Police Arrest Loan Shark Whose Sentence Was Commuted By Donald Trump

A convicted loan shark and drug smuggler whose sentence was commuted by Donald Trump has been arrested for assaulting his wife and father-in-law.
The father of 41-year-old Jonathan Braun had hired Trump’s impeachment lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, for legal advice on commutation.
In January 2021, just before leaving the White House, Trump issued 143 pardons and commutations, including a commutation for Braun.
Braun was released after serving five years of a 13-year-sentence for drug importation and money laundering.
Braun has now been indicted in Long Island, New York for petit larceny, one count of assault with injury on a person 65 years or older and two counts of assault with intent to cause injury in the third degree.
He was previously convicted of money laundering and importing marijuana and the Federal Trade Commission fined him $20 million in February for predatory lending practices.
Newsweek sought email comment from lawyers for Trump and Braun and from Dershowitz on Tuesday.
A Nassau County Police Department criminal complaint states that Braun is alleged to have thrown his wife off a bed on July 17, “causing her substantial pain and bruising her legs.”
On August 12, Braun is also alleged to have punched her in the head “causing her substantial pain,” the complaint states.
Her 75-year-old father intervened as Braun chased her and Braun allegedly punched him twice in the face.
His larceny charge is for not paying tolls on his white Lamborghini and black Ferrari. He is accused of not having license plates on either car to avoid the tolls.
The New York Times previously explained that Harvard Law Professor, Alan Dershowitz, said he “played a very limited role” in Braun’s clemency appeal. He told the NYT that he was paid “a very small amount of money” by Braun’s father to explain the commutation process.
In January 2020, Dershowitz represented Trump in an impeachment hearing in the Senate, in which Trump was accused of tying Ukrainian military aid to an investigation into Hunter Biden’s Ukrainian business interests.
Dershowitz controversially argued that even if Trump did all the things that Democrats had alleged following their impeachment inquiry, he could still not be impeached because they did not accuse the president of committing a specific crime.
Trump was acquitted in February, 2020.
According to court papers, Braun’s marijuana business was taking in $6 million a week. As well as marijuana importation and money laundering, Braun was also an enforcer for a loan sharking business before he went to prison. The business had lent out tens of millions of dollars, according to court records.
While he was in jail the Federal Trade Commission took a case against him and was joined by New York Attorney General, Letitita James.
James’ office went to court to obtain an injunction against a loan sharking business called Richmond Companies.
It revealed that Braun was the person behind threatening phone calls to businesses who couldn’t pay the extortionate interest that ranged from hundreds to thousands of percentage points above the lending sum.
“Respondents create a climate of intimidation and fear to discourage merchants from missing their payments or from questioning Respondents’ tactics, typically through phone calls made by Respondent Braun,” James’ complaint states.
“Braun has regularly called merchants’ representatives and harassed, insulted, sworn at, and threatened them,” it says. “He has told them that he knows where they live and threatened to seize their assets, destroy their businesses, and do violence to them and their families.
“Respondents inflict immense financial and personal harm upon the merchants they purport to help. They wrongly obtain judgments against merchants, strip money from their bank accounts, and force them into downward spirals of unending debt. Merchants have been forced to take desperate measures to deal with their purported debts to respondents. Many have been forced to shut their doors, file for bankruptcy, or both.
“Respondents have issued more than 3,000 fraudulent, usurious loans since 2015 and have illegally collected from merchants more than $77 million in payments on the loans,” it adds.
As a result of the FTC and New York Attorney General actions, Braun was fined $20 million last February.