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 Clean Air Act doesn't actually have criminally enforceable language, only civil enforcement options.

Applying criminal penalties from the part of the Clean Air Act that regulates power plants and other stationary sources to mobile sources like diesel trucks was a "creative reinterpretation of the statute," said Justin Savage, a former DOJ environmental trial attorney now at Sidley Austin.

"It's one thing to say, 'You shouldn't have been doing this, pay a large fine, you're going to be enjoined,'" Savage said of civil enforcement penalties at a recent Federalist Society event. "It's another thing to say, 'You're going to go to a federal correctional institute, sometimes for real time, you're going to lose your right to vote, your right to a firearm, maybe [be] debanked,' because of an interpretation of the Clean Air Act that, frankly, a lot of people who practice the Clean Air Act were not aware of."

The Biden administration said the anti-defeat device initiative was successful enough in raising awareness of their illegality that EPA in 2023 moved to end the initiative, although the agency could still bring cases when appropriate. An inspector general report that year found the initiative had led to $33 million in penalties and had curbed over a half-million tons of nitrogen oxides, a precursor to smog emitted by diesel engines.

Even though it was the first Trump administration that launched the enforcement initiative, some Republicans are up in arms about Clean Air Act prosecutions amid broader claims that the Biden administration "weaponized" the government against Trump and his allies.

To that end, Lummis last fall introduced legislation that would expunge the records of anyone convicted of tampering with emissions control and monitoring devices and prohibit EPA from requiring any pollution controls on vehicles. That would mark a sharp U-turn after decades of rules that led to cleaner air across the country.

Lummis' bill hasn't gotten any traction, but Republicans in Congress have focused recently on more targeted diesel engine issues amid complaints that malfunctions with the emissions control and monitoring systems force trucks and agricultural equipment to either lose power or shut down.

Shifting gears

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has moved to end tampering prosecutions.

In November, DOJ dropped charges against a mechanic named Levi Krech that had been filed just months earlier in July.

Cables, Krech's attorney, teamed up with Daugherty to convince the interim U.S. attorney for Wyoming, Darin Smith, that the tampering charges were inappropriate.

In January, John and Josh Owens, a father and son, signed with Daugherty to help with pending charges alleging they and various co-defendants smuggled tens of millions of dollars' worth of defeat devices into the U.S. from Canada. When a customer in 2023 threatened to report them, Josh Owens allegedly replied by email, "You'll be the guy we serve up on a silver platter to the EPA if it comes down to that," according to their 2024 indictment.

DOJ dropped the Owens' case in February, although they are appealing to have it dismissed "with prejudice," meaning the charges could never be refiled.

Around that time, Todd Blanche, then the deputy attorney general and Trump's recent attorney general nominee, ended all criminal prosecution related to defeat devices, which had remained ongoing to some extent even after Trump resumed power. Blanche wrote that he agreed with the legal theory that defeat devices can only be prosecuted civilly, not criminally.

But that does nothing for people already convicted of Clean Air Act crimes.

LaLone said it seemed nobody cared about his situation, until suddenly Lake received a presidential pardon last fall.

"When Troy got his pardon, I was like, holy smokes," LaLone said. "I said to Troy, 'Who the heck did you talk to? No one wants to listen.'"

Lake referred LaLone to Daugherty and Cables, but the duo said they won't take just any client.

"A couple of them have been stinkers, and we've taken a pass on those," Daugherty said.

Cables clarified that they want to represent those they feel were "treated unfairly by the Department of Justice, not people who made $15 million and they just don't want a felony because it's going to affect their ability to travel internationally."

In recent months, Daugherty and Cables have taken on nine clients, including LaLone and his brother, Wade, who was caught up in the case as an employee.

Matt Geouge of North Carolina was sentenced to one year and one day in prison in 2022 for selling over 14,000 defeat devices, along with a $1.3 million penalty to EPA and $1.2 million in restitution to the IRS for a tax evasion charge.

EPA had issued Geouge a notice of violation in 2015 but said he continued to sell the devices.

Cables argued the tax conviction only came about because Geouge ran out of money defending himself against the Clean Air Act charges.

Another client, Mackenzie "Mac" Spurlock of Alaska, was charged with tampering with nine trucks between 2020 and 2022 and pleaded guilty last June to violating the Clean Air Act. He was sentenced in December to five years' probation and a $32,000 fine.

Spurlock wants a pardon so he can reenlist in the Air Force, where he used to be an airplane mechanic, according to Daugherty. His conviction prohibits military service.

And Tim Clancy of Oregon pleaded guilty in 2024 to charges of tampering with at least 13 semitrailers operated by his company, Clancy Logistics. He was sentenced to three years' probation and a fine just over $100,000.

"Because the fact pattern of these other cases are well aligned to Troy Lake's, I hope in reliance on inductive reasoning that the future will resemble the past and that the president will take an interest," Daugherty said.

LaLone said he is also maintaining a positive outlook. "I feel like [Trump]'ll look at this and go, 'Oh my gosh, yeah, this was totally wrong,'" he said.

Jonesi, the former EPA enforcement official, disputed that the government would bring these criminal charges lightly.

"They understand that just even bringing a criminal charge is a taint, even if you lose, so they're very careful about that, and it's only for the worst actors," Jonesi said. "I think EPA is more likely to go after the person who's facilitating this for a lot of vehicles rather than Joe's Auto Garage who did it once."

Critics of the Clean Air Act criminal prosecutions, however, argue that civil penalties, which can rack up significant fines quickly, are severe enough to keep tampering at bay.

"I just think that this shift from criminal to civil doesn't necessarily handicap the agency, it just uses a different tool to get compliance," Granta Nakayama, who ran EPA's enforcement office under George W. Bush and is now a partner at King & Spalding, said at the recent Federalist Society event. "One that arguably is faster, more efficient, and could conceivably produce, I think, more effective results."

Still, tampering remains a widespread enough problem that EPA is developing new modeling so states can take pollution from illegal tampering into account in their regulatory compliance plans.

Meanwhile, Daugherty has started expanding beyond diesel trucks with his newest client, John Rimmasch of Wyoming.

A jury in April 2022 found Rimmasch guilty of five counts of wire fraud and one count of exposing workers to asbestos, a hazardous air pollutant under the Clean Air Act. He and his company contracted with the National Park Service to restore a historic railcar and allegedly invoiced the agency for asbestos abatement it did not conduct. Rimmasch was sentenced to 30 months in prison and was released after serving about 18 months.

Cables described Rimmasch as "a great guy, heart of gold," while also admitting he was "technically guilty" of submitting incorrect invoices to the NPS. But Cables also argued the dispute should have been resolved through civil enforcement or a lawsuit alleging breach of contract.

"Instead they raided his shop, they interviewed all of his employees, they said he was a bad guy, they said that he endangered all of his employees," Cables said. "He did not have the criminal intent to break the law and commit a felony."

Rimmasch declined to comment for this story.

Kevin Bogardus contributed to this story.