Correspondent Lesley Stahl launched the 59th season of “60 Minutes” with a hidden-camera investigation into the lawyers and lobbyists who promise convicted felons a pardon from President Donald Trump. The premiere aired on Sunday, September 13, 2026, and she then took what her team found to the man who ran the federal pardon office until August.
Shachar Bar-On and Michael Kaplan produced the piece, which aired under the title “The Pardon Economy.” Some brokers charge as much as $3 million to press a client’s case with the president, Stahl, 84, reported, and nothing they do is illegal — yet not one of them would agree to an interview.
Inside the Hidden-Camera Sting
One of those pardon seekers was Ammon Covino, who served 23 months after a 2013 conviction for illegal wildlife trafficking. The conventional path failed him first: he filled out the Justice Department’s three-page application and was rejected. A dozen brokers then got an email from him. Lobbyists Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl, whom Stahl described as self-styled pardon brokers, answered it in seven minutes.
With “60 Minutes” cameras rolling, Covino and his wife, Crystal Covino, sat down with the pair in a Virginia hotel lounge. The quoted price was $300,000, a sum that covered such items as $10,000 fundraiser tickets and introductions to MAGA influencers. “I kept saying ‘This feels illegal,’” Covino told Stahl. He said he put the question to his AI model again and again, asking whether the arrangement was against the law, and was assured it wasn’t.
Burkman was seen on the hidden-camera recording telling the Covinos: “With this particular White House, you have to put pressure on the president from all directions in a consistent way, to force his hand.” He also said: “We literally want to put the pen in his hand and get him to sign it because he’s tired of hearing about it.” A 2020 robocall operation aimed at suppressing Black votes left both men criminally convicted. The owner of a nursing home chain convicted of massive tax fraud is the client they claim to have won clemency for, at a price they say came to nearly $1 million.
The Rapper Who Says He Paid $600,000
Rapper Boosie Badazz, who has been convicted of drug possession and of being a felon in possession of a gun, the segment reported, told Stahl he handed the pair $600,000 and never got a pardon. “This is what I was led to believe: If you come with this money, you will get a pardon,” he said. Under his contract he could ask for half the money back if no pardon materialized; Burkman and Wohl say he never signed it. The rapper said he asked and got nowhere. “Just return it. You didn’t give me my pardon,” he recalled telling them. “It’s a bunch of BS. And they were so cocky.”
He also produced a text message for Stahl in which the two named recruits they claimed to have in Trump’s orbit — Erika Kirk, whose name was misspelled in the message, Laura Loomer, House Speaker Mike Johnson and White House aide Natalie Harp. Denials of any involvement came from all four.
Confronted by “60 Minutes,” Wohl said: “There’s nothing corrupt about it. There’s nothing improper about it.” Stahl put it to them plainly: “It seems that you have to have money to get a pardon these days.” Burkman answered: “We don’t work for free any more than you do, right? You’re well-paid for what you do. We’re well-paid for what I do.”
Stahl Presses the Pardon Attorney
The Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney was led by Ed Martin, 56, from May 2025 until his resignation in August 2026. The U.S. attorney’s office in Washington had occupied him from January through May of 2025, where he served in an acting capacity in a job he never won Senate confirmation for. On his first day back in office, Trump pardoned about 1,500 January 6 defendants, and a few hundred further grants have since been added to the Justice Department’s public clemency list.
Stahl walked Martin through a series of cases. Trevor Milton, an electric vehicle company founder, had donated $2 million to Trump’s re-election campaign. The founder of the Binance cryptocurrency exchange saw his clemency granted after he helped the Trump family move into cryptocurrency. And Paul Walczak, a healthcare executive, pleaded guilty to tax crimes, his clemency following his mother’s $1 million payment for a seat at a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser.
In a voiceover during the September 13 broadcast, Stahl reported that roughly 70 percent of the clemencies Trump has granted in his second term bypassed the Justice Department, a figure rising to 92 percent when his January 6 pardons are included. Asked about the pardon seekers who still use the traditional department route — “Is that a fair system?” — Martin replied, “I reject your characterization of the system.” He added: “I’ve not seen it. I’ve not heard it. I sat with a thousand people in the last year in my office, and I listened to them tell—some of them ended up with clemency, some of them were pardoned.”
“A pardon seeker going to Mar-a-Lago and joining in a fundraising event where you had to pay money and then getting a pardon, why isn’t that a quid pro quo?” Stahl asked Martin. “Why isn’t that pay to play?”
“I don’t know about those examples, but I would just say the prerogative, again the presidential prerogative, that it’s in the Constitution. It’s complete. It’s plenary,” Martin replied. He continued: “When people say, ‘It’s brokers, there’s quid pro quo,’ I’ve never seen it. I haven’t seen it, haven’t heard it.”
“Ed, the point is they’re going around you. And they’re bragging about going around you,” Stahl said.
“I just don’t see any evidence of some magical brokers. I think people are trying to make money,” Martin said.
“So are you saying that these brokers, they’re con men?” Stahl asked. “They’re snake oil salesmen, they’re swamp salesmen. What word do you want?” Martin answered.
To end the segment, Stahl read out a White House statement: “Anyone spending money to lobby for pardons is foolishly wasting their money.” It added: “President Trump performs his constitutional duties in an ethically sound manner, and to suggest so otherwise is either ill-informed or malicious.”
A Premiere Under New Management
Paramount chief executive David Ellison took over the company and, roughly a year ago, CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss was installed; she now oversees the broadcast. Reporting on the transition says three longtime “60 Minutes” correspondents — Sharyn Alfonsi, Cecilia Vega and Scott Pelley — departed after Weiss’ arrival, and that at least two segments critical of the Trump administration were stalled by leadership last season. A photo caption in that reporting states that Weiss fired the three correspondents and the show’s executive producer in May. Running the broadcast now is Nick Bilton, a screenwriter and documentary filmmaker with no prior work in television news, who took over as executive producer from Tanya Simon.
Last year Paramount paid Trump $16 million to settle his lawsuit over a “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, a dispute during which CBS News President Wendy McMahon resigned. None of the show’s off-season upheaval got so much as a mention across the rest of the premiere, which paired a Jon Wertheim piece on the Los Angeles Rams and their coach, Sean McVay, with an interview by Norah O’Donnell. Her subject was the U.S. Air Force officer whose F-15E was shot down over Iran; he spent two days on the ground there before he was rescued.
