Left: Culpeper County, Virginia, Sheriff Scott Howard Jenkins (Culpeper County Sheriff’s Office). Right: President Donald Trump speaks during the 157th National Memorial Day Observance at Arlington National Cemetery, Monday, May 26, 2025, in Arlington, Va. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
President Donald Trump has pardoned a beleaguered Virginia sheriff convicted of bribery and fraud, arguing he was actually a “victim.”
In December, Culpeper County Sheriff Scott Howard Jenkins was convicted of one count of conspiracy, four counts of honest services fraud, and seven counts of bribery regarding programs receiving federal funds. He was set to report for 10 years in jail on Tuesday — until the president intervened on his behalf.
“Sheriff Scott Jenkins, his wife Patricia, and their family have been dragged through HELL by a Corrupt and Weaponized Biden DOJ,” Trump wrote on social media, repeating a hefty accusation against former President Joe Biden and his dissolved administration — an accusation Biden, those close to him, and ex-Attorney General Merrick Garland have steadfastly denied.
In his Monday Truth Social post, Trump claimed Jenkins tried to offer vindicating evidence during his trial last year but that U.S. District Judge Robert Ballou of the Western District of Virginia denied him from doing so. The president argued that federal and state courts across the country have acted in a similar manner, continuing his verbal assault on judges — many of whom have denied him from enacting core elements of his executive agenda.
“This Sheriff is a victim of an overzealous Biden Department of Justice, and doesn’t deserve to spend a single day in jail,” Trump wrote of Jenkins. “He is a wonderful person, who was persecuted by the Radical Left ‘monsters,’ and ‘left for dead.””
“This is why I, as President of the United States, see fit to end his unfair sentence, and grant Sheriff Jenkins a FULL and Unconditional Pardon. He will NOT be going to jail tomorrow, but instead will have a wonderful and productive life,” the president concluded.
Law&Crime reached out to Ballou, a Biden appointee, for comment on the accusation.
Jenkins was convicted of accepting more than $75,000 in bribes in exchange for appointing several Northern Virginia businessmen as “auxiliary deputy sheriffs within his department,” the Justice Department wrote in March following the ex-sheriff’s sentencing hearing. He took bribes from at least eight people, according to evidence produced at trial, including two undercover FBI agents. Three other men pled guilty “for their roles in the conspiracy.”
The former sheriff of Culpeper County, which lies about 60 miles southwest of Washington, D.C., also “pressured” local officials to restore the right of Rick Rahim, a convicted felon and one of the alleged coconspirators, to possess a firearm, “falsely” stating that Rahim lived in Culpeper County, according to the DOJ.
“Scott Jenkins violated his oath of office and the faith the citizens of Culpeper County placed in him when he engaged in a cash-for-badges scheme,” Zachery T. Lee, the acting United States attorney for the Western District of Virginia, said in March. He assumed the role last December.
Jenkins, who lost his 2023 bid for re-election as the criminal charges loomed, has been a supporter of Trump for years. On the first day in office of his second term, the president also pardoned roughly 1,500 people convicted of crimes relating to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
