‘What a … Scumbag!’: Trump Makes a Move He Thought Would Fly Under the Radar, Then MTG and His Own Base Drag It Into the Light and Refuse to Let It Go
The corruption in the Trump administration knows no bounds, critics accuse, after another questionable criminal commutation.
President Donald Trump granted a convicted tax swindling nursing home magnate who was serving a prison sentence until he paid thousands of dollars to an influential lobbyist to buy himself a presidential pardon.
New Jersey businessman Joseph Schwartz was at the center of an exhaustive investigation by ProPublica into how he cheated nursing home residents, their families and hundreds of employees after he was caught in a $39 million fraud scheme and pleaded guilty last year to failing to pay the Internal Revenue Service taxes he kept from workers’ paychecks and their benefit plans.
Schwartz, who’s nursing home empire was crumbling by 2018, according to ProPublica in the story published on Monday, March 30, had served three months of a three-year sentence when Trump granted him a pardon last November, one of dozens of dubious pardons Trump has granted since starting his second term last January, mostly for wealthy convicts with ties to Trump’s political allies.
Trump’s bitter enemy, former Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was once one of his closest allies, blasted the president in a post on X.
This guy stole $39 million from elderly people and their families and then bought a pardon for nearly $1 million.
So gross and corrupt. https://t.co/pkWIBOpgBh— Marjorie Taylor Greene
(@mtgreenee) March 30, 2026
“This guy stole $39 million from elderly people and their families and then bought a pardon for nearly $1 million. So gross and corrupt,” Greene proclaimed.
The stunned MAGA world weighed in on the latest scandal rippling through the Trump universe, surprisingly lashing out at the president in angry protest.
“Trump has become a despicable hypocrite. He is happy to sell himself for $$. It’s odd but I would love to see someone I voted for 3 times impeached next year. Through his lies, deceit, & corruption he’s earned it,” this former Trump voter declared.
Another X user wondered, “A lot of people saw this when you didnt. Why do you think you were so naive?”
Trump acolyte and far-right-wing political commentator Laura Loomer, who has a direct line to Trump, took up Schwartz’s cause, working with other lobbyists, ProPublica reported, to draw attention to his case.
She posted a series of false posts insisting Schwartz had paid back “every dime,” that he didn’t commit tax fraud, and was not to blame for his empire collapsing.
Loomer may have had a direct hand in securing Trump’s pardon of Schwartz.
“As always, a grifter with no morals and no principles will lie, cheat and abuse his office power for personal gain. There must be strict limits on presidential pardon powers, otherwise we allow presidents to make a mockery of our system of justice,” X poster True Patriot pointed out.
Another poster Just Some Guy was more blunt. “Trump sucks. I will vote Democrat and I hope they remove and bring criminal investigations against his entire family. I was a 3 time Trump voter.”
This X user responded with, “I imagine this must feel like someone slipped you the painful-truth red pill. Welcome to reality. Suddenly, you’re seeing what a loathsome scumbag Trump really is.”
Schwartz wasn’t the only criminal in the health care arena that Trump has pardoned or granted clemency to, according to ProPublica.
Trump also commuted the sentence of Philip Esformes, who headed up another nursing home empire, this one in Florida, in 2020. He was sentenced to a 20-year prison term for over $1.3 billion in Medicare and Medicaid fraud.
In another Medicare fraud case, Judith Negron was convicted of swindling $200 million from the government. Also in 2020, the president granted her clemency, saying at the time she didn’t deserve to spend two decades in prison, the news outlet reported.