Money Grab/Pardon donors and drop cases against friends
Trump pardons nursing-home magnate Joseph Schwartz, erasing $5M in restitution
Joseph Schwartz’s Skyline Healthcare chain collapsed in 2018, leaving residents in dozens of homes without paid staff or supplies. He pleaded guilty to failing to pay over employment taxes and failing to file a benefit-plan report, and on April 10, 2025 was sentenced in New Jersey to 36 months, a $100,000 fine and $5 million in restitution.
What happened
Joseph Schwartz built Skyline Healthcare into one of the largest nursing-home operators in the country and then, in 2018, ran out of money. Homes in several states were left without paid staff, food vendors or supplies, and states had to step in. Federal prosecutors charged him with failing to pay over about $38 million in employment taxes withheld from workers’ paychecks.
He pleaded guilty, and on April 10, 2025, a federal judge in New Jersey sentenced him to 36 months in prison, a $100,000 fine and $5 million in restitution. On November 14, 2025, Trump pardoned him. The pardon erased the prison term, the fine and the restitution.
Reviews by Senate Democrats and the House Judiciary Committee’s Democratic staff found Schwartz had spent about $1 million on lobbyists to get the pardon. The money included amounts that reached the activist Laura Loomer, who campaigned publicly for his release. One of his lobbyists was later charged with trying to extort $500,000 more from him.
Who benefited
Schwartz walked out of prison and owes the government nothing. The lobbyists he paid collected about $1 million for a pardon that erased a 36-month prison term, $5 million in restitution and a $100,000 fine.
Who wanted something
Schwartz had the means to buy access and used it. The pardon did not go through the Justice Department’s pardon attorney, whose standards require remorse and paid restitution. It went through the people around the president.
Who lost out
The workers whose withheld taxes were never paid over lost out, as did the Treasury, which lost $5.1 million. So did the families of residents who died in understaffed Skyline homes. Families who won about $19 million in wrongful-death judgments against Schwartz’s companies have collected nothing, and the president has declared the man forgiven.
Why it matters
A pardon wipes out restitution, so it is worth exactly what the convict owed. Here the price of the lobbyists was lower than the debt they erased. Schwartz is one entry; the House Judiciary report counts nearly $1.7 billion in restitution and fines forgiven the same way.
Sources U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Pardon Attorney (primary)ProPublicaHouse Judiciary Committee Democrats (primary)Arkansas Advocate