White House defends releasing jailed executive who defrauded thousands out of $1.6bn

White House defends pardoning exec who defrauded thousands out of $1.6bnSource Reuters

Transcript

00:00Why did the president commute the sentence of David Gentile recently?

00:03He was a private equity executive.

00:05He served 12 days out of a seven-year sentence.

00:08Prosecutors said he defrauded $1.6 billion with thousands of victims,

00:14including veterans, farmers, teachers.

00:17Why was he important?

00:18To your first question, that's definitely not a decision for me to make.

00:21I would defer you to the Department of War.

00:23It's also probably a decision for the president himself to make.

00:26As for your second question, with respect to that pardon,

00:29he issued a commutation for Mr. Gentile,

00:32who's the former CEO and co-founder of GBP Capital Holdings.

00:36Unlike similar companies, GBP paid regular annualized distributions to its investors.

00:42In 2015, GBP disclosed to investors the possibility of using investor capital

00:47to pay some of these distributions rather than funding them from current operations.

00:52Even though this was disclosed to investors,

00:54the Biden Department of Justice claimed it was a Ponzi scheme.

00:57This claim was profoundly undercut by the fact that GBP had explicitly told investors what would happen.

01:03At trial, the government was unable to tie any supposedly fraudulent representations to Mr. Gentile.

01:09In short, again, this is another example that has been brought to the president's attention

01:13of a weaponization of justice from the previous administration,

01:16and therefore he signed this commutation.

01:18I just read you a very detailed summary of why the commutation was made.