President Donald Trump stopped his midterm campaign rally in Wasilla, Alaska, on Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2026, called two diesel shop owners onstage and handed them presidential pardons.
Trump pardoned Zachary Czubak and Patrick Fleming at the Curtis D. Menard Memorial Sports Center, wiping away a 2022 guilty plea in a Clean Air Act case. White House aide Natalie Harp carried the clemency documents to him onstage.
The president signed the papers in front of the audience, and the documents went to the two men, one of whom lifted his toward the crowd. Trump said he was granting unconditional pardons to all three co-owners of the shop.
Trump then turned to the power itself. “When you give somebody a pardon, they say that means — and I don’t know how this works and why it’s an expression, but it’s well-used — that means you’re as clean as a newborn baby’s ass. I never understood that. Why is that so clean?” he said.
Trump said the two men had been wrongly charged, and he accused the Justice Department under former President Joe Biden of going after the way Alaskans live. He told the crowd he had read about the case and looked into it.
“Think of it: They want to put them in jail for 10 years because they fixed an engine. How sick?” the president said.
Both men spoke briefly to the rally. “This means the world to me,” Fleming said. Friendships and families had been wrecked by the prosecution, Czubak told the crowd, and he said the three had wanted to help Alaskans and other drivers of diesel trucks rather than act as criminals.
At Least 37 Vehicles Tampered
Czubak, Fleming and Michael Wayne Hanzuk owned Arm Rippin Toys, Inc., an Anchorage shop specializing in diesel vehicles. A single count of conspiracy to violate the Clean Air Act drew guilty pleas from All three men in 2022.
Fees ranging from $1,140 to $5,445 bought customers the removal of emission control systems, Federal prosecutors said of the shop’s offerings. Workers modified physical components and blocked the vehicles’ diagnostic systems from detecting a problem, prosecutors said, leaving the trucks releasing more pollution.
Emissions monitoring devices on at least 37 vehicles were falsified and tampered with by the co-owners and employees between July 2019 and September 2020, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in 2022. About $100,000 in payments came to the business for that work.
The Justice Department put per-vehicle emissions increases from the removals at about 40 times for particulate matter, about 310 times for nitrogen oxides, about 120 times for carbon monoxide and about 1,100 times for non-methane hydrocarbons. Trump did not mention those figures at the rally.
Defeat equipment produces an enormous jump in air pollution from even a single vehicle, according to a 2022 statement from Scot Adair, then the special agent in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Criminal Investigation Division in Alaska. Anyone endangering health and the environment for profit, he added, would continue to face accountability from the agency and its law enforcement partners.
Czubak and Hanzuk each received five years of probation, a $66,000 fine and 180 hours of community service, according to the Justice Department. Fleming received a $66,000 fine, and none of the men served prison time.
Hanzuk did not need the stage. He had already received a pardon in September 2026.
A Second Alaska Mechanic Pardoned
Trump pointed at the rally to a similar case. He pardoned Mac Spurlock, another Alaska diesel mechanic, in July 2026; prosecutors had charged Spurlock with violating the Clean Air Act by removing pollution control systems. Spurlock and his supporters argued that Alaska’s frigid weather would otherwise cause emissions systems to fail, making the engine modifications necessary.
Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, welcomed that pardon in July 2026. He blamed overzealous federal prosecutors and called for EPA rules adjusted for cold-weather states.
The Justice Department announced in January 2026 that it would end criminal Clean Air Act charges based on allegations of tampering with onboard diagnostic devices. Fuel economy standards have been loosened under the same administration, which also scrapped an EPA policy granting automakers credits for start-stop emissions systems.
Political allies and people who, like him, say they were prosecuted unfairly have repeatedly been the beneficiaries when Trump uses the clemency power.
$5,000 Checks and a Toss-Up
Trump made two other announcements at the same Alaska stop. He said Taiwan would purchase gas from a proposed mega-gas project in Alaska, and he pledged a $5,000 check to every adult American if Republicans hold both chambers on Nov. 3. Independent analysts estimate that proposal would cost more than $1 trillion.
Republicans staged the rally in part to boost Sullivan in his contest with Democratic challenger Mary Peltola and to lift Rep. Nick Begich, R-Alaska, ahead of the Tuesday, Nov. 3, midterm elections.
The state’s ranked-choice voting system drew a repeal push from Trump as well, who told the crowd it was a way for Democrats to cheat. He warned that another candidate named Dan Sullivan, a retired teacher, is on the ballot, and claimed Democrats had put him forward to confuse voters. A 2.5 percent showing in the August Senate primary put that candidate into the general election, and Trump told the crowd that share could decide the race.
The Civiqs rolling state-level tracker put Trump’s net approval in Alaska at roughly minus 16 points in early October, in a state he carried by about 13 points in November 2024. The major political forecasters rate the Senate race between Sullivan and Peltola a toss-up.