July 4 (UPI) — President Donald Trump pardoned 11 people, including nine Clean Air Act violators, claiming they were just “fixing their car.”

The pardons were mostly for men who were prosecuted under the President Joe Biden administration for using, installing or selling “defeat devices,” software used to bypass emissions controls.

“It is my Great Honor to have just signed Pardons for six people who were persecuted by the Biden Administration, and were in, or being sent to, prison, for ‘fixing their car.’ While I know this sounds ridiculous, it is nevertheless a fact, and part of the Weaponization and Stupidity that our Country had to endure during four long years of Sleepy Joe Biden. I AM SETTING THEM ALL FREE, RIGHT NOW! President DONALD J. TRUMP,” the president posted on Truth Social Friday afternoon.

Lawyer Stewart Cables and lobbyist Jeff Daugherty, who represent five of the defendants, identified them to CBS News. They said Ryan and Wade Lalone, Matt Geouge, Tim Clancy and Mac Spurlock received pardons.

A White House official later confirmed the pardons to CBS News and said that five others had also been pardoned, three for similar pollution violations. Along with those already mentioned, the official identified the others as Joshua Davis, Barry Pierce, Aaron Rudolf, Adam Kidan, Jack Harvard and Jonathan Achtemeier.

“Thanks to God for putting it on Trump’s heart to approve these pardons, and thank God for Donald Trump,” Daugherty told CBS. He said Trump “is the only president who would have taken an interest in these parties, and the reason is he’s the only president to face such ferocious weaponization himself.”

A press release from the Justice Department in February 2025 announced the conviction of Achtemeier, saying “From the comfort of his home, this defendant caused environmental damage across the country, tampering with pollution controls on diesel trucks so that they spewed 30 to 1,200 times the pollutants of a legally configured truck,” Acting U.S. Attorney Teal Luthy Miller said. Miller now works in private practice.

Trump last fall granted clemency to Troy Lake, a Wyoming mechanic who served seven months in prison for violating federal emissions laws for disabling air pollution-control equipment on diesel engines.

In January, the Department of Justice ordered prosecutors to drop all cases and investigations related to the defeat devices.

Two of those pardoned Friday were convicted of crimes not related to pollution.

Jack Harvard was convicted of bank fraud charges in Texas in the 1980s and now runs the Texas Safari Ranch in Clifton, Texas, and Adam Kidan was sentenced to 70 months in prison in 2006. Kidan pleaded guilty to conspiracy and fraud charges related to his attempt, along with lobbyist Jack Abramoff, to purchase a casino for $147.5 million with a counterfeit wire transfer document. Kidan is a donor to Republican campaigns.