Trump’s Corrupt Pardons May Well Be the Most Corrupt Thing About Him |
Trump’s Corrupt Pardons May Well Be the Most Corrupt Thing About Him
When the Framers invented the pardon power, they never imagined someone like Trump as president. We need to rein that power in immediately.
Joseph Schwartz had a multistate nursing home empire. Through negligence and fraud, including deaths of patients in his facilities, it unraveled, leaving the families of the victims with nothing. And Schwartz responded by engaging in a massive payroll tax scheme, bilking his employees of $39 million. As ProPublica wrote, “He pleaded guilty last April to failure to pay the IRS taxes withheld from employees and failing to file a financial report for his employees’ benefit plan. A federal judge sentenced him to three years in prison.”
Three months into that sentence, in November of last year, Donald Trump pardoned Schwartz. Why? The New York Times reported recently on his extensive lobbying campaign: “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. Thousands more went to lawyers who had personal relationships with Alice Marie Johnson, Mr. Trump’s ‘pardon czar,’ and David Warrington, the White House counsel, according to four people familiar with the effort.”
Schwartz’s is only the latest of a series of pardons of fraudsters. Of all the corrupt actions taken in chapter 2 of the Trump presidency, none is more shocking than the misuse of the presidential pardon—not just for personal gain but to reward friends, enrich lobbyist buddies, and make clear that anyone who commits a crime to further Mr. Trump’s interests need not fear prosecution.
Our Constitution does not limit presidential pardons. The Framers debated bestowing this immense power upon one individual, yet ultimately believed that presidential integrity, and the possibility of impeachment, would shield it from corruption. Unfortunately, the Framers did not anticipate a president with no integrity—nor did they anticipate a Congress abandoning its Article 1 authority in service to an unprincipled executive.
As we prepare to celebrate our nation’s 250th anniversary, we must safeguard our........