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Meet the Clean Air Act pardon crusaders Troy Lake offered a stunning confession during dinner with his new neighbor, Wyoming political consultant Jeff Daugherty: Lake would soon report to a federal prison.Daugherty was stunned again when he learned Lake’s crime was conspiring to violate the Clean Air Act, a felony.The Justice Department and EPA said Lake, a mechanic and small business owner, had disabled pollution control monitors on hundreds of commercial diesel trucks.He pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to violate the Clean Air Act and was sentenced to one year and one day in prison — an unusually strong punishment for this type of environmental crime.“I'm not going to lie, it was an emotional dinner,” Daugherty said.“We had just met these people, but already felt this horrible pity for them.” Daugherty, a political consultant and local lobbyist, decided he would get Lake a presidential pardon, despite having no idea how to do that.Cut to last November, when President Donald Trump granted Lake clemency.“In my 39-plus years at EPA, I never heard of a pardon — Clean Air Act or otherwise — for an environmental crime,” said Gary Jonesi, a career enforcement official who started the nonprofit group CREEDemocracy after retiring from EPA last year.That may soon change.A growing list of people convicted for Clean Air Act violations are hoping to replicate Lake’s success, with help from Daugherty and Colorado attorney Stewart Cables, arguing they were only trying to help truck owners who couldn’t afford or wait for repairs.“We’re not those people out there blowing black smoke and ruining the environment,” said Ryan LaLone of Gaylord, Michigan, who pleaded guilty in 2013 to deleting emissions control software from hundreds of heavy-duty trucks, including state-owned vehicles.LaLone’s wife drives a Tesla, he added.“I believe there’s people that have violated wrongfully.I know that there is.We’re not one of them.” The campaign lands squarely at the intersection of two of Washington’s most partisan issues, the alleged “weaponization” of the federal government against political adversaries and air pollution policy.Trump, especially in his second term, has stood out for the number and frequency of pardons issued, with allegations that some intermediaries are charging significant sums for access to influential officials.Daugherty handled Lake’s case for free and said he charges his other clients a discounted rate, sometimes “huge.” (Lobbying disclosures so far show he’s made at least $50,000 from his pardon advocacy.) Since January 2025, 96 percent of Trump's pardons have gone to people who didn't meet longstanding Justice Department guidelines for clemency, up from 14 percent in his first term (and just 1 percent under Joe Biden), according to a new Reuters analysis.Working the phones Daugherty and Cables — who have teamed up to handle the lobbying and legal sides, respectively, of these pardon applications — say they’re optimistic that they can get Trump to pardon more Clean Air Act felons.“What the pardon office and [U.S.Pardon Attorney] Ed Martin want to know is whether there's Americans out there who have been subject to criminal enforcement cases and felony cases, when they didn't really know that what they were doing could be considered a crime, and they don't have the means to defend themselves,” said Cables.After his dinner with Lake, Daugherty began working the phones.He talked with Cyrus Western, the head of EPA's Rocky Mountain region; state legislators in Cheyenne; Republican Sen.Cynthia Lummis; and even “diesel influencers” on social media (“Troy had an army of mullets behind him,” Daugherty joked.) Lake and his wife had a relationship with two veterans who knew EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin from his time as an Army officer, "so they made phone calls on behalf of the Lakes, and within a half an hour we had an appointment with Sean Hayes," the deputy White House counsel who works closely on pardons, Daugherty said.Things were quiet for a while, and then last November, without warning, Daugherty got a call from Lummis’ office confirming Lake had been pardoned.They went to a celebratory dinner at the Little Bear Inn in Cheyenne, where Lake’s son used Daugherty's pocket knife to slice off his ankle monitor.The tracking agency called immediately, Daugherty said, and Lake explained the president had just pardoned him.“They expressed the same astonishment and congratulated him, but said, ‘We need to hear it from someone but you,’ so we put them in touch with the proper authorities, and it was really magical,” Daugherty said.(Lake unsuccessfully tried to purchase the severed monitor to keep as a trophy.) Lake’s story apparently resonated with the president.Speaking last week at an agricultural roundtable in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, Trump recounted Lake’s case — or at least his own version of it.“I gave him a pardon because he had to go to jail because he was fixing his tractor or his truck,” Trump told his host at the Wisconsin event, farmer Ken Custer.“So I promise, Ken, if you ever get caught fixing your tractor or truck, I will give you a pardon, OK?” (It was one year and over 300 commercial trucks.) Trump in February also pardoned Elite Diesel Service, Lake's company, which had been sentenced to five years' probation and $50,000 in fines."The president is interested in providing relief to hardworking American truckers that were persecuted by the Biden regime for fixing engines ruined by Democrat policies," a White House official commented for this story."But as always, the president is the final decision-maker on any clemency-related actions to give second chances to deserving candidates." Pardons in the pipeline More clemency could be coming soon, with Trump reportedly considering issuing 250 pardons to commemorate the nation's semiquincentennial this summer.It’s unclear whether that will actually happen or whether any of those may be additional Clean Air Act convicts.There are many still hoping for help from Trump, including LaLone.He and his company Diesel Freak were charged with felonies for reprogramming the environmental controls on vehicles, a process known as "deletion." LaLone was sentenced in 2024 to a year’s probation, and his business paid a $750,000 fine.LaLone said he felt "blindsided" by the criminal charges and told POLITICO that many of the vehicles in question were owned by the Michigan Department of Transportation or local counties and were brought to him because emissions control systems don't do well in the cold.Diesel engines are designed to limit their power or even shut down altogether if sensors believe the emissions control systems have failed, leaving trucks out of order at crucial times, LaLone argued, echoing longtime complaints from many truckers, farmers and Republican lawmakers.Federal agents and prosecutors didn't want to hear it, LaLone said, and his attorney advised against fighting back, leading to his guilty plea."It’s like I was convicted of murder, but I never pulled the trigger, you know?That’s how I feel," LaLone said.From fines to felonies Criminal enforcement against individuals for tampering with vehicle emissions control systems is a relatively new phenomenon.EPA’s concern about emissions tampering increased significantly after the blockbuster Volkswagen diesel cheating scandal of 2015.After targeting several other major automakers found cheating on emissions systems in their new vehicles, EPA turned its eye toward aftermarket “defeat devices,” deletions and other efforts to tamper with emissions control hardware or software, either to bypass operating restrictions or just to increase the engine’s power.In 2019 — during Trump’s first term — EPA added defeat devices to its list of enforcement priorities.That led to more cases against individuals and auto shops charged with tampering, though critics are now arguing that the mobile source section of the Cle