President Donald Trump pardoned nine people convicted of violating the Clean Air Act for tampering with diesel vehicle emissions-control systems, framing the clemency grants as relief for Americans who were, in his words, "persecuted by the Biden Administration" for "fixing their car." Trump announced six of the pardons on Truth Social, and a White House official confirmed the remaining names to Fox News Digital.
The pardons target mechanics, car tuners, and small-business owners who were prosecuted for selling or installing so-called "defeat devices", hardware or software that disables federally mandated emissions-control equipment on diesel trucks. Eight of the nine recipients fit that description, Fox News reported after reviewing federal court records. The ninth recipient's specific role was not detailed.
The move extends a pattern. In late January 2026, the Trump administration announced it would no longer pursue criminal charges against manufacturers, distributors, or users of defeat devices, though civil penalties could still apply. Now Trump has gone further, wiping the convictions entirely for nine people who were caught up in enforcement actions that conservatives have long called a case study in federal overreach.
The pardon recipients named in the announcement are Matthew Geouge, MacKenzie "Mac" Spurlock, Ryan Lalone, Wade Lalone, Tim Clancy, Joshua Davis, Barry Pierce, Aaron Rudolf, and Jonathan Achtemeier. Their cases range from small-shop mechanics modifying trucks for harsh-climate customers to operators whose businesses generated millions in revenue from tuning devices.
Geouge's case illustrates the upper end. His December 2021 plea agreement showed that his two companies grossed more than $10 million from the sale of illegal tuning devices alone. That is a substantial commercial operation, and the kind of fact that critics will seize on to argue the pardons reward more than backyard wrenching.
But the case that drew the most detailed defense from a sitting lawmaker belongs to Spurlock, an Alaska mechanic and Air National Guard veteran who owned Matanuska Diesel. Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, issued a written statement celebrating Spurlock's pardon and describing the federal enforcement action against him in vivid terms.
"Four years ago, about 30 armed EPA agents conducted a military-style tactical raid of Matanuska Diesel, owned by Mac Spurlock, a devoted husband and father, small business owner and veteran of the Alaska Air National Guard."
Sullivan said Spurlock's shop had helped trucking businesses by modifying diesel emissions-control systems that were mandated under what the senator called "a one-size-fits-all Obama-era emissions regulation." The modifications, Sullivan argued, kept vehicles from shutting down in Alaska's subzero conditions.
The practical complaints behind these pardons are not new, and they are not limited to people who ran afoul of the law. Diesel Exhaust Fluid systems, the emissions technology that defeat devices bypass, have been a source of chronic mechanical failures, particularly in extreme climates.
Brad Bylsma, the state equipment fleet manager for the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, stated that DEF systems account for a "significant portion of our maintenance issues and costs" with state-owned diesel vehicles. That is not a defendant talking. That is a state government official describing the same equipment the federal government spent years prosecuting people for modifying.
Frederic Sifuentes, president of an Alaska-based transportation service, put a sharper number on it:
"The percentage of breakdowns we have here in Alaska with the DEF systems is roughly 85% of the time."
Diesel trucks without defeat devices can enter what the industry calls "limp" mode, a safety protocol that limits speed to as little as 5 miles per hour until the emissions system is restored. For a trucker hauling freight on an Alaska highway in January, that is not an inconvenience. It is a potential emergency.
The EPA itself has acknowledged that DEF system failures are common and have caused problems for truckers and farmers for years. The agency issued new guidance removing the requirement for DEF sensors, a tacit admission that the technology it spent years enforcing was creating real-world failures the regulations never accounted for.
This is the gap that made the prosecutions so politically volatile. The federal government was sending armed agents to raid diesel shops over equipment modifications that the government's own transportation partners were quietly complaining about through official channels. Recent clashes over DOJ priorities have only sharpened the broader debate about how federal enforcement power gets aimed, and at whom.
The emissions pardons were part of a larger batch. The New York Post reported that Trump signed a total of 11 pardons, including Adam Kidan, a former business partner of lobbyist Jack Abramoff who was convicted in 2006 of fraud and conspiracy related to a casino purchase involving a counterfeit wire transfer, and Jack Harvard, convicted of bank fraud in the 1980s. Kidan has since become a major Republican donor.
The emissions-focused pardons also build on earlier clemency actions. Breitbart noted that Trump had previously pardoned Wyoming mechanic Troy Lake, who served seven months for disabling pollution-control equipment on diesel engines. That same report cited lobbyist Jeff Daugherty, who said Trump approved the pardons because "he is the only president to face such ferocious weaponization himself."
One detail from the Breitbart report adds context that complicates the "just fixing their car" framing: Jonathan Achtemeier, one of the nine pardon recipients, was found to have caused trucks to emit 30 to 1,200 times the pollutants of a legally configured truck. That is a wide range, and it underscores the tension between the sympathetic cases, mechanics helping truckers survive Alaska winters, and operations whose environmental footprint was considerably larger.
Trump's broader pardon record in his second term has been prolific. The Washington Examiner reported that Trump has granted clemency to thousands during his second term, including over 1,500 January 6 defendants, establishing a clear pattern of reversing Biden-era justice decisions.
The pardons do not exist in isolation. They sit atop a layered policy reversal that has systematically dismantled the federal government's approach to emissions enforcement.
First came the January 2026 announcement that the DOJ would no longer pursue criminal charges for defeat device violations. Then the EPA issued guidance removing DEF sensor requirements. And AP News reported that Trump signed a memo earlier in the week directing the EPA that Americans can modify their vehicles as they see fit, superseding California Air Resources Board authority.
That sequence, DOJ policy change, EPA guidance revision, executive memo, individual pardons, amounts to a comprehensive unwinding of the enforcement framework that put these nine people in federal crosshairs in the first place.
For the men who were convicted, the pardons restore their rights and clear their records. For the broader regulatory landscape, the message is unmistakable: this administration views the criminal prosecution of emissions-equipment modifications as a misuse of federal power.
Trump's willingness to use the pardon power aggressively has drawn criticism from opponents who argue it undermines environmental law. But the administration's position rests on a straightforward claim: that the Biden-era DOJ treated regulatory violations like violent crimes, complete with armed raids and prison sentences, while the underlying technology was failing so badly that the government's own agencies were documenting the problems.
Several questions linger. The original sentences imposed on the nine pardon recipients have not been detailed publicly. The specific courts and charges for each individual beyond Geouge's plea agreement remain unclear. And whether civil penalties will still be pursued against any of the recipients, or against others in similar cases, is an open question the administration has not addressed.
There is also the matter of scale. Geouge's $10 million operation and Achtemeier's pollution multipliers suggest that not every case fits neatly into the frame of a small-town mechanic helping a neighbor keep his truck running. The administration has chosen to pardon across the spectrum, from sympathetic to commercially significant, without drawing public distinctions.
The political calculation is clear enough. Federal enforcement actions that look disproportionate to the conduct they target tend to generate backlash, and these cases, with their armed raids on diesel shops and prison time for equipment modifications, offer the administration a ready-made narrative about a regulatory state that lost its sense of proportion.
When thirty armed federal agents show up to raid a mechanic's shop over emissions equipment that the government's own fleet managers say doesn't work, the system has a credibility problem. The pardons don't fix the policy. But they do name the failure.