Kwame Kilpatrick: I went to ‘work’ to elect Trump after he ‘promised’ a pardon

• Ex-Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick said Donald Trump promised to pardon him before he campaigned for Trump in 2024
• Trump commuted Kilpatrick’s 28-year corruption sentence in 2021 but he still owes more than $800,000 in restitution
• A pardon would remove Kilpatrick’s obligation to pay the debt; Kilpatrick says there is no ‘quid pro quo’

Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick said he campaigned “all over the country” for Donald Trump last year after the Republican presidential nominee promised to pardon him during a meeting at his Mar-a-Lago estate, according to a voicemail obtained by Bridge Michigan. 

“He promised that in his first month in office that he would give me a pardon,” Kilpatrick said this spring in a message left with state Rep. Karen Whitsett. She did not provide the audio to Bridge but confirmed its authenticity.

“I told him that I'd go to work, and I did,” Kilpatrick added, referring to Trump. 

Kilpatrick, who cut a pro-Trump radio ad for the Michigan Republican Party in September, said he spoke for Trump multiple times last fall in Detroit, Philadelphia and Georgia, and helped to arrange Detroit events for the president. 

Trump in 2021 commuted Kilpatrick’s 28-year federal prison sentence for corruption convictions stemming from a bid-rigging scheme while he was mayor of Detroit. 

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A full pardon, however, could allow Kilpatrick to avoid paying off the $831,000 in restitution he still owed as of last fall. 

“The pardon would cure everything,” Kilpatrick told Whitsett in the voicemail, suggesting he was still “getting killed” in federal court by prosecutors intent on making him pay his debts. 

“I'm not a beggar. I'm not a bitchy guy. … I just want my work to speak for itself.”

Speaking to Bridge on Friday, Kilpatrick initially denied knowledge of the voicemail. Upon hearing it, he confirmed its substance and said it’s a “heck of a message.”

He said the Mar-a-Lago discussion with Trump “wasn’t a quid pro quo.”

“I worked for President Trump, not for a pardon, and not because I got a commutation,” Kilpatrick told Bridge by phone. “I thought he was the right person for the job, and I still do.”

Kilpatrick had called Whitsett this spring after Trump failed to pardon him during the first month of his term in the hopes the lawmaker could vouch for him with the president. 

Whitsett, who was instrumental in helping secure Kilpatrick's commutation in 2021, told Bridge she regularly speaks with Trump.

“I expect to be speaking to him” soon, she said. 

When she next speaks with Trump, Whitsett said she wants to discuss SNAP benefits, after-school programs and ensuring funding continues for free meals in schools and to tout the state’s proposed public safety trust fund.

The prospect for a pardon for Kilpatrick, however, didn’t make the list.

“Right now, the priority for me is Detroit and these programs,” said Whitsett, who is a Democrat. 

The White House did not immediately return a request for comment Friday on the prospect of a pardon for Kilpatrick. Trump is returning to Michigan on Tuesday for a rally in Macomb County. 

Whitsett has advocated for Kilpatrick before. In announcing Trump’s commutation in 2020, the White House said the move was "strongly supported by prominent members of the Detroit community," including Whitsett.

Trump later told her she was the reason Kilpatrick was released in 2020, Whitsett told Bridge, saying the president had previously declined a commutation after the US Department of Justice recommended against it. 

“That was the conversation that we had,” she said of her previous talk with the president. “He was like, ‘No, I'm not doing anything else other than this, and I'm only doing this for you.’”

Kilpatrick resigned as mayor of Detroit in 2008 amid a corruption probe. 

Subsequent indictments saw Kilpatrick sentenced in 2013 to 28 years in federal prison, convicted of 24 federal felony counts including extortion, mail fraud, wire fraud and racketeering. 

While Trump’s commutation released Kilpatrick from prison, it didn’t free him of his obligation to pay what was once more than $1.7 million in restitution.

As of August, Kilpatrick still owed $831,913, and prosecutors alleged he was falsely claiming to live in Georgia to "delay or frustrate" government collection efforts.

Kilpatrick would not confirm the date of his travel to Mar-a-Lago but said he has since attended Trump’s inauguration and also told Bridge he attended a Black History Month celebration at the White House.

“When I went to the White House, I talked to the president and told him that, if you never did anything else for me, he's done enough,” Kilpatrick said. 

The former Democrat came out as a Trump supporter last year. 

Among other things, he spoke at an Oakland County Republican Party fundraiser, where he described the contest between Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris as an "election about the survival of the nation."

"When people are set against us in war, it matters that you send the firefighter into the room,” Kilpatrick said.

Audio of his comments later appeared in radio ads that the Michigan Republican Party ran for Trump in Detroit less than two months before the election. 

In the voicemail to Whitsett, Kilpatrick said the ad was played in Atlanta and Pennsylvania, and that he participated in a Philadelphia bus tour to support Trump’s reelection.

Speaking Friday to Bridge, Kilpatrick said he’s “happy” with his life as a pastor and motivational speaker but would welcome a pardon. 

“I would love to have that entire stigma taken away from me, absolutely, and I would welcome it and be very thankful, just like I was before,” Kilpatrick said.