CINCINNATI — Former Cincinnati City Councilman Jeff Pastor is seeking a presidential pardon to allow him to restart his professional life and possibly resume a political career after his arrest for public corruption five years ago.
Since leaving prison in December 2024, Pastor has led a private life with his wife, Tara, and six children.
I've been covering Pastor since his election in 2017. He spoke to me in his first public interview since his release.
“America is built on redemption stories,” Pastor said. “It seems to me that America doesn’t need a perfect leader; they just need a leader who has been humble and been through the fire. Don’t focus on a person’s ashes; focus on what they’ve done.”
Watch our interview with Pastor here:
Pastor won the ninth and final council seat by just 223 votes, winning the election to the city council on his first try as a Republican in a city that was becoming increasingly progressive even back in 2017.
Pastor said FBI agents began targeting him at City Hall shortly after he took office.
“Just elected, and you’re being pulled into a trap, and you’re made to seem like a villain, you’re made to seem evil or that you were already corrupt. It’s the furthest from the truth,” Pastor said.
A federal grand jury charged him with taking $55,000 in bribes. Then U.S. Attorney David DeVillers said the indictment was “indicative of a culture of corruption, a culture of extortion, a culture of pay-to-play,” which Pastor still disputes.
Undercover FBI agents descended on City Hall in 2018 and 2019, posing as wealthy out-of-town developers. By 2020, the FBI had arrested three council members, or one-third of the city council, in separate corruption schemes.
A judge sentenced Pastor to two years in prison.
Pastor served 10 months at the minimum-security prison camp at Ashland in Eastern Kentucky, followed by four months in a Cincinnati halfway house before his release from federal custody in April 2025.
Two former colleagues also served prison time. Former council member Tamaya Dennard pleaded guilty to honest services wire fraud and served roughly a year of her 18-month sentence.
Former council member P.G. Sittenfeld maintained his innocence, but a jury convicted him of bribery and attempted extortion in June 2022. A judge sentenced him to 16 months in prison.
“P.G. Sittenfeld, this politician, he became human for me and taught me how to be human,” Pastor said. “To see this man reading his Bible, and giving sermons, and helping people.”
President Donald Trump signed a full and unconditional pardon of Sittenfeld in May 2025.
Now, Pastor is hoping for his own pardon because “everyone deserves mercy.”
This is an excerpt from his Oct. 30 interview. Answers were shortened for brevity.
Q: How are you feeling right now?
A: I’m happy to be in the free world, happy to be redeemed, if you will … It’s been five or six years, but for me it feels like yesterday … I’m glad that I’ve been able to go through the fire and not come out bitter, but better and that’s important. This is about redemption, and it’s about resilience, and responsibility … I feel really good about my wife and my children and being able to be home with them and be a dad.
Q: Why did you want to run for Cincinnati City Council in 2017?
A: When you are driven by purpose, when you are driven by the desire to help others, you become unrelenting. I began running in 2014, if you recall, with this little placard that said Jeff Pastor and I started going to the community council meetings and to the local clubs and doing that for three years.
Q: Here are some of the things I wrote about you in 2017. ‘You knew from memory the poverty rates of many neighborhoods. You were an avid reader, a fiscal conservative, a free-market capitalist who believed in market-rate housing. Your biggest goal was to reduce poverty in the city.’ Does that take you back?
A: Absolutely. It’s almost as if I never left. … Just coming back through the city, you see that there is this air, this spirit of sadness, and gloom and doom and poverty. … And our city seems to be caught up in its own drama, ignoring the very people that I still have passion for, the working class, the working poor.
Q: When you came home from prison, when did you notice that things weren’t quite as good as you remembered them?
A: My son, who attends Walnut Hills High School, was getting prepared for his homecoming dance. And we went to Eden Park, the overlook. When I went there (he saw litter and lack of maintenance)… it was almost as if all of the hard work that we put into keeping Cincinnati beautiful … to make sure that our city is clean … I saw what felt like all of the hard work that we put in from 2017 until 2022, just went down the drain. I don’t know why it affected me that way, but it did.
Q: Did it make you want back in?
A: Absolutely, it felt as if there was no leadership in the city of Cincinnati … you’ve got folks on TV being bullied and beaten up. You’ve got the crime rate. You’ve got these children who are being shot dead. It’s just like everything has run amok … If I wouldn’t have left, if I wasn’t caught up in the FBI sting or the FBI trap, I’m positive that this wouldn’t have happened.
