Former television news host and Ozy Media founder Carlos Watson was arrested two years ago on federal securities fraud charges.

Yet despite being found guilty, President Donald Trump just intervened to spare the longtime Democrat from prison. 

Company closed down in the wake of claims that it had lied about viewership

According to the Daily Mail, Watson had been scheduled to report to prison this past Friday and begin serving a 10-year sentence.

However, an unnamed senior White House official confirmed to the paper that the president commuted his sentence just hours before he was to go behind bars.

The Daily Mail recalled how Watson founded Ozy Media in 2012 on a promise to examine politics while focusing on minority perspectives.

The company revealed in 2021 that it was closing its doors, with the announcement coming just days after a New York Times column accused it of inflating viewership numbers and potentially fraudulent activities.

U.S. attorney called Watson "a con man who told lie upon lie upon lie"

Prosecutors reiterated those claims at his trial, alleging that an Ozy Media cofounder misrepresented himself as a YouTube executive while on a telephone call with investors.

Then Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Breon Peace led the charge in going after Watson and subsequently touted his successful prosecution.

The Daily Mail quoted Peace as saying that jurors correctly recognized Watson as "a con man who told lie upon lie upon lie to deceive investors into buying stock in his company."

The then-U.S. Attorney went on to insist that Ozy Media ultimately "collapsed under the weight of Watson's dishonest schemes."

Trump has recently given out a series of pardons and commutations

For his part, Watson characterized the trial as an example of "selective prosecution" which amounted to nothing less than "a modern lynching." The Daily Mail pointed out that both Watson and Peace are African American.

"I made mistakes. I’m very, very sorry that people are hurt, myself included, but I don't think it's fair," the defendant said of his verdict.

Meanwhile, the New York Post reported that Watson's commutation is only the latest in a series of similar actions which Trump has taken in recent months.

The president previously pardoned Trevor Milton after he was found to have fraudulently exaggerated the potential of his electric vehicle company Nikola. What's more, He also pardoned three individuals convicted of using the cryptocurrency exchange BITMEX to violate anti-money laundering laws.