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DS as president, one page both sides, 9 x 13.5, April 29, 1946. President Truman issues a pardon to “Carlo M. Flumiani, an alien who was convicted in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York on an indictment…charging violation of Section 338, Title 18…on December fifteenth, 1941, [and] was sentenced to imprisonment for eighteen months and to pay a fine of Twenty-five hundred dollars.” The reverse reads: “I, Harry S. Truman, President of the United States of America, in consideration of the premises, divers other good and sufficient reasons me thereunto moving, do hereby grant unto the said Carlo M. Flumiani a full and unconditional pardon.” Signed at the conclusion by President Truman and countersigned by acting Attorney General J. Howard McGrath, who was later appointed as Truman’s third Attorney General. The red seal affixed to the left side remains fully intact. In very good to fine condition, with light soiling, creasing, and intersecting folds.
Carlo M. Flumiani, who was convicted of mail fraud in connection with an early ‘vanity publishing scheme,’ had established several publishing houses that drew naïve wannabe authors into a scheme of having them pay a hefty amount towards book publishing. Most of the books had very small runs, and most were sold back to the same ‘authors’ who paid the printing costs. Among the witnesses at his trial was Pulitzer Prize winner Sinclair Lewis.
Flumiani was a colorful figure who made and lost a fortune in the stock market crash and then rebuilt his fortune through publishing his own works and swindling many others along the way. Truman’s pardon indicates he served his 18-month sentence and paid his $2,500 fine but was ultimately pardoned to avoid deportation.
Presidential pardons are desirable and quite scarce, with this being the first Truman example that we have offered in five years. This one is all the more interesting due to Flumiani’s notoriety, his publicized trial, and the connection to early vanity press publishing.
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