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A convicted drug dealer who had been granted clemency by Donald Trump was sent back to federal prison on Monday for violating the terms of his release after being charged with several new crimes.
Jonathan Braun was sentenced to 27 months behind bars.
The Long Island man had been accused of swinging an IV pole at a hospital nurse and threatening to kill her, screaming at a member of his synagogue, groping his family’s nanny and evading bridge tolls.
Brooklyn federal Judge Kiyo Matsumoto said she hoped Braun’s “expressions of remorse” and promises to “lead a law abiding life” were in good faith, noting that many of the people who he had harmed have since forgiven him.
“Don’t squander it,” she said to Braun.
Prosecutors had sought a five-year sentence, the maximum punishment allowed, arguing that a lengthy stint behind bars was “necessary to protect the public from further crimes.
“The defendant’s brazen and violent conduct caused fear and terror in his victims,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing ahead of his sentencing. Braun, they said, has continued to show that he is a “serious danger to the community”.
Braun has been locked up at a federal jail in Brooklyn since his arrest in April for violating the terms of his release. That time will be subtracted from his sentence.
Braun was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison in 2019 after pleading guilty to drug-related charges. He served about a year behind bars before the US president commuted his sentence in the final days of his first term in January 2021.
Braun was freed from prison, but the rest of his sentence remained intact, including requirements that he pay a fine and stay out of trouble.
