POTUS Trump has turned his 2.0 regime into a pay-to-play pardon machine and seems willing to pardon virtually anyone, no matter how heinous the crime, how notorious the reputation.
Like everything else related to Trump 2.0, the torrent of shocking, awful news on this topic is overwhelming and numbing. That’s Steve Bannon’s “Flood the Zone” strategy in action.
I covered a little of this in December, but the flood hasn’t crested so we’re back to it.
But I’m gonna slice this bulimia buffet of family blogging sandwiches into manageable portions for easier digestion, but prepare to be pissed off.
But we’ll start with my personal favorite tale of depravity piled on depravity then move on to a hopeful note because one of the most shameless and flagrant firms is drawing all kinds of bad publicity, and then we’ll look at the scope of the problem then we’ll have a handy table compiling some of the super villains who’ve taken the ride on Trump’s pay-for-pardons conveyor belt.
All the Best People
This pithy tale from the DOJ really gives the flavor of Trump 2.0 “society” in which 34-year-old pardon lawyer Joshua Nass allegedly attempted extortion over a claimed $500K fee, allegedly sending an alleged enforcer to allegedly threaten the alleged son of alleged client Joseph Schwartz.
This Joseph Schwartz:
Another Trump Pardon:
- Nursing home operator Joseph Schwartz was convicted of a $39 million fraud, but President Donald Trump pardoned him just three months into a three-year prison term.
- A Troubling Pattern: Schwartz is one of several nursing home operators convicted of crimes who were granted clemency by Trump.
- Devastated Families: The families of some patients in Schwartz’s nursing homes have been awarded millions of dollars from lawsuits. But they haven’t been able to collect from him.
More about Trump clemency recipient Joseph Schwartz from ProPublica:
Coulson’s death and the circumstances surrounding it led her family to file a lawsuit against Skyline and its owner, the New Jersey businessman Joseph Schwartz, alleging that cost-cutting at Hillview left Coulson without the care she needed. It was one of several lawsuits tied to patient outcomes as Schwartz’s empire expanded and then unraveled, with much of the chain collapsing by 2018.
Schwartz didn’t contest the case, and a judge in 2020 awarded nearly $19 million in damages. Coulson’s family has never been able to collect. Schwartz had by that time relinquished all of his property in Arkansas, so there was nothing left in the state for the family’s lawyer to try to seize, nor was there enough information about assets he may hold in other states.
Coulson’s civil action was one of several efforts to hold Schwartz accountable for what happened at his nursing homes. In perhaps the most sweeping move, federal prosecutors in New Jersey charged Schwartz with orchestrating a $39 million payroll tax scheme connected to his nursing home empire.
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.
But Schwartz served just three months.
So yea, it’s hard to have sympathy for the alleged victim in this alleged case per NBC New York:
According to a letter from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Nass agreed in December to provide lobbying services to the client, who signed an agreement to pay Nass $600,000 in exchange for the services. The son helped make a $100,000 payment but said he could not then pay the full amount and asked for “a payment plan,” which Nass viewed as an “insult,” the letter said.
Nass, who is also a licensed attorney in New York, had told the witness to go to the son’s New York-area home to compel payment, but the son shut the door on him after being told Nass had sent him, court documents allege.
Between January and March, Nass and the witness discussed ways the witness could extort the payment, including assaulting the son or forcing him into a car with masked men and threatening him, according to the government’s news release. Nass said he did not want the witness to behave “like a human being with” the son, an FBI agent’s signed affidavit said.
Nothing caps off a story of alleged scumbags allegedly ripping each other off like multiple snitches stealing scenes.
Now let’s get on that positive tip I’m known for.
What’s Trump Done for the Injustice Society Lately?
We’ll start the positivity with an instance where maybe, just maybe, one law firm might have gone too far and the publicity is beginning to catch up with them. Worst of all, one of the most notorious cases involves a client who paid in full and didn’t get pardoned at all.
