US President Donald Trump pardoned 73 people and commuted the sentences of 70 additional individuals in the final hours of his term on Wednesday. The list included several Jewish convicts as well as Aviem Sella, a top Israeli Air Force pilot who was the recruiter and operator of spy Jonathan Pollard.
The list does not include Trump himself or members of his immediate family. It does, however, include his former chief strategist Steve Bannon and several family allies.
Sella fled to Israel days before Pollard was arrested outside the Israeli embassy in Washington DC, was indicted for espionage in 1987, but was never extradited. A former fighter pilot who took part in the 1981 strike on Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor, Sella started working for the Mossad intelligence agency in the early 1980s and received some of the classified top-secret documents provided by Pollard.
The White House said Sella’s clemency request was supported by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Israeli Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer, US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, and Miriam Adelson, the wife of top donor Sheldon Adelson who died last week.
“The State of Israel has issued a full and unequivocal apology, and has requested the pardon in order to close this unfortunate chapter in US-Israel relations,” the White House said.
Pollard, who was released from prison in 2015, was recently allowed to move to Israel after his parole restrictions were not renewed by the US Justice Department.
In a statement Wednesday, Pollard and his wife Esther said they were “very happy” about the decision, adding that it “puts an end to the affair’s bleeding wounds after 35 years.”
Trump also pardoned or commuted the sentences of several Jewish businessmen jailed for white-collar crimes, including Shalom Weiss, the recipient of what is believed to be the longest-ever white-collar prison sentence, and Ponzi schemer Eliyahu Weinstein, who defrauded Lakewood Jews and others out of $200 million.