Q: Did you know the FBI was investigating City Hall?
A: I did not know that the FBI was investigating City Hall. I did, however, have my suspicions with the FBI agent that I was working with, so much so that I even asked him pointedly, ‘This feels almost as if you guys are the feds.’ Quite frankly, no one, and I hate to be so straightforward, no one is coming to give you $10,000, do you know what I mean, just because they think you’re a great person. For me, I was under the impression that I was being hired to do work after having lost my job, my private sector job. I was looking to be hired so … hindsight is always 20-20 … and I probably would have done things a little bit differently.
Q: Do you feel like there was some entrapment in that investigation?
A: Of course it was. I didn’t go seeking these FBI agents or their confidential informants. … Hearing yourself on the wire being straightforward and a straight shooter, and knowing that these extraordinarily professionally trained lawyers on both sides can take what you say and flip it. I was putting myself in a situation where it’s me versus the United States government, and in that match-up, I am not going to win.
Q: Why did you plead guilty?
A: I pleaded guilty for several reasons. Number one is, you have to take responsibility … No matter what my story was … It doesn’t matter that these folks came and entrapped me, it doesn’t matter that I voted against their projects, the fact is that I got caught up in that situation … and it was time to take the plea deal and put it behind for my family, and the city.
Q: What was it like when you got to the prison camp?
A: There was a level of education that most of the people had. So, I wasn’t worried about the violence. I was more concerned about my wife and children, my mother, and my siblings. Being away from them, that became real. That was what was playing in my mind, over and over again. Now I have to wait until certain hours of the day, with only 15 minutes, to go call my wife and children … That was the most heartbreaking, humiliating, if you will, aspect of my first day in federal prison camp.
Q: How often were you able to see them?
A: I saw my wife and children three times. And the third time I said, "Please don’t come back." Whew, I’m sorry. (He began to cry) I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I wasn’t expecting that. You don’t like it when they have to leave.
Q: Is it because it’s too painful?
A: It’s way too painful. It’s not something I wish on anyone … You want the visits, but then that hurts worse, so I would rather, “Let’s just let me get through this without you coming because you have to go back” … my wife brought all of my children down for Father’s Day, and that broke me. It just absolutely broke me. (He did not see his family again until his release six months later)
Q: What was your prison routine like?
A: I went to bed at 9 o’clock … I started working out twice, sometimes three times a day. Eating correctly. Reading. Improving my French. I found God. As you recall, I had a stretch of atheism. But I was always spiritual. But here, when I say I found God, I found a spiritual connection I would say … I had an encounter that I felt like started that redemptive process.
Q: Can you describe it?
A: There was this one particular brother, and he said something like, “I wish I had your mother, and I wish I had the wife and the children that you have.” And there was another brother who was doing 30 years, and he’s happy every day … When you ask these people “What is it,” they start talking about their encounter with their spiritual practice … They asked me, “When was the last time you meditated, or you prayed?” I couldn't answer that question. And these brothers who are doing real time or had done real time, they’re asking me, a person who has 24 months, “Do you think your wife and children and the people who still support you out there, do you think that they want somebody who is bitter?” … That started my redemptive process.
Q: P.G. Sittenfeld was there when you arrived?
A: Correct. He was going through the appeals process. Hurt by being away from his family. And I saw that man was cheerful every day. This is not something that I’m saying because the cameras are here. This is the truth, and that should be said. When you get there (prison), there are no lies. You are stripped of everything. Popularity. Who you are. None of that matters there. So, he didn’t need to be cheerful. He didn’t need to be happy. He didn’t need to lead Bible studies and all these other things.
Q: Can you tell me about the time you spent with P.G. while you were in prison?
A: He would run to keep himself healthy … On this one particular day, he asked, “Hey, let’s walk and talk.” He said, “I never really got to know you. I just want to get to know you, I just want to talk to you.” … And we walked the compound. He asked about my wife, and he asked about my children, and I’m not ashamed to say that those moments when you’re in hell together. I don’t think you can ever go back and look at the person the same … he became human for me, and he taught me how to be human.
Q: In a phone call with your wife, you learned that P.G. would be released from prison pending his appeal. What was it like when you told him that?
