The 59th season of “60 Minutes” opened on Sunday, September 13, 2026, with a hidden-camera investigation into the lawyers and lobbyists who promise convicted felons a pardon from President Donald Trump — and with correspondent Lesley Stahl putting the findings to the man who ran the federal pardon office until August.
The segment, titled “The Pardon Economy,” was produced by Shachar Bar-On and Michael Kaplan. Stahl, 84, reported that some brokers charge as much as $3 million to press a client’s case with the president, and that what they do is not illegal — yet none would agree to an interview.
Inside the Hidden-Camera Sting
The broadcast turned to Ammon Covino, a pardon seeker who served 23 months after a 2013 conviction for illegal wildlife trafficking. He first tried the conventional route, filling out the Justice Department’s three-page application, and was rejected. He then emailed a dozen brokers. Lobbyists Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl, whom Stahl described as self-styled pardon brokers, wrote back within seven minutes.
Covino and his wife, Crystal Covino, met the pair in a Virginia hotel lounge while “60 Minutes” cameras recorded the conversation. The quoted price was $300,000, covering items such as $10,000 fundraiser tickets and introductions to MAGA influencers. “I kept saying ‘This feels illegal,'” Covino told Stahl.
On the recording, Burkman outlined a pressure campaign designed to wear the president down until he signed. The two men were criminally convicted over a 2020 robocall operation aimed at suppressing Black votes. They claim they won clemency for the owner of a nursing home chain convicted of massive tax fraud, who they say paid them nearly $1 million.
The Rapper Who Says He Paid $600,000
Rapper Boosie Badazz told Stahl he handed the pair $600,000 and never got a pardon. “This is what I was led to believe: If you come with this money, you will get a pardon,” he said. His contract let him request half the money back if no pardon materialized; Burkman and Wohl say he never signed it. He said he asked for the money back and got nowhere. “Just return it. You didn’t give me my pardon,” he recalled telling them. “It’s a bunch of BS. And they were so cocky.”
He showed Stahl a text message in which the pair claimed to be recruiting people in Trump’s orbit — Erika Kirk, whose name was misspelled in the message, Laura Loomer, House Speaker Mike Johnson and White House aide Natalie Harp — all four of whom denied any involvement.
Confronted by “60 Minutes,” Wohl said: “There’s nothing corrupt about it. There’s nothing improper about it.” Stahl put it to them plainly: “It seems that you have to have money to get a pardon these days.” Burkman answered: “We don’t work for free any more than you do, right? You’re well-paid for what you do. We’re well-paid for what I do.”
Stahl Presses the Pardon Attorney
Ed Martin, 56, ran the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney from May 2025 until he quit in August 2026. Before that, he spent January through May of 2025 leading the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington in an acting capacity, a job he never won Senate confirmation for. Trump pardoned about 1,500 January 6 defendants on his first day back in office, and the Justice Department’s public clemency list has grown by a few hundred further grants since.
Stahl pointed to the pardons of Trevor Milton, an electric vehicle company founder who had donated $2 million to Trump’s re-election campaign; the founder of the Binance cryptocurrency exchange, granted after he helped the Trump family move into cryptocurrency; and Paul Walczak, a healthcare executive who pleaded guilty to tax crimes and whose clemency followed his mother’s $1 million payment for a seat at a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser.
“A pardon seeker going to Mar-a-Lago and joining in a fundraising event where you had to pay money and then getting a pardon, why isn’t that a quid pro quo?” Stahl asked Martin. “Why isn’t that pay to play?”
“I don’t know about those examples, but I would just say the prerogative, again the presidential prerogative, that it’s in the Constitution. It’s complete. It’s plenary,” Martin replied. He continued: “When people say, ‘It’s brokers, there’s quid pro quo,’ I’ve never seen it. I haven’t seen it, haven’t heard it.”
“Ed, the point is they’re going around you. And they’re bragging about going around you,” Stahl said.
“I just don’t see any evidence of some magical brokers. I think people are trying to make money,” Martin said.
“So are you saying that these brokers, they’re con men?” Stahl asked. “They’re snake oil salesmen, they’re swamp salesmen. What word do you want?” Martin answered.
Stahl closed the segment by reading a White House statement: “Anyone spending money to lobby for pardons is foolishly wasting their money.” It added: “President Trump performs his constitutional duties in an ethically sound manner, and to suggest so otherwise is either ill-informed or malicious.”
A Premiere Under New Management
The broadcast aired under CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, installed roughly a year ago after Paramount chief executive David Ellison took over the company. Reporting on the transition says Weiss’ arrival was followed by the exit of three longtime “60 Minutes” correspondents — Sharyn Alfonsi, Cecilia Vega and Scott Pelley — and that leadership stalled at least two segments critical of the Trump administration last season. Running the broadcast now is Nick Bilton, a screenwriter and documentary filmmaker who replaced Tanya Simon as executive producer and who had not worked in television news before.
Paramount paid Trump $16 million last year to settle his lawsuit over a “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, a dispute during which CBS News President Wendy McMahon resigned. The rest of the premiere — a Jon Wertheim piece on the Los Angeles Rams and their coach, Sean McVay, along with Norah O’Donnell’s interview with the U.S. Air Force officer whose F-15E was shot down over Iran, and who spent two days on the ground there before he was rescued — came and went without any acknowledgment of the show’s off-season upheaval.