North Carolina’s insurance commissioner has heard nothing from the W
hite 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 victi
mless. It was deliberate, sustained, and directly aimed at corrupting a state regulatory system charged with protecting the pu
blic in order to enrich himself,” reads the letter from Commissioner Mike Causey, who wore a wire and recorded a conversati
on 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 Republican
s, 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 o
n 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.
Causey
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 Trum
See more beautiful photo albums Here >>>
p’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 ar
rests 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 proo
f 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. Lindber
g’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 who
se 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 re
rves 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.