Kelly Loeffler, the head of the Small Business Administration, claims Donald Trump will not pardon people who commit crimes.
In an interview on Fox News on Friday, Loeffler acknowledged that officials have been investigating fraud in the Somali community in Minnesota for years, but argues that, unlike the Biden administration, Trump will not allow fraudsters to go free since he is not in the business of pardoning criminals.
“This is a new day in the Trump administration. We had four years under the Biden administration, where not only did they look the other way, but this is what the Democrat socialist welfare state looks like where Democrat politicians look the other way,” Loeffler said in a clip highlighted by Mediaite.
“We’re not gonna do what the last administration did, which is try to forgive fraudulent loans, look the other way, pardon people for committing crimes,” she added. “And you can see an all-of-government approach in this, and it’s gonna be very different.”
Under the Biden administration the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minneapolis charged 47 defendants in 2022 with allegedly exploiting a federally funded child nutrition program during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since returning to office less than a year ago, Trump has pardoned or commuted the sentence of nearly 1600 criminals, including fraudsters, Jan. 6 insurrectionists and drug traffickers.
Last month, Trump pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was serving 45 years in federal prison after being convicted of taking bribes to allow the transport of 400 tons of cocaine to the U.S.
