They were sons of Washington, D.C. privilege, young men whose fathers shaped the nation’s history for better and for worse.
The two men from San Diego each found their own success, in part through family connections — one repeatedly winning election to Congress, the other becoming a respected state prosecutor.
Then they each failed spectacularly and publicly.
Today, Duncan D. Hunter and Raymond Liddy are both convicted felons, and the former congressman is lobbying President Donald Trump to pardon Liddy, who is the son of a notorious Watergate figure and was convicted of possessing child pornography.
According to a federal disclosure filed late last year, Hunter is working to secure a pardon for the son of G. Gordon Liddy, who went to prison for overseeing the break-in of Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel and other crimes that drove Richard Nixon from the White House.
The lobbying report was submitted by Tommy Marquez, chief executive officer at Tommy Marquez Consulting, a government affairs firm based in Grapevine, Texas. Marquez listed Hunter as a consultant to his company.
The single-page document shows that Marquez and Hunter are seeking a presidential pardon for Liddy, who was convicted in 2020 of possessing child pornography.
Neither Hunter, Marquez nor Liddy responded to requests for comment on the lobbying efforts, which were disclosed in a federally required filing dated Nov. 6.
Liddy, who is 62 and lives in a $6 million home in Coronado, was sentenced to five years of probation following his criminal conviction in a bench trial, which means the case was decided by a judge rather than a jury.
He also lost his job at the California Department of Justice and was disbarred.
In a 2021 appeal, Liddy’s attorneys argued the judge had made reversible errors in allowing certain evidence. They said Liddy was wrongly convicted and never downloaded the images at issue.
The appeal was rejected.
Federal court records in Tennessee show Liddy violated his probation in 2023 and was sent to prison.
Among the violations, records show, Liddy was arrested for drunken driving in South San Diego County in 2021. According to court records, he threatened his probation officer, called her a racial slur and repeatedly abused drugs and alcohol.
“Both Mr. Liddy and his wife, Courtney Liddy, continued calling (the officer) obscene names to include ‘b—’ and ‘mother—’ as well as telling the probation officer to ‘go f— yourself’ and ‘we know where you are n— and we will find and kill you,’” the May 9, 2023, warrant petition says.
Courtney Liddy also was accused of following multiple social media accounts created by the probation officer.
Knut Johnson, one of the San Diego attorneys who represented Liddy at the time, apologized to the probation officer on behalf of his client and told her that Liddy suffered from anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. Johnson subsequently withdrew from the case.
Court records also note that Liddy is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran — like Hunter — who received a 50% disability designation from the Veterans Administration due to burns he sustained during military service.
His lawyers also noted that Liddy and his family suffered as a result of his father’s notoriety.
“When the story broke, he (G. Gordon Liddy) became a villain to millions,” the unsuccessful appeal noted. “The young Mr. Liddy and his family were scorned.”
In May 2023, the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office dismissed the drunk driving case — just eight days before federal prosecutors sought the arrest warrant.
Liddy’s federal probation was revoked, and he was sentenced to two years in custody, records show.
He was released from the federal Bureau of Prisons on Jan. 17, 2025, and is registered as a sex offender in both California and Tennessee. He remains under supervised release.
Hunter, meanwhile, who turned 50 last month, committed crimes of his own.
He was elected to Congress as a Republican in 2008 in the East County congressional seat held for decades by his father. But federal election regulators opened an investigation into Hunter’s use of campaign donations following a 2016 report by The San Diego Union-Tribune.
The probe into his handling of political donations also involved his then-wife, Margaret. Both denied any wrongdoing for years, but the case was eventually referred to the U.S. Department of Justice, which indicted them in 2018.
Despite the criminal allegations, which accused the pair of spending more than $250,000 in campaign funds on travel, fine dining and other personal expenses, Hunter was re-elected in 2018 and again in 2020.
But one month after winning his seventh term, Hunter pleaded guilty to a single felony count. He was sentenced to 11 months in prison but received a pardon from President Trump in December 2020, weeks before he was due to report to federal prison.
Margaret Hunter, who was sentenced to eight months of home confinement and three years of probation for her role, got a presidential pardon the next day.
Duncan Hunter’s efforts to secure a pardon for Liddy are not the former congressman’s first foray into lobbying.
Records show he created a limited liability company called Valoon in 2022 and soon began lobbying for an entity called Trex Enterprises Corp.
“Trex is encouraging governments around the world to adopt radar on their major airport runways in order to minimize damage and/or loss of life due to foreign objects on runways, i.e., wrench/nut/bolt/piece of tire,” one of his lobbying disclosures says.
The legislative database Legistorm reported in 2023 that Hunter had direct ties to the company, and steered millions of dollars in federal funding to the firm while serving in Congress.
Valoon also disclosed lobbying work for a company called NJF Worldwide of Freehold, N.J., that worked to secure federal contracts for minority-owned and service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses.
According to Hunter’s current profile on the LinkedIn social media website, the former congressman has been a vice president for Trex Aviation Systems since October 2024.
He also lists himself as a self-employed consultant since March 2025.
Trump administration records show the Liddy pardon or clemency application as pending, meaning it is under consideration.
No details about the request are publicly available, beyond a designation that says Liddy is seeking a “pardon after completion of sentence.” The application was filed in 2025.
Trump has a record of rewarding political supporters in exercising his pardon and commutation privileges, even beyond his decision to spare Duncan and Margaret Hunter and other white-collar convicts from federal punishment.
Within hours of being sworn in as 47th president of the United States on Jan. 20, 2025, Trump ordered the unconditional pardons and commutations of more than 1,500 people convicted or charged in the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.
More recently, he pardoned a former president of Honduras convicted of smuggling hundreds of tons of cocaine into North America, as well as former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, former Rep. Michael Grimm and former Tennessee state Sen. Brian Kelsey.
Trump also commuted the 87-month prison sentence handed to former Rep. George Santos last April.
Many people freed of criminal charges under Trump’s presidential authority have gone on to commit new crimes, including Adriana Camberos of Chula Vista, who was granted clemency in 2021 but sent back to prison last year following a new conviction.
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