’60 Minutes’ Tries to Prove Pardons Can Be Bought From Trump in ‘Hidden-Camera Operation,’ Make Clowns of Themselves Instead

On Sunday, CBS News’ “60 Minutes” ran a much-touted hidden-camera investigation. In it, they accused the Trump administration of running a “pardon economy” in which upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars were required to buy a pardon.

Furthermore, they alleged they’d gotten hidden-camera footage proved that there were so-called “pardon brokers” who you could pay to get a clean slate from President Donald Trump.

What they found was something they could have discovered via 20 seconds with a search engine: Longtime grifters Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman are still grifting, and they also can’t get you a pardon.

For whatever reason, Leslie Stahl and the “60 Minutes” crew thought they’d found differently. They said this was a hard-hitting look inside Trump’s pardon “vetting system,” where he’s been “pardoning political allies — including all of the Jan. 6 rioters — as well as a string of unrepentant financial conmen who argued — just like him — that they were wrongly prosecuted.”

“How do these people get their grievances in the president’s ear?” Stahl said. “Donations appear to help, and those who-can-pay hire pardon brokers: lawyers and lobbyists who sell their ties to the president, for exorbitant fees. It’s a marketplace of money and mercy.”

Dun-dun–DUN! Boy, Leslie Stahl really has them dead to rights now, certainly. How could she tout that kind of a story and produce the biggest letdown on network TV since Cousin Oliver joined “The Brady Bunch,” or at least since Fox aired “My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiancé”?

Easily, if you are familiar with Messrs. Wohl and Burkman.

Wohl, 28, and Burkman, 60, are basically the Keystone Krooks of the Beltway. Both hucksters have worked together on various shenanigans since Trump’s first administration, usually trying to get various Democrats framed for sexual misconduct allegations or involving shady investment schemes. Both men are convicted felons for schemes so idiotic they defy description.

The duo briefly entered the news again earlier this year because an equally idiotic rapper known as “Boosie Badazz” doesn’t know how to search up names on this here internet thingy and instead trusted Wohl and Burkman to get him a pardon by paying them a few hundred thousand dollars. Unbelievably, that money disappeared and Mr. Badazz has no pardon. Who would have thought?

Alas, even though these two hucksters are tied to the Trump administration in the same way that Lil Wayne is tied to the Clinton administration because he once mentioned Monica Lewinsky in his lyrics — for reasons that should be self-evident to anyone familiar with the tenor of rap lyrics and the events of the Clinton administration — outlets covered this story when it broke in July as a “MAGA Mess” or a “MAGA Fiasco.”

This was slightly humorous because a few Washington publications still took Wohl and Burkman seriously and also presented this with po-faced seriousness, if just briefly — as if these people didn’t remember who Wohl or Burkman were or couldn’t look them up. But July isn’t exactly the busiest month in the nation’s capital, even in a midterms and a semiquincentennial year, so one could be forgiven for devoting time to the Jacob and Jack and Boosie Badazz show at outlets like NOTUS and Raw Story.

On a September Sunday, on CBS’ showcase hour-long weekly news magazine, this is simultaneously both more and less funny, as well as profoundly non-newsworthy:

In a hidden-camera operation, pardon brokers Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl said that for $300,000, they could help a felon get a pardon from the president. They said their services included working with influencers to advocate for his case. https://t.co/sPGjgWxvus pic.twitter.com/8tqytBjVcy

— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) September 14, 2026

Tune in next week as Leslie gets Ammon Covino, the undercover pardon-seeker in this clip, to expose that “Nigerian prince” who keeps on ing her AOL.com address asking for her bank account and routing numbers so he can deposit an inheritance.

“Ammon is a felon. The Covinos run several zoos and aquariums,” Stahol notes during the piece.

“A decade ago, he was convicted of illegal wildlife trafficking and served 23 months in prison. He applied for a pardon taking the regular route through the Justice Department,” which has been rejected.

The implication here is that money will get them the pardon. But later in the piece, Stahl notes that “Burkman and Wohl made a similar pitch to Boosie Badazz, a rapper with a lengthy criminal record, after he was convicted on a gun charge.” (In fact, the pitch was almost materially identical, to read the reports from July.)

He didn’t get his pardon, either. What does that tell us? That two people who could easily be outed as scam artists via an internet search were still scam artists? This is as much of a spoiler as telling you that every time that Bowser promises he’s reformed in a Super Mario game and/or movie, he hasn’t. (Sorry if I just spoiled the last 40 years of Nintendo history for you.)

But Stahl later trots out the cases of two (2) high-profile Trump supporters who got pardons. Both pardons, mind you, had actual logic behind them. Trevor Milton, founder of EV maker Nikola, had been sentenced to four years in prison in what was seen by those in the Trump camp as an overreach based on political grounds. Changpeng Zhao, founder and former CEO of Finance, also served a four-month prison sentence for money laundering which Trump called a “war on cryptocurrency.”

Here’s the segment in its entirety:

If those cases plus Wohl-Burkman is what “60 Minutes” was basing this 13-minute segment on — and yes, they effectively did — that should have been their first sign to abort. Both cases they used, in brief, to make their point were arguably overzealous prosecution, Milton’s for being a Trump supporter and Zhao’s for Biden’s Justice Department being asleep at the wheel during the FTX debacle.

And even if you find those pardons dubious, that’s hardly a “pardon economy.” What we got was CBS beclowning itself with minimal evidence, instead.

Furthermore, even if you want to treat the Trump administration as Shakespearean drama, Wohl and Burkman would be too silly to serve as comic relief. Heck, they might even be too broad for parts in “Ace Ventura 3: The National Zoo.” And this is the gotcha footage they’re using to effectively frame this piece around? Give me a break.

Bari Weiss of The Free Press, as you may have heard, recently caused a fuss simply for being named head of CBS News and having the temerity to institute journalistic standards that weren’t skewed wildly to the left. Bari, if you’re reading this, let me give you some advice: Take whatever your people spent on the “hidden camera investigation” part of this farce, halve it, and I will work as a freelance consultant teaching Leslie Stahl, her editors, and the reporters who work with her how to use search engines. Heck, I’ll throw in basic ChatGPT and Grok queries gratis.

Also, just use the author contact button on this page; please don’t believe Jacob Wohl when he says you have to pay him $10,000 to get my address. I’m hoping you’re not as credulous as the rest of your squad — but Sunday didn’t provide me with much hope, alas.

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