WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump'spardonof former Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced did not include all of the criminal cases she's faced, and the White House is planning to make a fix out of an abundance of caution, an official said Sunday.
Trump's pardon of Vázquez Garcedsays it appliesto "those offenses against the United States individually enumerated and set before me for my consideration: United States v. Vazquez-Garced, et al., 3:22-CR-342."
The former Puerto Rico governorwas initially indictedby the Justice Department in 2022 on bribery charges related to the financing of her 2020 campaign. In August 2025, shepleaded guiltyto a reduced charge, a misdemeanor campaign finance violation, and that guilty plea and agreement were filed under a separate docket number, 3:25-cr-00296.
The 2025 docket number is not listed in the pardon.
The Trump administration believes the original document is sufficient for the pardon, but a White House official said an additional document will be signed out of an abundance of caution.
It's somewhat common for a federal case to be brought under a new docket number when a plea agreement is reached. In this instance, the original 2022 case includes other defendants. Those co-defendants have beenseparatelypardoned, but none of the cases have yet been dismissed.
For now, the 2025 case against Vázquez Garced remains active, even after the pardon. On Saturday, Judge Silvia L. Carreño-Coll denied a pending defense motion in that case related to Vázquez Garced's scheduled sentencing on Jan. 29. The defense team has not yet filed a motion about the pardon in either case that would seek to close them.
The plea deal came about after attorneys for Vázquez Garced and her billionaire co-defendant Julio Herrera Velutini met with officials at Justice Department headquarters. The group included Chris Kise, who worked on Trump's legal team, alongside Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who defense attorneyssaid"was not present and did not participate" in the negotiations that day.
Vázquez Garced's team said the plea agreement "resulted from the government's professional evaluation of new compelling and exculpatory evidence uncovered through defense investigation and presented during good faith negotiations, not from any directive from Main Justice." Herrera Velutini's daughter, Isabela Herrera, haddonated$2.5 million to the pro-Trump super PAC MAGA Inc. in December 2024. Kise did not respond to a request for comment.
Liz Oyer, a former Justice Department pardon attorney, told NBC News on Sunday that the "recurring" issues around Trump's pardons would have been avoided had the administration been following normal protocols.
"There have been a number of clemencies that he's granted where the meaning or scope of the relief granted has been ambiguous, and in other cases, this hascreated a lot of work for courtsas wellas the Justice Departmentlitigating what the intent of the president was," Oyer said.
"We saw that in the Jan. 6 pardon proclamation, which has generated litigation around the country about how far-reaching the pardon was intended to be," she said. "And that's still ongoing in the case of thealleged pipe bomber, who is now arguing that the pardon covered his conduct."
"All of these ambiguities and questions are completely avoidable if an orderly process is followed and the Office of the Pardon Attorney is consulted so that the paperwork can properly effectuate the president's intent," Oyer said.
Ryan Crosswell, who was the lead prosecutor in the Vázquez Garced case and is now running for Congress as a Democrat in Pennsylvania,said Fridaythat the pardon was a "sad day for the rule of law in America" and that the "people of Puerto Rico deserved to see this case go to trial."
An attorney for Vázquez Garced did not immediately respond to NBC News' request for comment.
