Rod Blagojevich is probably the best-known person who was granted a pardon this year. He was the governor of Illinois from 2003–2009. The article was created 21 years ago. He was removed from the governor's office by impeachment by the Illinois State House of Representatives and conviction by the Illinois State Senate. He was convicted, following two federal trials and several appeals of 13 government corruption charges including wire fraud and extortion. He'd made the mistake of telling FBI agents on tape that "I've got this thing, and it's fucking golden. I'm just not giving it up for fucking nothing," referring to the U.S. Senate seat vacated when Barrack Obama ascended to the presidency.

Forty apparent sockpuppets have edited the article a total of 94 times. User:Hello4321 was the most active apparent sock on the Blagojevich article. His edits seemed to favor Blagojevich. A sockfarm with over 20 socks in it was named after Hello4321 by sock puppet investigators. Other socks in the farm were noted for editing articles about politicians, courts, and journalists, as well as aggressively editwarring.

Blagojevich was released from prison having served almost eight years of his 14 year sentence in 2020 following his first grant of clemency from Trump. It's not clear what additional benefit he gets from this year's full pardon. It is unlikely, however, that no paid socks, either Hello4321, or any of the 39 other socks, had edited the article to favor Blagojevich.

Michael Grimm was a Republican congressman who represented part of New York City from 2011–2014. He was indicted for 20 counts of fraud, federal tax evasion, and perjury in 2014. As part of a plea deal, he pleaded guilty to one count of felony tax fraud. He served seven months of his eight month sentence. In 2024 he was paralyzed in an accident while playing polo.

The article about Grimm was edited 147 times by 15 apparent sockpuppets. At least seven of the sockpuppets appear to be part of well-known large sockfarms, or made important edits.

• User:Screwball23 made the most edits, 71, of anybody who contributed to the article, starting with Grimm's underdog primary campaign for the Republican nomination against the incumbent congressman. Screwball23's edits generally favored Grimm, at first going against the establishment Republican position. Grimm won that primary election and the next three congressional elections in his district, until he pleaded guilty in 2014 shortly after that year's election. After the 2010 primary victory Screwball23's edits were generally consistent with establishment Republican views until they were blocked in November 2012. Screwball23 screwed up when User:Votevotevote2012 responded to a talk page message to Screwball23 and admitted that both accounts were controlled by the same person.
• User:Champaign Supernova made 29 edits on the Grimm article generally opposing Screwball23. User:CFredkin made 16 edits there as well. Both CFredkin and Champaign Supernova were accused of making biased edits in the article about 2016 Florida Republican primary candidate David Jolly. Jolly's campaign spokesperson User:Bascomcomm declared that they had edited the Jolly article and accused CFredkin and Champaign Supernova of making biased edits. [Disclosure – Smallbones reported Bascomcomm to the COI noticeboard in 2016]

In 2014 Trevor Milton founded Nikola Corporation, which began developing ecologically friendly large trucks. In 2020 short-seller Hindenburg Research produced a report characterizing Nikola's marketing as an Ocean of Lies and "an intricate fraud built on dozens of lies".^[3] (See also this video.)

In 2021, Milton was indicted and the next year convicted on three counts of fraud. He received a four year prison sentence with a $1 million fine and was required to pay $168 million in restitution. He was not imprisoned pending appeal. In 2024 Milton and his wife gave $1.8 million to Trump's campaign. The 2025 full pardon made the sentence void.

Fourteen apparent socks made 29 edits to either the Trevor Milton or Nikola Corporation articles. User:Deltagammaz made 10 edits and was indefinitely blocked with the account globally locked. Users Harley.M.X and Dimentow were later blocked as part of the industrial scale Yoodaba sockfarm. Each made just one edit, which was neither neutral nor very destructive.

Todd Chrisley and Julie Chrisley were reality TV stars with their Chrisley Knows Best and other shows. They borrowed about $30 million based on falsified documents. The article about Todd was edited by two sockpuppets, but no apparent socks edited the article about Julie. Nevertheless, 11 sockpuppets or UPEs edited Chrisley Knows Best.

John G. Rowland served as the Republican governor of Connecticut from 1995–2004. A construction firm which had state contracts did free work on Rowland's vacation home. He resigned under threat of impeachment and later pleaded guilty to a federal charge of fraud and spent almost a year in prison. The ten apparent sockpuppets who edited the article about him included two who worked with large sockfarms.

Jeremy Young Hutchinson is part of a very large Arkansas political family. He pleaded guilty to bribery, campaign finance violations, and tax fraud. He was sentenced to a total of eight years in prison by federal courts in two states and served about two years. In his request for a pardon his lawyers stated "it is absolutely clear that Democrats at the Department of Justice and within the F.B.I. chose to prosecute the case because he was a high-profile conservative legislator from a Republican family." ^[1]

Carlos Watson founded Ozy Media in 2013. In 2021 The New York Times reported that Watson made serious misrepresentations to investors. Ozy's board closed the company the same day, though some operations continued for more than a year. He was arrested for fraud in 2023, convicted in 2024 and sentenced to ten years in prison. In 2025 Trump commuted the sentence on the same day Watson was to report to prison.

