SEC dismissed civil fraud cases against Trump clemency recipients Devon Archer and Carlos Watson

On September 18, 2025, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission moved to dismiss — with prejudice, by separate joint stipulations filed the same day — its civil fraud enforcement actions against Devon Archer and against Ozy Media, Inc. and its founder Carlos Watson. Both men had previously received clemency from President Trump for related criminal fraud convictions. Archer's civil action was tied to about $60 million diverted from bonds issued by the Oglala Sioux Nation's Wakpamni Lake Community Corporation; Watson's case involved roughly $37 million connected to defrauding Ozy Media investors.

The Commission offered no public explanation for either dismissal. The stipulation in Archer's case said only that the SEC had "exercised its discretion" and that the dismissal "does not necessarily reflect the Commission's position on any other case." The dismissals came a week after the SEC had separately dropped a similar civil case against Nikola founder Trevor Milton on September 11, 2025, following his own March 2025 pardon — a pattern of the agency declining to pursue recovery from Trump clemency recipients.

University of Minnesota law professor Richard Painter said of the pattern, "This is political, and the SEC doesn't want to piss off the president." Former U.S. Pardon Attorney Liz Oyer noted that the pardons themselves shifted the burden of civil recovery onto agencies like the SEC — which then declined to pursue it.