US loan shark pardoned by Trump gets another 27 months in prison

NEW YORK - A loan shark and convicted drug trafficker who was freed from prison by US President Donald Trump in 2021 was sentenced to 27 months in prison for repeatedly violating the terms of his federal release.

Jonathan Braun, 42, was sentenced by US District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto in Brooklyn at a hearing on Nov 10. The prison term will be reduced by the seven months he has already been in custody since his arrest in April.

Braun was granted clemency by Mr Trump after serving two and a half years of a decade-long sentence for running a marijuana-smuggling ring. At the time, he was facing separate investigations by US and New York authorities into his lending business, where he was known for ripping off small businesses and threatening them with violence.

Once free, Braun returned to lending and racked up new complaints from borrowers who said they were tricked by companies associated with him, Bloomberg Businessweek reported in 2022. Tallying the debts in the cases showed the companies had loaned at least US$17 million since Braun’s release, and that’s just the loans that ended up in court, according to the Bloomberg report.

Mr Trump’s grant of clemency left Braun on federal probation. Since 2024, Braun has been repeatedly arrested and charged in relation to several violent episodes. 

Mr Matsumoto ruled in September that he threatened to kill a nurse at a Long Island hospital on Jan. 24 and tried to strike her with an IV pole. The judge also found that he sexually assaulted his live-in nanny in February, and menaced a man praying at a Long Island synagogue a month later. 

“I do wish you well,” Matsumoto told Braun after she imposed the sentence.

The incidents also resulted in New York state court charges, which are still pending.

Ms Matsumoto also ordered Braun to pay a US$100,000 (S$130,000) fine immediately. Federal prosecutors had said that Braun claimed to be indigent, yet employed a butler, drove luxury cars, gambled with more than US$25,000 and lived in a sprawling multi-million-dollar home in Long Island. Braun also repeatedly evaded tolls at a bridge near his home while driving a Lamborghini and Ferrari, prosecutors said.

Braun’s court-appointed lawyer, Kathryn Wozencroft, had asked for him to be released for drug treatment, saying that his violations came during a period of substance-induced mania and that he was now sober. Braun had claimed to be addicted to a drug called 2C-B, which was undetectable on drug tests, the judge said.

“I want to apologise to all the victims in this case,” Braun said at the hearing. “I was not in the right state of mind. I lost control over my actions.”

But prosecutors argued that Braun’s violations came not as the result of an addiction-driven psychiatric crisis, but due to a “belief that the defendant is above the law.” The US had requested a 60-month sentence. 

Braun’s commutation was part of a wave of more than 100 pardons and commutations in the waning hours of Mr Trump’s first term. Some of the recipients have since been arrested for other crimes, as have some of the hundreds of people he pardoned who were convicted for their roles in the Jan 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol building.

500 per cent interest rates

Braun had long been a prolific lender, charging interest rates that topped 500 per cent annualised and collecting tens of millions of dollars in payments. In June 2020, seven months before the Trump commutation, Braun was sued by New York’s attorney-general and the Federal Trade Commission over the loans. Braun was ordered in 2024 to pay US$20 million to the FTC.

New York’s attorney-general won a US$77.3 million judgment against Braun, some associates and their companies.

Associates of Braun say he’s bragged about paying millions of dollars to Trump-connected intermediaries to secure clemency, Bloomberg reported.

The New York Times reported in 2023 that Braun’s family tried to use a connection to Charles Kushner, the father of Jared Kushner, Mr Trump’s son-in-law, to get Mr Trump to consider clemency. Charles Kushner was also pardoned by Mr Trump at the end of his first term. BLOOMBERG