Maybe you’d read about JM Burkman & Associates before their spotlight moment on 60 Minutes this Sunday. The editors of The Advocate sure have; that’s why they headlined their piece on the firm “Pair behind false accusations against Pete Buttigieg caught peddling presidential pardons.”
Rapper Boosie Badazz (not his real name) was familiar with the firm as well, having paid them $600,000 in expectation of a pardon he hadn’t received as of his January 2026 sentencing.
Boosie took a few minutes out of his busy incarceration schedule (and from his AAA arbitration case trying to claw back $300K from the firm) to complain about the 60 Minutes coverage of his case, per Billboard:
“I did a hour interview with 60 Minutes about what happened with my lawsuit but only a few things got put out,” he wrote. “I talked about how before this situation happened that I sat down with the pardon czar at the White House discussing why I felt I needed a pardon. I told them I felt Ms. Alice [Marie Johnson] would help me but the judge ended up dismissing the case a few months later so she didn’t need to. A month later they picked my case back up n gave me the same charges n added a charge of me being [an addict] around a firearm.”
He added: “How am I [an addict] when I have never been to rehab. I was sentenced to 10 years n state prison for 3rd offense marijuana n never offered rehab. We had proof that these thieves said the president signed the pardon. I was asked what I wanted out of this situation n I said, ‘I wanted the president to look at my case with Ms. Alice n see if its worth a pardon!!’ I also said, ‘I wanted him to take n consideration how I was done wrong by these people who lied on him to do so!!’ My story wasn’t told fully but hopefully this interview will prove my point clearly n civil court that I need to be compensated x 10.”
I let Boosie speak his piece because it’s so typical of the way the US “justice” system bullies Black performers. As a 40-year-fan of hip hop, I’ve seen this family blogging before.
But back to 60 Minutes and their shyster expose “How pardon brokers determine their prices.” I’m embedding the below less because I think it’s a must-watch and more because just seeing the mugs on these two living incarnations of the Dewey, Cheatem, and How stereotypes is worth 2,000 words alone.
The accompanying CBS News story hits the lowlights of the lowlives in a quick scan:
Jack Burkman and his business partner Jacob Wohl were making their latest sales pitch. They were seated at a table with Ammon Covino, a convicted felon, and his wife, Crystal.
“With this particular White House, you have to put pressure on the president from all directions in a consistent way to force his hand,” Burkman explained. He and Wohl, lobbyists and right-wing provocateurs, had become avatars of a lucrative new cottage industry of brokers courting those seeking pardons from President Trump.
Now, they were zeroing in on the man they hoped would be their next client: Covino, an aquarium operator who served nearly two years in federal prison for illegally transporting a shark and a stingray across state lines.
But let’s resist the temptation to join Bari Weiss’ CBS in wallowing in the ridiculous details of these noxious idiots and their illegal antics and get some more serious takes on the aberrant POTUS behavior.
‘This Is Not Normal’
Ok, I lied; allow me a little more wallowing in the freak show by sharing a tweet from White House Pardon Czar Alice Marie Johnson, herself a Trump-clemency recipient who served 22 years:
Yesterday was a powerful day for second chances.
I am deeply grateful to President @RealDonaldTrump for granting clemency and pardons to 30 deserving individuals whose cases we carefully reviewed and brought forward—and to the White House Counsel team, led by Will Scharf, for… pic.twitter.com/UQIssRgFHi
— Alice Marie Johnson (@AliceMarieFree) September 4, 2026
This inspired former DOJ Pardon Attorney Liz Oyer to react aghast on Substack:
Last week, Donald Trump reportedly granted pardons and commutations to 30 people. But even as word of these clemencies has spread, most of the recipients remain unknown. The White House made no announcement of the clemency actions when they were granted. Nearly a week later, there still has been no official statement, and no list of recipients has been disclosed.
…
As of this writing, I’ve been able to piece together only 11 of the 30 recipients who reportedly received clemency on September 3. The other 19 remain unknown.This is not normal.
