North Carolina’s insurance commissioner has heard nothing from the White House, three weeks after he sent a letter urging the president to refrain from pardoning twice-convicted insurance entrepreneur Greg Lindberg.
“Mr. Lindberg’s criminal conduct was not incidental, technical, or victimless. It was deliberate, sustained, and directly aimed at corrupting a state regulatory system charged with protecting the public in order to enrich himself,” reads the letter from Commissioner Mike Causey, who wore a wire and recorded a conversation that led to Lindberg’s bribery conviction in 2020 and again in a retrial in 2024.
North Carolina’s U.S. Senators, Thom Tillis and Ted Budd, both Republicans, have agreed with Causey that Lindberg should not be pardoned, said a spokesman for the NC Department of Insurance.
A pardon for Lindberg, a reported billionaire who has engaged in extensive litigation over his criminal charges and intertwined insurance enterprises in the last six years, was not on most North Carolina officials’ radar until recently. President Donald Trump has now pardoned so many convicted felons, including a former Illinois governor, a former Tennessee state senator, a Virginia sheriff convicted of accepting bribes, the former president of Honduras convicted of drug trafficking, as well as a Lindberg co-defendant, that the probability of a free pass for Lindberg now seems more likely.
And Lindberg, once a heavy donor to Republican candidates, has engaged in an extensive public relations and lobbying effort to sway Trump. In October, Lindberg hired Trump’s former bodyguard to lobby for a pardon, according to news reports.
Trump has blamed his predecessor’s Department of Justice, in part, for what he has called overzealous and partisan prosecutions for the more than 1,600 convictions and arrests that Trump has overturned since taking office a year ago. But Causey, a Republican and former insurance agent, said Lindberg’s arrest and trials were based on extensive proof of illegal actions and financial improprieties.
“The evidence presented was not speculative. It was contemporaneously recorded, exhaustively investigated, and ultimately proven in federal court,” Causey’s letter reads. “Mr. Lindberg’s actions were a calculated attempt to undermine regulatory oversight, evade accountability, and silence those whose duty it was to safeguard policyholders, retirees, and working families.”
The harm that Lindberg created for policyholders of his troubled life insurance companies continues to play out, the commissioner noted.
“…The consequences of Mr. Lindberg’s misconduct did not end with his conviction,” the letter explains. “The victims of his illegal activities, including policyholders and employees whose financial security was placed at risk, continue to suffer the repercussions today. These harms are real, ongoing, and irreparable. A pardon would not undo them; it would compound them by signaling that wealth, influence, and persistence can outweigh accountability.”
Lindberg was convicted of attempting to bribe Causey in hopes of removing a DOI official that had exposed Lindberg’s financial regularities, including diverting insurance carrier reserves for his other businesses. An appeals court threw out the conviction due to improper jury instructions, but Lindberg was convicted again in 2024. He has yet to be re-sentenced while courts examine how much in Lindberg may owe in restitution in that and related cases.
In late 2024, Lindberg pleaded guilty to $2 billion in fraud in a related prosecution.
“Clemency is most compelling when it corrects a clear miscarriage of justice or shows mercy where the law has operated too harshly,” Causey’s letter reads. “Neither condition applies here. Mr. Lindberg received due process, extensive judicial review, and every protection afforded under the Constitution. His convictions reflect accountability, not excess.”
The full letter can be seen here.
Related: NC High Court Lets Stand Lindberg’s Civil Fraud Liability
NC High Court Allows Liquidation of Lindberg Insurers; He Owes $524M in Fed Case
Topics North Carolina
