Trump pardoned six people prosecuted for Clean Air Act 'defeat device' emissions violations

On July 3, 2026, President Donald Trump announced pardons for six people who had been prosecuted for tampering with vehicle air-pollution controls — so-called "defeat devices" — in violation of the Clean Air Act. Trump described the prosecutions as an act of "weaponization and stupidity" by federal prosecutors, framing the defendants as people wrongly punished for "fixing their car." The White House did not release a list of those pardoned; a lawyer, Stewart Cables, and a lobbyist, Jeff Daugherty, who represent five of the six, identified their clients to CBS News as Ryan and Wade Lalone, Matt Geouge, Tim Clancy, and Mac Spurlock.

The pardons followed an organized advocacy campaign on the defendants' behalf. They also came after the Justice Department earlier in 2026 ordered federal prosecutors to drop all pending prosecutions and investigations involving aftermarket defeat devices, which disable emissions-control equipment, and after Trump last fall granted clemency to Troy Lake, a Wyoming mechanic who had served seven months in prison for disabling pollution controls on diesel engines.

The Clean Air Act is the principal federal statute governing vehicle emissions, and prosecutions under it are brought to enforce limits Congress set to protect public health. In granting the pardons, the president adopted the advocates' framing of the cases as political persecution rather than addressing the underlying conduct; one representative said Trump "is the only president who would have taken an interest in these parties" because "he's the only president to face such ferocious weaponization himself." The clemency parallels the administration's earlier pardon of former Rep. Stephen Buyer, likewise granted through an organized campaign that recast a criminal case as "lawfare."