North Carolina’s insurance commissioner says the White House hasn’t responded, three weeks after he urged the president to reject a pardon for twice-convicted insurance entrepreneur Greg Lindberg.
In a letter to President Donald Trump, Commissioner Mike Causey argued Lindberg’s conduct went far beyond technical violations. He described it as deliberate and sustained, aimed at corrupting a state regulatory system designed to protect the public, and to enrich one person.
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 himselfMike Causey, Insurance Commissioner
Causey’s view carries weight. He wore a wire, recorded a conversation, and that evidence helped secure Lindberg’s bribery conviction in 2020 and again after a retrial in 2024.
According to the North Carolina Department of Insurance, both US senators from the state, Thom Tillis and Ted Budd, agree a pardon would be a mistake.
Until recently, a pardon wasn’t top of mind for most state officials. That changed as Trump issued pardons at a rapid pace, clearing convictions for a former Illinois governor, a former Tennessee state senator, a Virginia sheriff convicted of taking bribes, the former president of Honduras convicted of drug trafficking, and even a co-defendant tied to Lindberg’s case. The pattern shifted expectations.
Lindberg, once a major Republican donor and a reported billionaire, has fought his criminal cases and insurance entanglements in court for years.
He’s also pushed hard outside the courtroom. In October, news reports said he hired Trump’s former bodyguard to lobby for a pardon. The message wasn’t subtle.
Trump has blamed what he calls partisan overreach by his predecessor’s Justice Department for more than 1,600 convictions and arrests he has reversed since returning to office. Causey, a Republican and former insurance agent, rejects that framing in Lindberg’s case.
He said the prosecutions rested on recorded evidence, financial records, and testimony that held up in federal court.
In his letter, Causey wrote that the proof wasn’t speculative. Investigators documented it as it happened, prosecutors built it piece by piece, and juries convicted.
The evidence presented was not speculative. It was contemporaneously recorded, exhaustively investigated, and ultimately proven in federal court.
He said Lindberg tried to undermine regulatory oversight, dodge accountability, and intimidate officials tasked with protecting policyholders, retirees, and working families.