The secrecy surrounding Trump’s pardons is not normal. In normal times, there would be a formal announcement from the White House, accompanied by a list of recipients. The official clemency documents, signed by the president and embossed with the Justice Department seal, would be promptly posted for public inspection on the Pardon Attorney’s website. A press release would typically explain the rationale for the clemency grants. Prompt public announcements of clemency actions have been a feature of every modern presidency, Republican and Democratic. Even during Trump’s first term, these conventions were generally followed.
The absence of clemency paperwork is not “just” a paperwork problem. It is a fundamental problem with the integrity of the pardon power. The failure to timely document and disclose clemency grants creates chaos. It fuels corruption. And it begs the question: Are there more?
Chaos reigned during my brief tenure as Pardon Attorney under Donald Trump. It began the night of January 20, 2025—Inauguration Day—when Trump pardoned all of the January 6 rioters without giving my office any heads up. We were then expected to facilitate the immediate release of around 400 federal prisoners, scattered across the country, that night, without any warning. Frantic calls started coming in from the Bureau of Prisons, reporting that family members were showing up at prisons, banging on gates, demanding the release of their loved ones. Meanwhile, we didn’t even have a list of names to work from, let alone the signed paperwork.
The secrecy that has surrounded the pardon process under this Administration is a breeding ground for corruption. Some of the pardons that have come to light are literally unexplainable other than as the product of corrupt dealings. Take, for example, Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former president of Honduras, imprisoned for trafficking hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States. Trump’s decision to pardon him—while simultaneously blowing up purported drug traffickers at sea—is not defensible by any logic or reason. We can only speculate about what Hernandez might have offered Trump in exchange for this extraordinary action. Doing away with the detailed press releases Trump favored during his first presidency seems to reflect the impossibility of even fashioning a non-corrupt rationale for some of his recent pardons.
I have quite a bit of sympathy for Oyer, she’s of the Lina Khan type of Biden appointees from what I can gather, a liberal idealist trying to serve the public to the best of her abilities who found herself trapped in the Trump 2.0 clown car. But let’s keep moving, there are others of her ilk doing their best to document the atrocities.
The one good thing, other than the cheap laughs and melodrama, about a 60 Minutes piece is that it does seem to stir congressional Democrats into what they think passes for action, with the US House Judiciary Committee Democratic staffers releasing a 25 page report titled “Pardons, Inc.” that’s is worth the click just for the footnotes which compile a ton of NYT/WSJ/ProPublica stories on this ongoing scandal.
Infojunkies say, score!
This Trump DOJ posted list of applications denied as of July is useful for a who-gets-turned-down contrast with the paying clients.
Also, I have to wonder what’s become of the Congressional Democrats’ (two reps and one senator) inquiry into the pay-to-play pardons express which was announced in May.
Asking For a Friend, How’s This Work Exactly?
I know what canny readers are thinking, but before going back to finish that night school law degree, best to assess the market and learn how it really works. Thankfully, NPR did the yeoman’s work in their July piece “$600,000 for a presidential pardon? Inside the growing industry of clemency lobbying” :
They begin by describing how things used to work:
…traditionally, the pardon process works under the Department of Justice umbrella in an office called the Pardon Office in which a group of people go over thousands of federal pardon applications that the government gets to see who would apply, and they follow – or they used to follow, rather, strict guidelines.
Typically, it was that people had served some portion of their sentence, that they showed contrition. They apologized. They said that they were guilty, and that if restitution was to be paid by their individual cases, that had already been done. And so that was the kind of amount of things that people needed to prove to then be considered for a pardon. And it was a huge litmus test for folks who had been convicted already to get a pardon, following these very strict guidelines under the Department of Justice, and that just doesn’t exist anymore.
But soon they’re done to brass tacks and providing aspiring pardon seekers with actionable tips on how to grab that Get Out of Jail Free card from POTUS Don:
1, call who you know. If you know anybody remotely close to the White House, let them know that you’re looking for a pardon.
