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A nonprofit watchdog legal group has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) alleging that a billionaire whom President Donald Trump pardoned made illegal straw donations to a Trump-aligned super PAC
The complaint filed earlier this week by the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) requests the FEC to open an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding donations to a group called MAGA Inc. It also alleges that the donations were made for the sole purpose of obtaining a pardon from Trump.
Venezuelan billionaire Julio Herrera Velutini was indicted in 2022 for violating federal bribery laws related to illegal donations he made to a candidate in Puerto Rico’s gubernatorial elections. After Trump won the 2024 presidential election, Velutini’s daughter, Isabela Herrera, began making donations to MAGA Inc.
The complaint notes that “making large donations to Trump’s political network, which includes
MAGA Inc. as his primary super PAC, has become a well-documented tactic for those
seeking to obtain benefits, including favorable treatment by others facing civil and
criminal enforcement for illegal activity, from the Trump administration.”
Notably, Velutini, a Venezuelan national, cannot legally make political donations like these himself. And the 25-year-old Herrera, whose donations totaled around $3.5 million from December 2024 to July 2025, is not independently wealthy, the complaint stated.
Herrera “lack[ed] the financial means” to make such donations, and didn’t seem to demonstrate any “interest in electoral politics to suddenly contribute millions of dollars to a super PAC,” according to the complaint from CLC. Indeed, her only other donation to a political cause, prior to December 2024, was $20 to Pete Buttigieg in 2020.
The timing and circumstances surrounding the contributions, and the fact that Herrera appears to lack the financial means or any demonstrated interest in electoral politics to suddenly contribute millions of dollars to a super PAC, provide reason to believe that Herrera was not the true contributor, and that the money instead was provided by her billionaire father, whose freedom appeared to hinge on the contributions—but who, as a foreign national, could not legally make the contributions himself.
The complaint claims that the donations sought to curry favor with Trump in order to elicit a pardon for Velutini, as other “ultrawealthy” contributors to Trump or his allied groups have done before.
And that’s exactly what happened. Herrera’s last donation was made in July 2025. In August, the Department of Justice (DOJ) presented Velutini with a plea bargain deal, and in January, Trump issued him “a full and unconditional pardon.”
In a Bluesky thread sharing a link to the complaint, CLC reiterated the need for an inquiry.
“The sequence of events before and after the daughter’s contributions strongly suggest that she was an illegal ‘straw donor’ used by her father to secure political favor and, consequently, clemency from the Trump administration,” CLC wrote in the social media post. “If so, billionaire Julio Herrera Velutini broke more than the laws meant to keep election spending transparent and voters informed: He also illegally sought to influence American politics as a foreign national.”
The complaint doesn’t allege Trump engaged in any illegal action. As president, the U.S. Constitution gives Trump unrestricted power to pardon anyone, save for individuals facing impeachment, without any oversight whatsoever.
However, an inquiry into Velutini’s and Herrera’s donation scheme could uncover potential problems for Trump still if evidence shows that he issued the pardon because of the money that was given to MAGA Inc. While not technically illegal, it could still be deemed an impeachable offense by Congress.
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