Many prominent U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) alumni — including former federal prosecutors and MS NOW legal analysts Joyce White Vance and Barbara McQuade — are scathing critics of President Donald Trump and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi's criminal justice policies. Trump and Bondi, they argue, are using DOJ as a tool of retribution against political foes and doing things they never would have considered when they were federal prosecutors.
But at the same time, Trump isn't shy about issuing presidential pardons for his allies. On his first night back in the White House, Trump pardoned hundreds of rioters who violently attacked the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021.
In an article published on March 6, New York Times reporter Kenneth P. Vogel emphasizes that Trump's use of presidential pardons isn't merely a matter of policy — it is an "industry."
According to Vogel, a "lucrative pardon industry" has "emerged around Mr. Trump."
"It is based in part on the proposition that paying the right person to deliver a message tailored to Mr. Trump's politics or grievances is more important than demonstrating remorse or a low likelihood of recidivism," Vogel explains. "A growing number of practitioners promise access in this murky enterprise, but some also may exaggerate their effectiveness to elicit payments from clients desperate to avoid incarceration. Pardon seekers routinely offer to pay as much as $1 million or more, often with bonus payments triggered by a successful outcome, according to lobbying filings and people familiar with the fees."
Vogel continues, "This transactional approach to clemency has been welcomed by white-collar offenders like those serving time at the Otisville camp, a minimum-security facility about 75 miles northwest of Manhattan. Many of its inmates cheered Mr. Trump's election, seeing him as a kindred spirit who shares their grievances about the unfairness of financial crime prosecutions like the one that led to his own conviction, according to four people familiar with conversations at Otisville."
One of Trump's pardons was Joseph Schwartz, who was convicted of federal tax crimes related to nursing homes he owned and sentenced to three years but served only three months.
"Mr. Schwartz had not been shy about sharing the strategy behind his clemency campaign with other inmates," Vogel reports. "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…. The perception that freedom is for sale to affluent offenders like Mr. Schwartz outrages some of his victims, including former employees of his nursing homes who were deprived of health insurance or left scrounging for supplies to care for residents."
One of those ex-employees, Theresa Dante, told the Times, "This man hurt a lot of people. If it's OK for Mr. Schwartz to do this to everybody, then in the future is this going be OK?"
