On Tuesday, court records were unsealed that revealed in August, the Justice Department was investigating a potential crime related to a bribery-for-pardon scheme, which would entail funneling money to the White House (or a related political committee) through a large political contribution in exchange for receiving a presidential pardon. The Washington Post reports that specifically, U.S. prosecutors were investigating whether two individuals had approached senior White House officials as unregistered lobbyists, and a potentially related plot in which cash would be passed through intermediaries in exchange for a pardon of the sentence of a defendant who apparently is or once was in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the Judge responsible for reviewing the prosecutors’ requests to access search warrant evidence back in August, was responsible for unsealing the records this Tuesday. The largely-redacted 18-page opinion does not identify the subjects of the investigations, nor do they indicate whether anyone has been or will be charged related to the investigation.