Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - President Donald Trump on Tuesday pardoned 15 people, including former Buffalo area Congressman Chris Collins.
Collins, the first member of Congress to endorse Trump to be president, was sentenced to two years and two months in federal prison after admitting he helped his son and others dodge $800,000 in stock market losses when he learned that a drug trial by a small pharmaceutical company had failed.
Collins began serving a 26-month sentence in October after pleading guilty to federal insider trading charges in 2019.
Collins' incarceration had been delayed since early spring due to COVID-19 concerns, but a judge denied the most recent motion to delay, which would have pushed Collins' reporting date to December 8.
Collins was serving his time at a federal prison camp in Pensacola, Florida, though his attorneys had asked that he serve his sentence at home, arguing that the 70-year-old is at risk for COVID because of his age.
The 70-year-old former New York congressman representing a district between Buffalo and Rochester was sentenced in January after pleading guilty last year to conspiring to commit securities fraud and lying to law enforcement.
Prosecutors said he fed inside information about a biotechnology company to his son so his son and friends could avoid $800,000 in stock losses when a failed drug trial was announced. An indictment said Collins obtained the secrets in an email from the chief executive of Innate Immunotherapeutics Ltd. while Collins was attending the Congressional Picnic at the White House on June 22, 2017. Collins sat on the company's board.
The pardons also included former Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter of California.
Hunter was sentenced to 11 months in prison after pleading guilty to stealing campaign funds and spending the money on everything from outings with friends to his daughter's birthday party.
Trump also announced a pardon for George Papadopoulos, his 2016 campaign adviser whose conversation unwittingly helped trigger the Russia investigation that shadowed Trump's presidency for nearly two years.
By pardoning Papadopoulos, Trump once again took aim at special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe and is part of a broader effort by Trump to undo the results of the investigation that yielded criminal charges against a half-dozen associates.
Last month, Trump pardoned former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who had twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, and months earlier commuted the sentence of another associate, Roger Stone, days before he was to report to prison.
In the group announced Tuesday night were four former government contractors convicted in a 2007 massacre in Baghdad that left more a dozen Iraqi civilians dead and caused an international uproar over the use of private security guards in a war zone.
Supporters of Nicholas Slatten, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard, the former contractors at Blackwater Worldwide, had lobbied for pardons, arguing that the men had been excessively punished in an investigation and prosecution they said was tainted by problems and withheld exculpatory evidence. All four were serving lengthy prison sentences.
