Trump Pardons Cheyenne Diesel Delete Mechanic Troy Lake

President Donald Trump pardoned Troy Lake on Friday.

The 65-year-old Wyoming diesel mechanic spent seven months in federal prison for tweaking and removing emissions systems on ailing engines. He was originally sentenced to one year and one day in prison, but was released early to home confinement with an ankle monitor in September.

He and his business Elite Diesel were also fined $52,000.

Though relieved to be free of the dismal prison in which he spent his 40th wedding anniversary and his 65th birthday, Lake said that he believed he’d spend the rest of his life as a convicted felon, unable to vote, hold public office, or possess or hunt with firearms.

Until Friday.

He was standing in his kitchen when he noticed he had a voicemail, Lake told Cowboy State Daily on Friday.

It was from U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis, calling to congratulate Lake on receiving a full, complete, unconditional pardon from the president.

Lummis said she found it shocking the pardon was even needed, in a copy of the voicemail Lake sent Friday to Cowboy State Daily.  

“But I just wanted to call and … let you know how very sorry I am that this even happened to you guys, but how delighted I am that the pardon has come through from President Trump,” said Lummis. “Thank you, take care, and congratulations.”

Lake said he started pacing his family home just outside of Cheyenne, his heart racing.

Then he wept.

“I don’t guess men are supposed to do that,” he said. “But it’s great. It’s news that, you know — I guess I look at it as, there are some good things that happen in the world.”

The First Tears

Meanwhile, Troy’s wife Holly Lake was driving on Interstate 25 south of Cheyenne when she got the call.

She had to pull over to cry.

“These are the first tears I’ve shed over this whole thing since it all started,” Holly told Cowboy State Daily, reflecting on roughly six years of being investigated by the federal government after U.S. Environmental Protection Agency personnel first raided the family’s shop in 2018.  

Holly hadn’t let herself cry because, “I knew we had to get through this,” she said. “I had to be strong for everybody, I guess.”

Troy Lake said the thrilling news makes him want to help others like him.

He said he hopes he can help anyone in the diesel industry or in the government who will listen to find ways to tune trucks for cleaner air — and to spark commonsense reforms to the systems and the laws around them.  

“We need to sit down and think about a more logical way of doing it, not putting people out of work,” he said, referencing the expensive emissions repairs that can cripple small trucking businesses and other diesel fleets.

'Everyday People Won Today'

Troy and Holly Lake in their separate interviews both thanked Trump, Lummis and her team, as well as the advocates who fought for their cause.

Troy said he’s amazed at his wife and family, who fought for a pardon while he was in prison, “helpless” to get word of his own case to the new administration.

Holly said she’s grateful for the numerous Wyoming lawmakers who urged the president to pardon her husband, “and all the people around the country who have backed us up. We found out who our friends are. It’s unbelievable.”

One of those is Jeff Daugherty, a Cheyenne-based political consultant and family friend who took up the Lakes’ cause for free because he saw Troy’s prosecution as unjust.

“Regular, everyday people won today. That feels good,” Daugherty told Cowboy State Daily in a Friday text message.

He added that the pardon is “a testament to the brave people who stayed with Troy,” including Lummis, Wyoming House Speaker Rep. Chip Neiman and the state representatives he rallied, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, and Region 8 Administrator Cyrus Western.  

Neiman told Cowboy State Daily on Friday that he’d like to thank Trump, “for doing the right thing” and standing up for victims of government overreach.

“I appreciate all the efforts on behalf of everybody that was willing to put their name on the line for (Troy),” Neiman added.

Came Out Swinging

Lummis championed Lake’s cause in Washington, D.C.

She was outspoken to Cowboy State Daily about her support for Lake as early as August, when he was still in prison. 

She wrote a letter to Trump in late September urging the president to pardon the Wyomingite. Last month, she unveiled proposed Congressional legislation to free delete mechanics from prison and legalize the practice.

“Calling to tell him tonight that he’d been pardoned by President Trump was a truly joyous moment, and I am grateful to President Trump for standing up for those wronged by the Biden administration’s weaponization against working Americans,” said Lummis in a Friday text statement sent via her senior communications adviser.

That was a reference to the fact that, though the Lakes’ shop was raided by EPA investigators in 2018 under the first Trump administration, the case did not turn into a criminal prosecution until Biden’s presidency.  

