WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s pardon for former Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda Vazquez Garced did not include all the criminal cases she faced, and the White House plans to fix that out of an abundance of caution, an official said Sunday.
Trump pardons Vasquez Garced He says it applies To “those crimes against the United States individually enumerated and before me for consideration: United States v. Vasquez-Garced et al., 3:22-CR-342.”
The former Puerto Rico governor was initially indicted by the Department of Justice in 2022 on bribery charges related to her 2020 campaign financing. In August 2025, she plead guilty On a reduced charge, misdemeanor campaign finance violation, the guilty plea and agreement were entered under a separate case number, 3:25-cr-00296.
Case No. 2025 is not included in the pardon.
The Trump administration believes the original document is sufficient to grant a pardon, but a White House official said an additional document would be signed out of an abundance of caution.
It is fairly common for a federal case to be filed under a new docket number when a plea agreement is reached. In this case, the original 2022 issue is included Other defendants. These were the accused Separately SorryBut none of the cases have been dismissed yet.
For now, the 2025 case against Vázquez Garced remains active, even after the pardon. On Saturday, Judge Sylvia L. Carreño Cole’s pending defense motion in that case related to Vasquez Garced’s scheduled sentencing on January 29. The defense team has not yet filed a motion for clemency in either case that would seek to close them.
The plea deal came after lawyers for Vazquez-Garced and her partner, billionaire Julio Herrera Vilotini, met with officials at the Justice Department headquarters. The group included Chris Case, who worked on Trump’s legal team, along with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who is defending Trump. He said “He was not present and did not participate” in the negotiations that day.
Vazquez-Garced’s team said the plea agreement “resulted from the government’s professional evaluation of the compelling evidence and new exculpation uncovered by the defense investigation and presented during good faith negotiations, and not from any guidance from the Supreme Court.” Herrera Vilotini’s daughter, Isabella Herrera, had given birth I donated $2.5 million to PAC MAGA Inc. pro-Trump in December 2024. Kise did not respond to a request for comment.
Liz Auer, a former Justice Department pardon lawyer, told NBC News on Sunday that the “recurring” issues around Trump’s pardons could have been avoided if the administration had followed normal protocols.
“There have been a number of clemencies that have been granted where the meaning or scope of the relief granted has been ambiguous, and in other cases, this has created a lot of work for the courts as well as the Department of Justice to litigate on the president’s intent,” Auer said.
“We saw that in the January 6 amnesty announcement, which sparked lawsuits across the country over the intended extent of the amnesty,” she said. “This continues in the case of the alleged pipe bomber, who now argues that his conduct was included in the pardon.”
“All of these ambiguities and questions could be completely avoided if an orderly process were followed and the pardon attorney’s office was consulted so that the paperwork could properly effectuate the president’s intent,” Auer said.
Ryan Croswell, who was the lead prosecutor in the Vasquez-Garced case and is now running for Congress as a Democrat from Pennsylvania, Friday said that the pardon was a “sad day for the rule of law in America” and that “the people of Puerto Rico deserve to see this case go to trial.”
Vasquez Garced’s attorney did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment.