Pardon Industry Offers Rich Offenders a Path to Trump

[Nevilledog]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/06/us/politics/schwartz-trump-pardon-industry.html

No paywall link
https://archive.li/awlO9

One evening last November, word spread around the federal prison camp in Otisville, N.Y., that an inmate who had spent heavily to pursue clemency had hit pay dirt, winning a pardon from President Trump and walking free.

His release intensified an ongoing debate for those who were left behind. Whom could they pay to achieve the same result?

There was a lot to parse in the clemency campaign of Joseph Schwartz. He had served only three months of a three-year sentence for tax crimes related to a nursing-home empire that had collapsed amid allegations of endangering the residents and defrauding his employees.

Mr. Schwartz had not been shy about sharing the strategy behind his clemency campaign with other inmates, so they knew he had paid multiple people to try to get the job done, according to two people familiar with conversations at Otisville.

Nearly a million dollars went to right-wing operatives who claimed to have worked with Laura Loomer, a social media provocateur who has the ear of Mr. Trump, to advocate for Mr. Schwartz’s release. Another $100,000 or more was paid to a lobbyist who had a different set of connections to Mr. Trump — pro-Israel evangelicals.

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