A Utah music producer and a state representative who were involved in high-profile criminal cases were pardoned in a series of concessions by President Donald Trump.
The president pardoned 15 people on Tuesday and commuted the sentences of five, including a pair of congressional Republicans, a 2016 campaign official involved in the Russia investigation and former government contractors convicted in a 2007 Baghdad massacre.
State Representative Phil Lyman was serving as Utah County Commissioner in 2014 when he led about 50 ATV drivers in a protest at Native American cliff dwellings that officials closed to motorized traffic.
The trip occurred in the midst of a movement in the west rejecting federal control of large tracts of land and came in the wake of an armed confrontation that Cliven Bundy had with the Bureau of Land Management over fees.
Lyman spent 10 days in prison and was ordered to pay nearly $ 96,000 in restitution. In 2017, the Trump administration lifted the ban on motor vehicles on parts of the canyon. But he left restrictions in place through other areas where Lyman directed his journey.
“The false narratives in the media have been so damaging, not just to me but to the truth,” Lyman wrote on Facebook after receiving clemency. “I am deeply grateful to President Donald Trump. Today he corrected a mistake ”.
Trump also granted a full pardon to Weldon Angelos, a music producer who was sentenced to 55 years in federal prison for selling marijuana and a conviction for possession of weapons under mandatory minimum sentence laws. Former President Barack Obama commuted Angelos’s sentence in 2016 after more than a decade behind bars.
“Everything is erased now,” Angelos told The Salt Lake Tribune. “I don’t get the time and money back, but I’m a whole person again. I am not a criminal. I no longer have to check that box on a job application. “
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