Before he went to prison, and before he was released on orders from President Donald Trump, Jonathan Braun was a prolific predatory lender. In eight years he advanced almost $80 million to small-business owners across the U.S. He targeted those desperate enough to accept extreme interest rates—often higher than 1,000% a year—and when they inevitably fell behind, he squeezed them for more money. He bullied some and menaced others. “You suck, you’re dead, you’re a piece of shit, you should drop f---ing dead,” Braun told one of his clients in an exchange caught on video. Often he would use dubious legal tactics to drain their bank accounts.

Even as borrowers complained in court that they’d been frightened by his threats and ruined by his ripoffs, Braun faced no punishment. It wasn’t that the authorities were unaware of him. In fact he’d been operating as a loan shark while out on bail after a 2010 arrest on unrelated federal drug-trafficking charges, wearing an electronic ankle bracelet monitored by the U.S. Department of Justice. His trial was delayed for years without explanation.

Braun’s improbable career as a government-supervised predatory lender seemed to come to an end in 2020, when he was finally sent to a prison north of New York City to serve a 10-year sentence for the drug charges. While he was there, New York’s attorney general sued him for usury, fraud, and harassment related to his lending. But then, in January 2021, he secured a last-minute grant of clemency from Trump. His sentence was commuted, and he was released. “Pardon Frees a Drug Smuggler Known for Violence and Threats,” as the New York Times put it in a front-page story.

Trump didn’t explain why Braun had been freed. A statement put out by the White House misspelled Braun’s first name, exaggerated the amount of time he’d spent in prison, and didn’t mention the attorney general’s ongoing lawsuit. “Upon his release, Mr. Braun will seek employment to support his wife and children,” it said. According to someone with knowledge of the arrangement, Braun told his probation officer he’d be working for the president of a cleaning service.