Cop Killer Released by Trump Went on to Attack Wife

A convicted murderer whose sentence was commuted by Donald Trump has been convicted in Florida of an attack on his wife.
Trump commuted Jaime A. Davidson’s sentence on January 20, 2021, the former president’s last day in office. That month, Trump issued 143 pardons and commutations, including Davidson’s. This is the second case of domestic violence by someone released by Trump to have emerged in the last week.
In July 2024, Davidson was sentenced to three months in jail for domestic violence, according to court records obtained by the news site Popular Information. Davidson’s reoffending had not been previously reported.
The prosecutor in Davidson’s 1990 conviction, John Duncan, objected after hearing that Davidson was released.
“If you ask me for a list of people who nobody should give a presidential commutation to, Davidson would pretty much be at the top of the list,” Duncan told The New York Times in 2021.
Newsweek reached out to the Trump campaign and Duncan’s attorney via email for comment on Tuesday.
The story was investigated by Popular Information’s editor, Judd Legum.
Davidson was convicted of murdering Wallie Howard Jr., an undercover agent. Howard was shot in Syracuse, New York, and the killer stole $42,000 from him.
Davidson had planned the robbery and given the killer a gun. He was not present when Howard was killed, but prosecutors argued that Howard’s death was a reasonably foreseeable consequence of the robbery.
In 1993, Davidson was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
On March 31, 2023, just over two years after Trump released Davidson, he was charged in Orlando, Florida, with battery by strangulation and domestic violence. Davidson was accused of strangling Nayeli Chang, to whom he had been married for five months.
Chang told a subsequent trial that Davidson “grabbed me by the neck with his left hand and choked me.” She told him to “let me go because I can’t breathe.”
He then grabbed her. Chang told the jury she “felt weak, and my body started feeling cold.” She said she “thought she was going to die” and that “the only thing I could think of was my child who was in the other bedroom.”
Chang later told her that she “couldn’t call the police” because, if she did, she would be deported, and they would take away her son.
Davidson didn’t testify but wrote a 54-page email for the court and the media in which he claimed his innocence and quoted from a White House press release announcing his clemency.
Although Davidson’s murder sentence was commuted, he is still on supervised release, and federal prosecutors have filed a violation of its terms. That means he may have to serve additional time when his domestic violence sentence has finished.
It emerged on August 26 that a convicted loan shark and drug smuggler whose sentence was commuted by Trump was arrested for assaulting his wife and father-in-law.
The father of 41-year-old Jonathan Braun had hired Trump’s impeachment lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, for legal advice on commutation.
Newsweek reached out to Dershowitz and lawyers for Trump and Braun via email for comment on Tuesday.
Braun was released after serving five years of a 13-year sentence for drug importation and money laundering.
Braun has now been indicted in Long Island, New York, for petit larceny, one count of assault with injury on a person 65 years or older and two counts of assault with intent to cause injury in the third degree.
He was previously convicted of money laundering and importing marijuana. The Federal Trade Commission fined him $20 million in February for predatory lending practices.