A Felon like Trump, Jonathan Braun Freed by Trump Will be Sentenced Again
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| Love how she takes the stairs. I wonder how many of him are in that frame of his. Even a pardon doesn't make him start new as a decent guy. Now he will do some time and Trump can't pardon him. |
A Brooklyn federal judge found that Jonathan Braun had violated the rules of his release by assaulting a nanny, swinging an IV pole at a nurse and dodging tolls in luxury cars.
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’s family used a connection to Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to obtain the commutation in January 2021. He 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 offenses 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 Mr. Braun 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, thanks to credit for 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.
Judge Matsumoto said that when she sentenced him in 2019 in his original drug and money laundering case, she trusted that he would follow through on the promises he had made at that sentencing hearing. She noted that Mr. Trump had commuted Mr. Braun’s original sentence after he had served only a little over a year in prison.
“Very few people are able to achieve this kind of privilege, second chance,” the judge said.
Mr. Braun read a statement in court on Monday in which he claimed that he was a changed person, and his lawyer said he had suffered “drug-induced bipolar mania” caused by an addiction to 2C-B, a synthetic psychedelic. But the lawyer, Kathryn Wozencroft of the Federal Defenders of New York, said that his drug use was not an excuse.
“Mr. Braun was out of control, acting in a manic way,” she said, adding that his family had tried to help him to no avail. “Unfortunately, there was no ability to reason with Mr. Braun.”
Prosecutors expressed skepticism that Mr. Braun had changed, noting that he had made similar “leniency pleas” before his last sentencing in 2019 but had still violated his supervised release.
A prosecutor, Tanya Hajjar, pointed out that Mr. Braun had not paid fines he owes, despite being wealthy, and that before he was apprehended this year he had “repeatedly evaded” a $4 toll while driving his Ferrari and Lamborghini.
Such behavior shows a “total lack of respect for the court” and that Mr. Braun believes he is “above the rule of law,” Ms. Hajjar said.
Prosecutors read from a victim impact statement written by Mr. Braun’s former live-in nanny, who said Mr. Braun had 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 the statement, the woman said the episode had been one of the most difficult experiences of her life.
Mr. Braun’s 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.
Mr. Braun’s troubles began more than 15 years ago, when he fled to Israel to evade federal prosecutors investigating him as one of New York’s most prominent marijuana dealers. 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 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, prosecutors said.
Last year, Mr. Braun was arrested after he was accused of punching his 75-year-old father-in-law in the head. Mr. Braun struck his father-in-law twice as he tried to protect his daughter from Mr. Braun, who was chasing her while the couple argued in their Long Island home, according to Nassau County prosecutors.
Mr. Braun’s wife, Miriam Hurwitz, according to court documents, told the police that Mr. Braun had assaulted her twice in the previous five weeks. On July 17, 2024, the documents said, Mr. Braun threw his wife off a bed onto the floor, “causing her substantial pain and bruising her legs.”
Despite that arrest and four others, Mr. Braun was allowed to remain free. Only this past April, after he was charged with assaulting the child, was he brought before Judge Matsumoto. She ordered him detained.
Along with the violent conduct he was accused of, Mr. Braun had also failed to pay a $100,000 fine imposed at his 2019 sentencing. In September, Judge Matsumoto ruled that Mr. Braun had violated his terms of release.
“I have no one to blame other than my own actions,” Mr. Braun told the court on Monday. “It’s all on me.”
Reading from his statement, he apologized to the victims, his wife, his children and his family. “I refused to get the help that I needed,” he said.
Mr. Braun thanked the judge for incarcerating him when she did — “It saved my life,” he said — and allowing him to become sober and attend mental health treatment.
“I’m embarrassed with what I did,” he said. “I own up to it.”
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