Trump granted onstage pardons in Wasilla to two Alaska auto shop owners prosecuted under the Clean Air Act, men he said were wrongly charged by Biden-era prosecutors.
President Trump called Zachary Czubak and Patrick Fleming onto the stage at a pre-midterm election rally in Wasilla, Alaska, late Tuesday, signed their pardons at the podium, and handed the papers to them in front of the crowd.
CBS News reported that the two men, co-owners of the diesel shop Arm Rippin Toys, had pleaded guilty in 2022 to conspiracy to violate the Clean Air Act and received five years of probation, $66,000 in fines, and community service each.
Trump told the audience the pair had been “wrongly charged” and cast the case as an example of the Biden-era Justice Department having “viciously targeted the Alaskan way of life.”
He ordered an aide to bring the documents forward with a simple command: “Bring me the pardons!” Then he signed them on the spot and held one up for the crowd to see.
Czubak and Fleming briefly addressed the rally after receiving the pardons. Fleming did not say much about the damage.
Fleming said the charges “really did destroy us.”
"We're not criminals. We're not trying to hurt anybody,"
he told the crowd. He added that they want to help Alaskans and people with diesel trucks “across the world.”
Federal prosecutors had alleged the shop offered to remove emission control systems from customers’ vehicles for fees ranging from $1,140 to $5,445. That work, prosecutors said, involved modifying physical components and blocking diagnostic systems from flagging a problem, which caused vehicles to release more pollutants.
A third co-owner, Michael Hanzuk, received a pardon last month. Trump told the Wasilla crowd he was “taking care of” a third person as well.
At the podium, Trump mocked the idea that engine work should land people in long prison terms.
"Think of it: They want to put them in jail for 10 years because they fixed an engine. How sick?"
He drew a sharper contrast on crime priorities.
"Now if you murder somebody, no problem. Unless a Republican does the murdering. Then it's, you know, the electric chair, right?"
He also reached for a familiar phrase about the effect of a presidential pardon, then undercut it with a joke.
"When you give somebody a pardon, they say that means, and I don't know how this works and why it's an expression, but it's well-used, that means you're as clean as a newborn baby's a**. I never understood that. Why is that so clean?"
The line drew the crowd in. The underlying point was plain: these men were done paying for a case Trump called illegitimate.
The Wasilla pardons fit a pattern. Earlier this year Trump pardoned Mac Spurlock, a diesel mechanic charged with violating the Clean Air Act by removing pollution control systems. Spurlock and his supporters have argued such modifications can be necessary in Alaska’s frigid weather.
Sen. Dan Sullivan, the Alaska Republican, applauded Spurlock’s pardon in July and called the charges the work of “overzealous federal prosecutors.” Sullivan has also argued that EPA rules should account for cold-weather states. Tuesday’s rally was held in part to help Sullivan fend off a challenge from Democrat Mary Peltola.
Under the Biden administration, officials took a harder line. Former EPA special agent in charge Scot Adair said enforcers would “hold accountable those who jeopardize human health and the environment for the sake of profit.” The administration warned that cutting out emissions controls “results in a massive increase in air pollution from even a single vehicle.”
In January the Justice Department announced it would “no longer pursue criminal charges under the Clean Air Act based on allegations of tampering with onboard diagnostic devices.”
That shift came after the Arm Rippin Toys owners had already pleaded guilty, paid fines, and served probation terms. Trump’s pardons closed the book on the remaining consequences for Czubak, Fleming, and Hanzuk.
The same administration has moved to relax fuel economy standards and end an EPA policy that gave credits to car manufacturers for installing start-stop emissions systems. The direction is clear: less criminalization of technical work on diesel vehicles, especially in places where extreme cold is a daily fact of life.
Czubak, Fleming, and Hanzuk owned a shop that specialized in diesel vehicles. Prosecutors treated emission-control removal as a federal crime worth conspiracy charges. The men took pleas, paid $66,000 apiece, and lived under five-year probation terms. Trump decided that outcome was unjust and used the pardon power in public, on stage, in Alaska.
When federal prosecutors turn wrench work into felony cases, working people pay first, and a president willing to reverse it on the spot is doing the job voters hired him to do.
