Trump commutes first prison sentence

(Image credit: Pool/Getty Images)

On Wednesday, President Trump issued his first prison sentence commutation.

Trump commuted the sentence of Sholom Rubashkin, 57, a former Iowa kosher slaughterhouse executive who was sentenced in 2009 to 27 years for bank fraud and money laundering. The White House released a statement saying Democrats and Republicans, including Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), supported the commutation.

This is not a presidential pardon, and the conviction has not been vacated. Rubashkin, a father of 10 from Brooklyn, will be under supervised release and still must pay restitution. His Agriprocessors plant in Postville, Iowa, was raided in May 2008, and U.S. Immigration and Customs agents arrested almost 400 undocumented immigrants; prosecutors later accused Rubashkin of falsifying documents to continue borrowing on a $35 million line of credit.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.