Ben Delo and Arthur Hayes are two of the three founders of BitMEX, a large cryptocurrency exchange. Like most of the crypto-establishment they've argued for years that old financial regulations don't, or at least shouldn't, apply to the new cryptocurrencies. The US regulator, the CFTC, disagreed and fined BitMEX $100 million because the exchange was trading with US residents without registering as an exchange or following anti-money laundering (AML) rules. This is just standard procedure in US financial regulation. The CFTC later fined Delo and Hayes $10 million each. Delo and Hayes then pleaded guilty to money laundering charges.

Six apparent sockpuppets or UPEs have edited the Delo, Hayes, and BitMEX articles. None of them appear to be part of the large sockfarms, but they do appear to be socks.

Brian Kelsey was a Tennessee state senator from 2009–2022. In 2017 he ran for the US Congress and violated federal campaign financing law, pleading guilty in 2022 and received a 21-month sentence. He entered prison in 2025 and was pardoned 15 days later. The Kelsey article was edited by the Marquis de la Eirron sockfarm, which edited four other articles in this report, and by the strange Ludivine sockfarm. That farm was originally identified because its members all edited "Ritchie Blackmore, French actresses/film, (and) Tennessee politics."

Michele Fiore, a long term right wing Nevada Republican politician, rallied support for Trump within days of the January 6 insurrection. She also raised $70,000 through a non-profit for a memorial to Nevada police officers killed in the line of duty, then stole the money. Two of the four sockpuppets who edited the article about her were part of a 60 member sockfarm.

P.G. Sittenfeld was a Democratic Cincinnati city councilman convicted of taking bribes and extortion. In 2023 he was sentenced to 16 months in prison plus restitution, but served less than 5 months. In 2025 he received a full and unconditional pardon. Two of the three apparent sockpuppets who edited the article about him were members of large sockfarms.

Devon Archer and Jason Galanis were both convicted of fraud. They raised $60 million in the bond market for the Oglala Sioux tribal government and then used the funds for their own purposes. They also worked with Hunter Biden on different projects. In 2024 they testified in a Congressional closed-door inquiry about impeaching President Joe Biden. The impeachment drive failed. The article about Archer was only edited by one apparent sockpuppet. An article about Galanis was deleted and remains as a draft. It only had two apparent sockpuppets and in any case seems to have nothing to do with their legal problems or the Bidens.

Imaad Zuberi was a high-level fundraiser for presidential candidates – including Hillary Clinton, Obama, and Trump – who specialized in raising illegal campaign donations from foreigners.

Paul Walczak, who made $360,000 per year as the CEO of a nursing care company, apparently really doesn't like paying taxes. He didn't even file a tax return for three years, 2019-2021. He did collect withholding taxes from his employees though, on income taxes, medicare, and social security. But he didn't turn that money over to the IRS. All told, he didn't pay over $10 million in taxes. Instead he bought a $2 million yacht. In April 2024 he was indicted on about ten counts of tax related crimes and then sprinted through the court system.

In November soon after Trump won the presidential election, Walczak pleaded guilty to two counts. In February he pleaded guilty to the rest of the charges. On April 11 he was sentenced to 18 months in prison with $4.4 million restitution. About the same time Walczak's mother, Elizabeth Fago, attended a $1 million-per-person fundraising dinner for MAGA Inc. at Mar-a-Lago. On April 23, 12 days after sentencing, his pardon came through, allowing him to avoid prison and $4.4 million in restitution.

The saga of the Wikipedia article about Paul Walczak might be equally unbelievable. There is no article about him (yet). But a draft article was submitted about his mother Elizabeth Fago in 2014. The editor who submitted the 400 word draft made only a single edit on Wikipedia. They registered their account, and 10 minutes later saved the draft (archive), never to be heard from again.

James Callahan was general president of the International Union of Operating Engineers when he received sports tickets and similar items worth $315,000, from a company that worked for the union placing advertisements. He did not report the receipt of these items to the Department of Labor as required. Apparently no UPEs or sockpuppets edited the article about Callahan.

I've examined Wikipedia editing records for evidence on whether the 18 white collar convicted felons given clemency by Trump this year have hired editors to whitewash the articles about themselves on Wikipedia. Trump has claimed that these people were treated badly by previous administrations and that he has corrected these miscarriages of justice. A brief survey of the mainstream reliable press and the Department of Justice's website does not confirm those statements. There were real crimes committed. They've had their day in court and ten of them have used it to plead guilty. Another four have lost an appeal and the others were convicted in an open court by a judge or jury. Eight never served a day in prison on the charges, another only served 15 days. Two had already been released from prison. About six of those pardoned may not have to pay fines or restitution that was still owed.

Two of the felons did not have blocked socks edit the articles about themselves and another one only had one blocked sock edit. It would be difficult to conclude that they paid for a whitewash.

Eight felons had articles where 8–40 blocked socks had edited – which would make it difficult to conclude that they had not paid for a whitewash. The remaining seven had between 3–7 blocked socks edit. I conclude that about half had paid for whitewashing.

The socks tended to come from the same sockfarms. Five of the articles were edited by the Marquis de la Eirron farm and four by the DisuseKid farm, with two of the articles edited by both. Four were edited by the Rms125a@hotmail.com farm with two overlapping the above group. The large scale Yoodaba sockfarm only edited one. Thus ten of the articles were covered by these four large sockfarms. Again, it looks like about half (or more) of the felons employed these farms. Wikipedia's community, sockpuppet investigators, and checkusers should be congratulated for tracking down all these socks. These volunteers might be able to give the professional pardon screeners at the Department of Justice a few pointers.