Isn't that special.....

David Gentile no longer required to pay $15.5M in restitution after Trump’s commutation

Gentile was convicted in August 2024 of conspiring to defraud thousands of investors in a capital funds scheme totaling $1.6 billion.

By Gregory Svirnovskiy

Convicted fraudster David Gentile, a former private equity executive whose seven-year sentence was commuted by President Donald Trump shortly after entering prison, will not have to pay the $15.5 million in restitution associated with his conviction, according to a grant of clemency Trump signed in late November.

Gentile and his business partner, Jeffry Schneider, were convicted in August 2024 of conspiring to defraud thousands of investors in a capital funds scheme totaling $1.6 billion and using funding from investors to “pay distributions and create a false appearance of success.” He was sentenced in May.

The White House has maintained that Gentile’s firm had notified its investors of the strategy.

“At trial, the government was unable to tie any supposedly fraudulent representations to Mr. Gentile,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters at a press briefing Monday. “This is another example that has been brought to the president’s attention of the weaponization of justice from the previous administration and therefore he signed this commutation.”

The president has made extensive use of his clemency power since retaking the White House. On Wednesday, Trump announced he had pardoned Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar, a moderate Democrat who was charged alongside his wife last year with accepting $600,000 in bribes. Also this week, he pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was sentenced to 45 years in prison for his role in a narco-trafficking scheme that brought roughly 400 tons of cocaine into the U.S.

For many of his commutations, Trump has faulted a Justice Department he argues was weaponized by former President Joe Biden.

“They will attack, rob, lie, cheat, destroy, and decimate anyone who dares to oppose their far left Agenda, an Agenda that, if left unchecked, will obliterate our magnificent country,” he wrote on Truth Social while announcing his pardon of Cuellar on Wednesday.