A: He’s in his pod. I said, “Hey, did you hear?” And he said, “Hear what?” I said, “Man, they are about to kick you out of here.” And he said, and I quote, “You wouldn’t play with me like that?” … He walked up and called his wife, and he came back and cried. I’ll never forget it … To see this six-foot-two man just break down into tears. He was happy, and I was happy for him.
Q: Did you say goodbye to P.G.?
A: Yes. Absolutely. It was sad … It was like losing an anchor, if you will. I’m not ashamed to admit that I cried on his shoulder one time because of news I was getting at home. Things that were just outside of my control. He sat there and listened. It wasn’t just him helping me; it was like kinship … you bond over trauma.
Q: When you left prison, what was that like walking out of there?
A: Paula, I cried ... Because of the people I was leaving behind. Don’t get me wrong, I missed my family, I didn’t want to stay … but then the brotherhood that you built with people who I felt like still shouldn’t be there.
Q: What is your life like now?
A: It’s interesting because I see the need to get back out there. The people who have influenced me at the prison, at the halfway house. They’re amongst us, they’re out there. There are people who are never going to go to prison, but they are living similar lives in terms of being in poverty. They don’t make enough money to qualify for a decent two-bedroom apartment … somebody needs to speak for them.
Q: What’s your opinion of the current Cincinnati City Council and the administration?
A: Collectively, it’s not a good mix. I’m pretty sure that people would be a little more vocal about the crime, a little more vocal about the incompetency amongst some of their colleagues. Because they are all from the same party, they are pulling from the same sources … It’s just that everybody is trying to be liked, one wants to get out there and be bold … Being able to work across the aisle because a lot of major decisions (during his tenure) were 5-4 votes. So, you had to compromise. Now you don’t have to compromise … This is a crisis in leadership.
Q: Why do you want the pardon?
A: Everyone deserves mercy. A pardon is not an entitlement. A pardon is mercy and reform in action.
Q: But you’d like to come back to politics, and you need a pardon to be able to be elected again?
A: If you want to run in state and local politics, for sure. Because of the Ohio Revised Code. You would need a presidential pardon.
Q: Would you like to run for Cincinnati City Council again?
A: If the opportunity presented itself, absolutely. There is a part of me … that feels like it was ripped away.
Q: If you get the pardon … what do you say to people who say I couldn’t vote for him because he pleaded guilty?
A: Don’t judge me by my ashes, judge me by my fruit … From 18 to 36, I’ve never been in trouble with the law. I get on council, and I get caught up in a trap. I take full responsibility, plead guilty. I own it … There were people who were embroiled in scandal and decided to wear wires on their fellow man, for the right or for the wrong. Not Jeff Pastor.
Q: If you had to pick your perfect Cincinnati City Council, who would be on it?
A: I would definitely have John Cranley back as mayor … And you can’t go wrong with (the council elected in) 2017, you can’t … but when I say 2017, let me be very specific. It would be like-minded individuals. They don’t have to be the same individuals. You need a David Mann today. You need a John Cranley today. You need a Christopher Smitherman today. You need a Tamaya Dennard.
Q: But in fairness, the U.S. Attorney’s office said there was a culture of corruption.
A: That they created … I respectfully disagree with the U.S. Attorney’s office that there was a culture of corruption. If there was a culture of corruption, you wouldn’t need to create anything.
Q: What would you do if you were back on City Council?
A: They were crying about affordable housing, now you’ve got nine members of council and a mayor of the same party, and we’re still talking about affordable housing. You'd better get that done. Because you were accusing me and other pro-development individuals of not being for affordable housing. You’re not doing anything now … If you don’t clean up the parks and you don’t clean up the streets, what is going to attract the very tax base that you need? … I turn on the news every day, and I see a poor soul who is meeting an untimely death … and you can bet your last dollar it has to be poverty-driven. If we deconcentrate poverty, I guarantee you crime will go down.
Q: What are you doing now for work, and what would you like to do?
A: I would like to do something along the same lines. Right now, it’s just making it here and there. A pardon would certainly help … right now, I just prepare myself, so it’s just preparation until something opens up.
Q: The fifth anniversary of your arrest is on Nov. 10. How are you going to feel on that day?
A: I want the people to understand that this is behind us. This is five years ago. They moved on … I, too, have now moved on … from being bitter to being better.
