President Trump signed pardons for two Alaska diesel mechanics in the middle of a campaign rally in Wasilla on Tuesday night and brought both men onstage to collect them. Zachary Czubak and Patrick Fleming had pleaded guilty in 2022 to conspiracy to violate the Clean Air Act.
Trump told the crowd that each man was getting an unconditional pardon. He cast the case as an example of how the Biden-era Justice Department "viciously targeted the Alaskan way of life" and said it had wanted "to put them in jail for 10 years because they fixed an engine." He also argued that their work had helped keep trucks running in Alaska's extreme cold.
According to court records cited by CBS News, Czubak, Fleming and a third man, Michael Hanzuk, owned Arm Rippin Toys, an Anchorage shop that specialized in diesel vehicles. The Justice Department's account of the case says the co-owners admitted removing required pollution controls and tampering with monitoring devices on at least 37 private and commercial diesel vehicles between July 2019 and September 2020. Prosecutors said the shop charged customers $1,140 to $5,445 to remove a vehicle's emission controls and took in about $100,000 for the work.
CBS News reported that each of the three received five years of probation, $66,000 in fines and community service.
Fleming told the crowd that the case "really did destroy us," adding that it had destroyed friendships and families. "We're not criminals. We're not trying to hurt anybody," he said, according to the Post. "We want to help Alaskans." As the men left the stage, Trump called the charges "crazy" and told them, "Enjoy your lives, fellas."
The pardons add to a string of clemency grants in Clean Air Act cases. Hanzuk was among those pardoned on Sept. 3, the Justice Department's pardon office records show. At the rally, Trump also pointed to his earlier pardon of Mackenzie Spurlock, a Wasilla diesel shop owner whom the office lists among 17 pardons issued on July 3; Spurlock had been sentenced in December 2025 to five years of probation and a $32,000 fine for tampering with a Clean Air Act monitoring device. The office's roster, last updated Sept. 9, shows more than two dozen clemency grants by Trump in Clean Air Act cases, most of them issued on July 3 and Sept. 3 and three of them in Alaska cases. Czubak and Fleming had not been added to it as of late Tuesday.
The Justice Department has also narrowed its enforcement. In January it said it would "no longer pursue criminal charges under the Clean Air Act based on allegations of tampering with onboard diagnostic devices."
The rally was a midterm event for Sen. Dan Sullivan and Rep. Nick Begich, the Republican incumbents in Alaska's Senate and House races, and was held in part to help Sullivan fend off a challenge from Democrat Mary Peltola. Sullivan celebrated Spurlock's pardon in July. He and other critics of the emissions equipment say it often fails in temperatures below 12 degrees, sometimes leaving a driver with a truck that can go only 5 miles per hour, and he has sponsored a bill that would require the Environmental Protection Agency to rewrite its rule for cold climates.
Federal officials saw the case differently at the time. In a statement on the Arm Rippin Toys charges, they warned that cutting out emissions controls "results in a massive increase in air pollution from even a single vehicle." Anti-pollution advocates oppose weakening the law, which helped reduce smog in American cities. At a March hearing where Sullivan said the Washington lawyers who write the rules do not feel their impact, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said the equipment had dramatically reduced emissions of nitrogen oxides from diesel vehicles, pollution he tied to lung disease, birth defects and cancer, among other illnesses.