Trump’s Former Pardon Attorney Wildly Insinuates Fauci May Have ‘Paid’ for His Pardon from Biden

President Donald Trump’s former pardon attorney Ed Martin suggested on Wednesday that Dr. Anthony Fauci paid big bucks to receive a pardon from ex-President Joe Biden, just hours before the former president left office in early 2025.

He insinuated something was amiss with Fauci’s pardon during an interview with the New York Post’s Miranda Devine on her Pod Force One podcast, where he discussed a recent 60 Minutes report on “pardon brokers” who claim to sell access to the Trump administration.

While appearing in the 60 Minutes interview, Martin butted heads with correspondent Lesley Stahl over what she said looked like convicts paying lots of dough for a Trump pardon. Martin shot it down.

During his Wednesday interview, Martin said Stahl would’ve been better off looking into Fauci’s pardon.

“My point is to Lesley Stahl was: Hey, OK, you want to talk about people making money off pardons? Ask Fauci how much he paid,” Martin said. “In fact, ask Fauci if he used taxpayer dollars for it. Who knows?”

Martin said he read emails from Fauci’s attorneys to the Biden administration where they were “begging” for a pardon, up until the moment Trump was “putting his tie on” to get inaugurated. Biden issued a full and unconditional pardon to Fauci a few hours before Trump reentered office on January 20, 2025.

He added he did not believe what Stahl was “peddling” and that he “never saw” evidence of Trump officials getting paid for pardons.

His claims come a few weeks after Stahl’s story was part of the 60 Minutes season premiere. Her story looked at two “pardon brokers” who were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to seek pardons from the Trump administration — only for it to look like they sold nothing but false hope and bogus connections to high-ranking officials.

Stahl also noted several pardons were issued after felons made big donations to Trump. That led her ask Martin, who ran the DOJ’s pardon department before quitting in August, whether they were kosher.

“A pardon seeker going to Mar-a-Lago and joining in a fundraising event where you had to pay money and then getting a pardon, why isn’t that a quid pro quo?” she asked. “Why isn’t that pay to play?

“I don’t know about those examples, but I would just say the prerogative, again the presidential prerogative, that it’s in the Constitution. It’s complete. It’s plenary,” Martin said. “When people say, ‘It’s brokers, there’s quid pro quo,’ I’ve never seen it. I haven’t seen it, haven’t heard it.”

On Wednesday, Devine suggested Stahl’s piece was slanted against Trump to make it look like he was selling clemency.

“Of course, Leslie Stahl uses the term ‘broker’ when she’s talking about Republicans and she just says ‘lawyer,’ or ‘attorney’ when she’s talking about Democrats,” she said.

Watch above.

Jason Cohen contributed to this story.

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