Washington DC - President Donald Trump has pardoned Trevor Milton, the founder of electric truck company Nikola, who was convicted of defrauding investors, the White House said on Friday.

Milton (42) was convicted by a federal jury in 2022 on charges related to misleading investors about his company's zero-emissions truck technology.

"The greatest comeback story in America is about to happen," Milton said in a social media video posted on Thursday after getting the news from Trump.

Trump defended the pardon on Friday, saying Milton was unfairly prosecuted and that pardoning him was "highly recommended."

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"They destroyed five years of his life, and he did nothing wrong," Trump said from the Oval Office.

According to the Wall Street Journal, campaign finance records show Milton and his wife donated more than $1.8 million to a Trump fundraising committee in October.

The pardon comes as Nikola, which Milton founded in 2015 and took public in 2020, filed for bankruptcy last month after struggling to convince the trucking industry to adopt its technology.

The Securities and Exchange Commission's separate civil case against Milton remains active.

This pardon follows others issued by Trump in recent days, including for Devon Archer, a former business associate of Hunter Biden, the son of the former president, and Ross Ulbricht, founder of the Silk Road dark web marketplace.