# Mark Rossini A former [[FBI]] special agent. He was charged alongside the banker [[Julio Herrera Velutini]] and former Puerto Rico governor [[Wanda Vázquez Garced]] in the 2022 bribery case, and pardoned with them by [[Donald Trump]] in January 2026. The pardon wiped out his second federal criminal case. ## The FBI years Rossini joined the FBI around 1991. Before 9/11 he was one of the Bureau's liaisons to the CIA's bin Laden unit. He has said that in January 2000 a CIA officer stopped him from telling FBI headquarters that two future 9/11 hijackers held US visas. That account comes from his own interviews and later reporting; it is not an official finding. In 2008 he pleaded guilty to unlawfully searching FBI databases. Many of the searches were connected to the Hollywood private investigator Anthony Pellicano, who was then under federal investigation. Rossini resigned and in May 2009 was sentenced to probation, community service and a fine. ## The Puerto Rico case He later worked as a consultant for Herrera Velutini. Prosecutors charged that the two of them promised to fund Vázquez's 2020 campaign if she replaced the regulator examining Herrera Velutini's bank, and then paid more than $300,000 to consultants working for her campaign. Living in Madrid when the charges were announced, he turned himself in on **August 9, 2022** and pleaded not guilty. He pleaded guilty to a single campaign-finance misdemeanor on **August 27, 2025**. Trump pardoned him on **January 15, 2026**. On January 20 he became the first of the three defendants to accept the pardon in court and asked for all charges to be dismissed. See [[Herrera Velutini Pardon]]. ## See also - [[Herrera Velutini Pardon]] · [[Julio Herrera Velutini]] · [[Wanda Vázquez Garced]] - [[Pardons as Currency]]