department process is short-circuited, and there’s insufficient vetting — if you don’t take the time to look at someone’s history and potential other exposure — this is what you end up with: a process that appears corrupted by money and influence,” said Daniel Zelenko, a white-collar defense lawyer at Crowell and Moring and former federal prosecutor and enforcement lawyer at the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The full story of Mr. Braun’s arrest, indictment and sentencing spans a decade and, according to prosecutors’s statements in court and filings in his case, often unfolded like a crime thriller.
In 2009, agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration raided a house on Staten Island that Mr. Braun’s drug trafficking network used to stash large stockpiles of drugs. Mr. Braun, who was in Florida at the time, learned from his underlings about the raid.
Immediately, Mr. Braun rented a car and with at least one associate drove 25 hours to the New York border with Canada.
“In the dead of night, dressed entirely in black and utilizing a motorless boat, Braun was ferried across the river into Canada, and remained there for several months, hiding out in one of the properties owned by his Canadian associate,” according to court documents filed by the Justice Department.