And 2, try to get in front of the president. I’ve talked to people who say that they have advised their clients to go to Mar-a-Lago, the president’s resort residence in Palm Beach, Florida. Any way that you can get your application, why you deserve clemency in front of the president, they say, is an easier way to get closer to a pardon.
But never fear, it’s all above board; well, it’s legal anyhow:
This is legal. To be fair, people have always paid attorneys, lobbyists for pardons. You’re not paying for the individual pardon. You’re paying the person to go advocate on your behalf to get you a pardon clemency commutation.
What’s happening now is that because of the normal barriers in which existed to get a pardon, it is easier for people who have some sort of association. They don’t have to have a legal degree. They don’t even have to be an actual lobbyist to now go and advocate to the White House to get their clients’ pardons. And so it has created and normalized this new economy in which people are paying up to $5 million, in some cases, to individual lawyers or lobbyists to then go advocate on their behalf in hopes of getting a pardon. Now, not everybody that is doing this is getting a pardon, as we can see by this case.
This Reuters special report gets into the numbers and reveals that 96% of second-term clemency grants failed DOJ guidelines, against 14% in term one and under 1% under Biden. Identified 290 influencers advocating 624 times across 197 successful bids; 11 of them were themselves Trump clemency recipients.
But Reuters knows where the bread is buttered, and they lead with color:
Trump phoned Trevor Milton, an electric-vehicle entrepreneur and Republican donor who was convicted of defrauding investors of more than $660 million.
The president, according to previously unreported details of the conversation reviewed by Reuters, told Milton that high-profile advisors convinced Trump that Milton had been unfairly prosecuted by the Justice Department of President Joe Biden. Among those who put in a good word, Trump said, was U.S. health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Milton’s treatment was unjust, Trump said, and similar to his own targeting by federal investigators around the same time. “You had a lot of support,” Trump told Milton. “Bobby Kennedy. You have to call Bobby and thank him.”
Let’s wrap this section with a handy table for comparison shoppers that tells the Pardoners’ Tale better than Chaucer, well at least it’s not in Ye Olde English:
| Broker | Outfit | Disclosed fee | Known clients / results |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jack Burkman & Jacob Wohl | JM Burkman & Associates | $3.2M in 2025 | Schwartz ($960K, pardoned); Boosie ($600K, no pardon, in arbitration) |
| Ches McDowell | Checkmate Government Relations | $450K/mo | Binance/Zhao — pardoned. Friend of Don Jr. |
| Fr. Frank Mann | Retired Queens priest | $2.5M | David Gentile — commuted 12 days into a 7-year term |
| Keith Schiller | Trump’s ex-bodyguard | $1M | Fred Daibes, contracted for “executive relief” |
| Marty Obst & Robert Goad | Mo Strategies | $500K | Blessinger Legal — a law firm outsourcing its own clemency access |
| Brett Tolman | Former U.S. Attorney (Utah) | undisclosed | 12+ grants. “I just send my petitions directly to the White House” |
| Roger Stone | Himself | claims $0 | 5+ grants incl. Hernández; a first-term clemency recipient himself |
| Alan Dershowitz | “Consulting work” for clemency lawyers | undisclosed | Ozy/Watson |
| Boris Epshteyn | Trump adviser | undisclosed | No disclosed pardon work; became a clemency recipient himself in 2025 |
I Blame Society
Honestly though, Al Jazeera did the best longform piece on this family blogging in February which put the score at 1,840 “acts of clemency” on Trump’s part as of February. Only the angels know how much mercy he’s spread across the grateful nation since.
The Al Jazeera piece also provides some historical context and traces the end of orderly process and the beginnings of our 21st century dystopia to one William Jefferson Clinton:
Margaret Love, who served as the US government’s pardon attorney from 1990 to 1997, argues that the “wheels came off” starting under President Bill Clinton.
Love began her tenure under Republican George HW Bush and continued to serve under Clinton. Up to that point, she said the pardon process “was really pretty regular and low-key”.
