Jonathan Braun, whose sentence was commuted by Trump, sentenced to prison for violating terms of release

Jonathan Braun, the Lawrence man whose 10-year federal drug smuggling and money laundering sentence was commuted by President Donald Trump, will be spending most of the next two years in prison for violating the terms of his post-release supervision, a judge decided on Monday.

U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto sentenced Braun to 27 months behind bars for committing a series of misdemeanor and felony physical and sexual assaults and other infractions in Nassau County over the last two years, counter to his agreement with federal probation authorities.

Braun, 42, has been held in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn for the last eight months, which will count as time served on his sentence.

Federal prosecutors had asked Matsumoto to sentence him to 5 years in prison after the judge found Braun had violated the terms of his probation through acts that included groping his live-in nanny, and threatening and menacing an emergency room nurse and a parishioner at his synagogue. He also failed to pay more than $75,000 of a $100,000 fine from his first conviction, the judge found, and allegedly dodged tolls on the Atlantic Beach Bridge at least 40 times in his white Lamborghini and red Ferrari.

Kathryn Wozencroft, his public defense attorney, said an attention deficit disorder and heavy use of the synthetic hallucinogenic drug 2CB produced Braun's "psychotic bipolar behavior" over a two-year period. 

She asked Matsumoto to sentence her client to time served with a mandatory drug treatment program. She noted he had become sober behind bars.

Braun, who wore prison scrubs and a yarmulke for the first time since being rearrested, apologized to his family and his victims.

"I was unable to stop using," he told the court. "I was a maniac. ... I’m embarrassed for what I did. I own up to it."

The most severe offense happened over Valentine’s Day weekend when he sexually assaulted his live-in nanny. She testified, under the pseudonym Dannelle, that Braun, an observant Jew, came into her room under the ruse that he needed her to plug in his phone because he was observing Shabbat. He pulled her down on her bed, put her in a chokehold and groped her, trying to convince her to have sex with him. He also placed her hand on his genital area  before she was able to get away.

She testified that she was worried he was going to kill her, based on his violent outbursts she had witnessed while working for him.

Dannelle, who addressed the court before sentencing via speakerphone, said she had trouble finding work in the community after the attack.

"This experience left me with lasting trust issues," she said. "I am fortunate that through this process, I have prevented another nanny from going through this."

Matsumoto found Braun had menaced an emergency room nurse with an IV pole, threatening to kill her in a fit of rage because he didn’t believe the staff was attending to him quickly enough.

In another violation, he grabbed Edward Miller, who shushed him in his synagogue, by the arm, evoked the angel of death and said, "Do you know who I am? Do you know what I could have done to you?"

Miller said that, as a lawyer, he had represented families with relatives behind bars and though he is angry, urged the judge for a nonincarceration punishment.

"As a victim, I want to see Mr. Braun rehabilitated," Miller said. "This man got a pardon from the president of the United States and he went out and blew it. That makes me angrier, but I have to overcome my anger and do the right thing."

Braun had originally pleaded guilty in 2018 to operating a $6 million-a-week marijuana smuggling business across the Canadian border. After serving a little over a year in federal prison, Trump commuted his sentence.

After Braun was released from prison in January 2021, he worked for a small business loan company, which the state attorney general and the Federal Trade Commission found to be issuing extortionate loans. He settled with authorities for $20 million and a federal judge issued an injunction against him. Federal prosecutors charged that he continues to loan money.