NC official who wore FBI wire to catch billionaire urges Trump not to pardon him

North Carolina Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey urged President Donald Trump on Tuesday not to pardon Durham billionaire and major GOP campaign donor Greg Lindberg, who was convicted in a federal case connected to an attempted bribe of the commissioner.

Lindberg was twice convicted in connection with a bribery scheme in North Carolina and is being held in a Gastonia jail while awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty in a related case to conspiracy to commit offenses against the United States and conspiracy to commit money laundering, The News & Observer previously reported.

Causey, a Republican, played a key role in the investigation. In 2018, he wore a wire for the FBI that helped document Lindberg offering him millions of dollars to fire a state insurance regulator who had raised concerns about Lindberg’s business practices, The N&O reported.

Earlier this year, Lindberg sought a pardon from Trump. In late October, he hired a lobbying firm with ties to the former administration, including Keith Schiller — one of the firm’s leaders who previously worked as Trump’s bodyguard and later served as a deputy assistant and director of Oval Office operations during Trump’s first term — to lobby on his behalf for clemency.

“Mr. Lindberg’s criminal conduct was not incidental, technical, or victimless,” Causey wrote in a letter on Tuesday.

“It was deliberate, sustained, and directly aimed at corrupting a state regulatory system charged with protecting the public in order to enrich himself,” Causey wrote. “During an 18 months-long investigation conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mr. Lindberg was lawfully recorded on a wire attempting to bribe me, in my official capacity as North Carolina Commissioner of Insurance, to remove a senior department official who had identified and exposed serious financial improprieties within Mr. Lindberg’s insurance enterprises,” he wrote.

“The evidence presented was not speculative. It was contemporaneously recorded, exhaustively investigated, and ultimately proven in federal court. Mr. Lindberg’s actions were a calculated attempt to undermine regulatory oversight, evade accountability, and silence those whose duty it was to safeguard policyholders, retirees, and working families,” he wrote.

U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican who announced earlier this year that he would not seek reelection after breaking with Trump over cuts to Medicaid, said on X that he “fully” agreed with Causey.

“There should be no pardon given the troubling nature of this crime and all the evidence that supported the conviction,” he wrote.

Former North Carolina Republican Party chairman Robin Hayes was also sentenced in connection with the bribery scheme and charged with making false statements to the FBI. He received a pardon from Trump in 2021.

This story was originally published December 23, 2025 at 1:22 PM with the headline "NC official who wore FBI wire to catch billionaire urges Trump not to pardon him."

Luciana Perez Uribe Guinassi

The News & Observer

Luciana Perez Uribe Guinassi is a politics reporter for the News & Observer. She reports on health care, including mental health and Medicaid expansion, hurricane recovery efforts and lobbying. Luciana previously worked as a Roy W. Howard Fellow at Searchlight New Mexico, an investigative news organization.