Dear John,

Five people did real harm. All five walked free — thanks to Donald Trump.

Source: Daniel Torok

The rioter convicted of assaulting a Capitol Police Officer so badly it ended his 17-year career — sentenced to seven years, pardoned.

The Virginia sheriff convicted of selling badges for $75,000 in bribes — 10 years, pardoned hours before he was due to report to prison. Even Virginia's Republican attorney general objected to that one.

The truck-company founder who towed a non-working truck to the top of a hill, filmed it rolling down, and sold investors their savings on the lie that it ran — pardoned before he paid back a cent of the $660 million he owed them.

The nursing home boss convicted of raiding more than $7 million from his own employees' paychecks to buy a yacht — pardoned weeks after his mother attended a $1-million-a-head dinner at Mar-a-Lago.

The congressman convicted of defrauding his own donors and stealing identities to do it — sentence cut short, the $374,000 George Santos owed his victims erased.

Notice who's missing from every story? The victims. Nobody made them whole.

One congressional analysis estimated that Trump's pardons and commutations have let recipients skip more than $1.3 billion in restitution and fines owed to victims and taxpayers — money those victims will never see.

But here's what they don't want you thinking about: a presidential pardon only covers federal crimes. Donald Trump can't pardon state crimes.

This week in the New York Times, law professor Tim Wu made the point plainly: states are their own sovereigns, and a federal pardon can't stop them from enforcing their own laws. He pointed to a nursing home fraudster Trump pardoned federally — whom Arkansas's Republican attorney general then made serve state time and pay restitution on a separate state case anyway. Where Washington walks away, states can still hold the line.

That's why state courts matter so much right now. The rule of law doesn't live in a building in Washington — it lives in every county courthouse, in every prosecutor who treats people equally, with no exceptions for the powerful and no special deals for the connected.

That's what this campaign is all about.

So here's what we're asking. If you believe the law should mean the same thing for everybody — the police officer, the worker, the small investor, and yes, the powerful and the well-connected too — then stand with us today. Chip in $25 and help us take this fight to every doorstep in Wake County.

Thanks so much,

Team Wiley

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Sources: Capitol officer's attacker (CBS News; DOJ press release removed by Trump DOJ) · Virginia sheriff (CBS News; Virginia Mercury) · truck-company fraud (CNBC; Washington Post) · nursing home executive (Skilled Nursing News; New York Times) · congressman (NPR; NBC News) · $1.3 billion figure (CBS News) · state prosecution argument (Tim Wu, New York Times, June 15, 2026).