https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/10/nyregion/jonathan-braun-resentencing.html?unlocked_article_code=1.0E8.URsI.H2Blwjl7sIXf&smid=url-share

Felon Freed by Trump Is Sentenced Again, This Time to 27 Months

A Brooklyn federal judge found that Jonathan Braun had violated the rules of his release by sexually assaulting a nanny, swinging an IV pole at a nurse and dodging tolls in his Lamborghini and Ferrari.

A felon whose sentence President Trump commuted in the final hours of his first term was sentenced to 27 months in prison on Monday after being accused of a range of criminal conduct — including physical and sexual assault — since Mr. Trump freed him.

The sentencing of the man, Jonathan Braun, who had a long history of violence and in 2011 pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and money laundering, demonstrates how Mr. Trump’s handling of pardons and commutations has allowed some convicts to return to criminality.

Mr. Braun, whose family used a connection to Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to obtain the commutation in January 2021, is at least the eighth convict to whom Mr. Trump granted clemency during his first term who has since been charged with a crime. Several others pardoned more recently after being convicted of crimes committed during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol have also run into trouble with the law.

Mr. Braun, despite receiving a commutation from Mr. Trump, was still on supervised release, essentially a federal version of parole. But prosecutors said Mr. Braun had continued a pattern of violence, including sexually assaulting a nanny, swinging an IV pole at a nurse and threatening a congregant at his synagogue.

He was also accused of assaulting a 3-year-old, and was continuing to make usurious loans to struggling small businesses. Judge Kiyo A. Matsumoto of Federal District Court in Brooklyn found this year that he had violated the terms of his supervised release, and federal prosecutors asked that the judge sentence him to five years in prison.

On Monday, Judge Matsumoto gave Mr. Braun 27 months, but he will have to serve only 20, because he was given credit for previous time in custody this year. The judge also said he must serve three and a half years of supervised release after his sentence, and undergo six months of residential treatment for drug abuse and mental illness.

The Braun case demonstrates how Mr. Trump has eschewed a longstanding Justice Department process of formally reviewing clemency applications, instead handing out pardons and commutations in a freewheeling manner unlike any previous president. He has helped supporters, comparing their prosecutions to the witch hunts he says were waged against him.

The New York Times reported in 2023 that Mr. Trump’s decision to grant Mr. Braun clemency damaged an investigation into predatory lending by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan.

That office had been trying to cut a deal with Mr. Braun in which he would be released in exchange for cooperating. By commuting Mr. Braun’s sentence, Mr. Trump removed the government’s leverage and the investigation foundered.

Editors’ Picks

I’m Obsessed With a Sofa From ‘Call Me by Your Name.’ Where Do I Get It?

A Home That Proves You Can Never Have Too Many Books

5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Alto Saxophone

Mr. Braun’s troubles began more than 15 years ago, when he fled to Israel to evade federal prosecutors who were investigating him as one of the most prominent marijuana dealers in New York. He was placed on an Interpol list, and by 2010 he had returned to New York, where he ultimately pleaded guilty.

During the years after Mr. Braun’s drug plea, when he was allowed to remain free on supervised release, he became involved in predatory lending to small businesses. He was accused of violently threatening at least eight debtors, according to court records.

Not until May 2019 was Mr. Braun was sentenced by Judge Matsumoto to 10 years in prison; he reported in 2020. Mr. Trump commuted his sentence just before leaving the presidency after Mr. Braun’s family had hired the lawyer Alan Dershowitz, Mr. Trump’s ally at the time, to lobby on his behalf.

After Mr. Braun was released, his bad behavior resumed, with a flurry of disturbing transgressions this year, prosecutors said.

Mr. Braun remained free after each. Only in April, after he was charged with assaulting the child, was he brought before Judge Matsumoto on charges of violating his supervised release. She ordered him detained.

This spring, Judge Matsumoto oversaw a revocation hearing for Mr. Braun during which a former live-in nanny testified about an incident on Feb. 15 in which Mr. Braun entered her room and put her into a headlock. Then, she said, Mr. Braun moved her hand over his bare genitals and groped her breasts.

In September, Judge Matsumoto ruled that Mr. Braun had violated his terms of release with that episode, the IV pole attack and by dodging tolls on Long Island while driving his Lamborghini and Ferrari. Mr. Braun had also failed to pay a $100,000 fine.

In a filing last month, Kathryn Wozencroft, Mr. Braun’s lawyer, wrote that incarceration had “saved Mr. Braun’s life.” Mr. Braun, she wrote, had committed himself to sobriety and had been meeting with a psychiatrist. Letters from Mr. Braun’s wife, his father-in-law and his younger sister described him as a devoted father who needed a shot at turning his life around.

Prosecutors said that Mr. Braun had used many of the same arguments in seeking leniency before his 2019 sentencing, when he called himself a changed man who had learned his lessons.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5795828&forum_id=2#49418070)