During the Clinton years, however, Love observed the number of pardons dwindle. Department of Justice leaders seemed uninterested in forwarding clemency recommendations to the White House.
She believes the motive was partly political: Clinton, a Democrat, did not want to be seen as lax on crime.
That changed, however, towards the end of Clinton’s presidency. On January 20, 2001 — his final day in office — Clinton unveiled a pile of 177 pardons and commutations.
One of the recipients was Marc Rich, a financier on the run from tax evasion and racketeering charges.
Rich’s ex-wife had been a donor to First Lady Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign and to the Clinton presidential library. His pardon sparked a scandal, as well as accusations of self-dealing.
So once again, Trump is just a symptom of a system that’s been rotting for decades, but boy what a symptom!
Let’s wrap with a couple of handy tables summarizing some of the most well-documented instances of our Lord Trump’s mercy in action.
Thirteen Particularly Well-Documented Pardons
Grease the palm that pardons, sayeth the Lord of Misrule.
| Recipient | Conviction / charge | Clemency | Penalties erased | Who carried the ask | Money toward Trump |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trevor Milton (Nikola) | Securities & wire fraud | 27 Mar 2025 | $695.2M | Brad Bondi (Paul Hastings), Marc Mukasey | $1.8M to Trump 47 + MAHA Alliance |
| BitMEX / HDR Global + 4 founders | Bank Secrecy Act | 27 Mar 2025 | $130M | — | Promoted $TRUMP meme coin |
| Jason Galanis | Securities fraud (two schemes) | 28 Mar 2025 | $84.8M | Star witness in the Hunter Biden impeachment push | — |
| Carlos Watson (Ozy Media) | Securities/wire fraud conspiracy | 28 Mar 2025 | $96.4M | Arthur Aidala; Alan Dershowitz consulted; Steve Bannon as reference | — |
| Paul Walczak | Payroll-tax theft ($10.9M) | 23 Apr 2025 | $4.4M | Applied direct to the White House, citing his mother’s fundraising | Mother Elizabeth Fago: $1M to MAGA Inc. + a $1M/plate Mar-a-Lago dinner |
| Todd & Julie Chrisley | Bank fraud, tax evasion | 28 May 2025 | $22.0M | Alex Little (Litson PLLC); daughter Savannah lobbied Alice Johnson | — |
| Changpeng Zhao (Binance) | Money-laundering failures | 23 Oct 2025 | — | Ches McDowell (Checkmate Government Relations), $450K/mo | Built World Liberty Financial’s infrastructure; brokered a $2B UAE stake paid in WLF stablecoin |
| Joseph Schwartz | $38M payroll-tax fraud | 14 Nov 2025 | $33M | Burkman & Wohl ($960K), Laura Loomer, Joshua Nass | Bought access to pardon czar Alice Johnson and WH Counsel David Warrington |
| David Gentile (GPB Capital) | Securities fraud | 29 Nov 2025 | $15.5M | Fr. Frank Mann, for a $2.5M fee | — |
| Juan Orlando Hernández (ex-president, Honduras) | Cocaine & weapons trafficking | Nov 2025 | 45-yr sentence | Roger Stone + Matt Gaetz, at Mar-a-Lago | Próspera investors (Thiel, Andreessen, Kelcy Warren) |
| Tim Leiweke (Oak View Group) | Arena bid-rigging | 3 Dec 2025 | pre-trial | Trey Gowdy (Nelson Mullins), over 18 holes at Mar-a-Lago | $250K to the inaugural fund |
| Julio Herrera Velutini + Wanda Vázquez, Mark Rossini | International bribery | Jan 2026 | misdemeanor plea first | Christopher Kise (Continental PLLC), ex-Trump defense counsel | Daughter Isabela Herrera: $3.5M to MAGA Inc. |
| Adriana & Andres Camberos | $58M grocery-diversion fraud | 15 Jan 2026 | $80M | Adam Katz + Stefan Passantino — the same duo won them 2021 clemency | $50K to the 2020 campaign (first round) |
Stay safe y’all!
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