Trump pardons Nikola founder Milton, wiping $676M restitution

In March 2025, President Donald Trump signed a full and unconditional pardon for Trevor Milton, founder of bankrupt hydrogen-truck company Nikola Corporation. Milton was convicted in 2022 of defrauding Nikola's investors — most memorably through a 2018 YouTube video that appeared to show a Nikola truck driving down a desert highway when, the company later admitted, it had simply been towed to the top of a hill and allowed to roll down. He was sentenced in 2023 to four years in prison, was free on appeal, and federal prosecutors were seeking roughly $676 million in restitution. The pardon wiped both.

The pardon followed at least $3.2 million in 2024 donations from Milton and his wife to Trump's joint fundraising committee, to PACs raising funds for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (who had by then dropped out and endorsed Trump), and to the Republican National Committee and 44 state Republican parties — captured in a companion action on this site. The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump told Milton on the pardon call that "Bobby" — Kennedy, now Health and Human Services Secretary — had said "great things" about him. At a White House press conference, Trump said "the thing that he did wrong was he was one of the first people that supported a gentleman named Donald Trump for president." A White House spokesperson said donations "played absolutely no role" in the pardon decision.

Attorney General Pam Bondi is the sister of Brad Bondi, one of Milton's lead defense lawyers — a structural conflict at the agency that prosecuted the underlying case and houses the Office of the Pardon Attorney. Milton has said the relationship played no role. The federal pardon does not touch civil liability: Nikola's bankruptcy trustee holds a judgment for more than $100 million against Milton and continues to pursue collection.