She said she’s grateful for the pardon, and said Lake was targeted “simply for keeping diesel engines in school buses, ambulances, and fire trucks running in our tough Western weather.”

This case, said Lummis “is yet another example of how federal agencies have been weaponized by Democrat administrations against hardworking Americans. I’ll continue fighting to ensure this kind of government abuse never happens again.”

When The Engines Guttered

Troy Lake got his first requests to alter diesel emissions controls in about 2007, and continued until about 2020.

That was during an era in which the federal government tilted quietly from imposing civil penalties on diesel “delete” mechanics, to prosecuting them criminally and putting them in prison.

Because Lake was for years the go-to mechanic for desperate diesel drivers and owners — and other mechanics seeking guidance — the U.S. District Court for Colorado and its corresponding federal prosecutor’s district decided to make an example of him, his sentencing transcript says.

He was sentenced Dec. 5, 2024, to one year and one day in prison, and fined.

He reported to prison Feb. 10 and remained at the FCI Florence correctional complex in Colorado most of this year, where he became instrumental to the prison’s diesel shop.

Right Off The Lot

In about 2007, customers started approaching Lake because their trucks had problems “brand new off the lot,” recalled Troy Lake’s son TJ, who was in high school at the time.

That coincided with the EPA tightening emissions standards on heavy diesel trucks in 2004, and again in 2007.

Removing or “deleting” emissions control systems wasn’t Troy Lake’s main business at that time. Not even close. He ran a successful shop with six service trucks and jobs in the gold mining industry, Holly Lake told Cowboy State Daily. 

“But customers of ours, quite a few of them, would buy new trucks every year and start running into those issues — and they’d ask Dad if he could fix it,” said TJ. “And we found a way.”

The culprits at that time were systems in trucks that recirculated exhaust into the engine’s “breathing,” or intake air supply.

They were built to limit exhaust particles. They also slashed engines’ lifespans by feeding them filthy air: “Like you’re breathing in your own fart,” said TJ. 

Troy Lake disabled those systems. 

His ability to do so spread via word of mouth and customers came to him, no advertising needed, TJ recalled. 

In the years that followed, manufacturers started adding diesel particulate filters to meet emissions standards. Then they added selective catalytic reduction filters and called for diesel exhaust fluid (DEF), a chemical treatment, usually urea-based, used to reduce nitrogen oxide output.

As the EPA heightened its emissions restrictions and manufacturers built more complex filtration and recirculation systems around them, Troy Lake’s “deletes” grew more sophisticated too.

Other mechanics had Troy finish their own deletions. They sounded him for help on tricky problems, and they referred their customers to him, court documents say.

It’s Everywhere

Troy Lake was a regional leader for deletions, but the procedure itself is commonplace, even rampant, Troy’s defense attorney Richard Kornfeld said at the sentencing hearing.

That's a notion lifelong trucker Cole Stevens, whose family owns Oklahoma-based Stevens Trucking, noted in his own interview with Cowboy State Daily when the outlet first broke Troy Lake’s story Aug. 2.

Stevens is an industry expert who doesn't know and hasn't worked with Troy Lake.

"Almost everybody I know that’s like a conservative, three-quarter-ton owner deletes their just, regular day-to-day pickup trucks," he said.

But because his business is so high-profile, added Stevens, he doesn't indulge in the practice.

"When the federal government started to regulate all these emissions deals, there’s all these evaporators and all these sensors that are just overkill; it actually makes the engines burn so hot you actually have way more engine problems," he said.

It's tough to tell if the new systems' particulate treatments are worth the damages they've wrought on the industry and the hazards they've caused, he said, because the major manufacturers have sunk billions of dollars into them to appease what Stevens cast as a rushed government pipe dream — "and nobody's doing any tests for non-DEF systems anymore. Nobody's making that argument." 

It Says …

The pardon, which Holly sent Friday to Cowboy State Daily, grants Troy Lake a full and unconditional pardon.

It also pardons Elite Diesel Service, which was criminally prosecuted. The text reads:

“Be it known, that this day, I, Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, Pursuant to my powers under Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 of the Constitution, Have Granted not the individual named below a full and unconditional pardon.”

Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.