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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to part one of who the F Did I Pardon? And I'm saying that it's part one because the list of absolute buffoons that Donald Trump has pardoned might just each deserve their own episode. You might be wondering, why are you wearing sunglasses? Why are you channeling Tim Dillon today? It's because I'm done. I'm done. I was watching the Toast recently and it's my favorite pop culture podcast. And they joked that when they wear sunglasses, it feels like they can be even more authentic. It is their true selves unburdened by what has been they're hiding behind the sunglasses. And I honestly, I really felt that today. The last three episodes have been a lot of griping, I would say black pilling, talking about the Trump administration. Tomorrow I am committing to turning a new leaf. We will be talking about Christine Owen's big booby cross dressing husband. Unfortunately, that story broke as I was sitting down to write this episode. So there was not time for me to do that today. But don't worry, don't worry. We will cover that tomorrow. But for now, now let's finish this trifecta of black pilled episodes while I try to explain to people, maybe the Trump administration, why voters, why the American people are just a little bit displeased. And today's story is a great example of that. And I am once again just asking the Trump administration to maybe consider hiring some pr. Like, consider the optics. Well, foremost, I should say, cause this really isn't about the optics. I am asking them to be transparent, to prioritize not being corrupt, to be consistent with the things that they ran on the mandate that the American people gave Donald Trump. But we do have to admit that it really is hilarious that their comms team acts like everything that's going on is totally peachy and that it makes complete and total sense. And if you are confused as to what I might be referring to today, if you don't know what's going on based on the title or the thumbnail. Well, guys, it's time for you to meet a man named Joseph Schwartz, the man involved in a $35 million nursing home tax fraud scheme who was pardoned by Trump only three months into his prison sentence. Here he is, the man himself, Joseph Schwartz. This man stole from his employees, he stole from the American taxpayers, and even worse is the way that people were treated within his nursing homes. And while the Trump administration is allegedly cracking down on fraud, he gets pardoned. Let's talk about it. So the story is between 2017 and 2018, this man, this gentleman, Joseph Schwartz, he withheld over $38 million in payroll taxes from his employees, but he, he did not pay them. He pocketed that money. He was also overbilling Medicaid for the federal funds that he was receiving for this conglomerate of nursing homes. I think that that's important to note, just so you guys see the intersection with what he was doing and what the entire conservative movement has been screaming about in regards to the fraud in Minnesota. It is the same type of fraud. All of this information was published in a really great article from ProPublica that came out yesterday. Hence everything going viral on X yesterday. And in this article, the author wrote, the collapse was swift, meaning the collapse of Joseph Swartz's empire skyline facilities that this company failed to make payments for food and medical supplies and cut hours for nursing home staff. At the same time, Schwartz began to siphon money from multiple sources over billing Medicaid and withholding millions of dollars in payroll taxes from workers paychecks, but never sending the money to the IRS, he admitted later. What's more, Schwartz paid himself $5 million in what one federal prosecutor described as a ghost employee at some of his facilities. But I also think it's important to note that this isn't just about defrauding the government. Because while he was pocketing, you know, those $5 million, his nursing homes were falling apart in front of him and the neglected residents were pay. We are talking about the elderly in our society, the families who put their loved ones in these facilities, expecting them to be taken care of. Just listen to these stories from this article, the author writes. Zelma Grissom's family said that the conditions at Hillview, the same facility where Doris Colson was living, left residents without even basic care. The mother of six had entered the facility after brain surgery left her unable to move on her own and dependent on staff to turn her in bed. Grissom's son said that Hillview appeared chronically short staffed. One day, Ivey said, a wound care nurse called the family into his mother's room and showed them a severe pressure surgeon that had developed after Grissom hadn't been turned regularly. Surgeons had to cut away infected tissue, leaving a large open wound. After that, the elderly woman's health spiraled. She started getting infection after infection. During one late night ambulance transfer, an emergency medical worker quietly told him how his mother had arrived. She pulled me to the side and told me how dirty and nasty and how wet she was. The family's lawyer said that she died of sepsis from the bed sores that Hillview caregivers had allowed to become infected, and a judge awarded that family $15 million. Here's another story from a separate article. The author writes the company left a wake of documented cases of extreme neglect, talking about Schwartz's company in Arkansas, maggots were found in a resident's catheter, according to documents. When the state attorney general issued fines in 2017, Skyline had taken over Ashton Place, a nursing home in Memphis, Tennessee. Less than two months later, a resident whose leg had been recently amputated was taken from the nursing home where he was found lying in feces to a hospital where nurses discovered maggots and gangrene in his leg. His death two days later prompted a state investig, which revealed that the man's dressing had not been changed for two days. Staff members told investigators that problems arose in part when Skyline told nurses to abandon electronic medical records and go back to paper record keeping. But I think as we know now, that was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to the problems that this company was going through. And like all of these stories are just horrific and they are just a couple from dozens of lawsuits against this man, against his company across 11 different states. Couple other quick examples here. One woman recalled the staff at a Little Rock, Arkansas nursing home where her mother lived being forced to serve residents raw vegetables and boxed pizza because no other food was available. Another man, a resident, fell and was left lying on the floor of another Skyline facility for nearly an hour before staff found him. Another woman said that her mother, who was suffering from dementia, wandered out of a Skyline facility in New Jersey and was eventually found sitting on ice covered ground in the parking lot at 4:30am Without a coat, shoes or socks. Again, horrific. So I say all of this just to paint the picture for you guys. Like this is about more than just money and more than just defrauding the government. This is about general human decency and medical malpract. 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All right, now on a less positive fast forward a couple of years, Joseph Schwartz pled guilty in April of 2025, so just last year and was sentenced to three years in prison and was only required to pay $1.5 million in restitution, which is very important to the story. And then in November of last year, just a Couple of months later, Trump gave him a full and unconditional pardon. However, it's important to note that this did not absolve him of state level prosecution. And so after being released from federal prison in November, he then had to turn himself into an Arizona state level facility. However, as of last month, he has been granted parole. But while he essentially gets to walk free, the families, the victims receive nothing. The employees receive nothing. The taxpayers are not being refunded the tens of millions of dollars that he overbilled and defrauded Medicaid. And it's not that he just doesn't have money, that he's some broke individual now because he and his people actually spent almost $1 million on lobbyists to help him get out of prison. $1 million to lobby the DOJ, the Trump administration, to get him out of prison. And that is just a drop in the bucket compared to the fortune that this man allegedly still has hiding. Because guess what? The government never seized his assets. They never even made him pay a fraction of what he stole. Listen to this. This was in that ProPublica article. The investigation never determined where the money went. Prosecutors said that they were not able to establish that Schwartz had used the money on a lavish lifestyle. But they said they never completed a forensic accounting of his finances, which moved money through more than 200 bank accounts. They said they believe Schwartz still controlled more than $50 million in assets. I guess it's out there. So they don't know. They didn't really check, but they think he still got $50 million. Like, of course, obviously that's what happened. But, guys, don't worry, don't worry. Because thanks to his pardon from Donald Trump, he was able to join the White House Hanukkah Party. And that's really all that matters, isn't? So you snaps for that. Thank God you defrauded the government. Elderly people died because of maggots and gangrene. But at least you got to go to the Hanukkah Party. I have no words. And the best part is, while he was at the Hanukkah Party, he made sure to go thank his friend Laura Loomer, who had advocated for him with the president. So at this point in the episode, I'm hoping that you guys are probably feeling the same way that I felt this morning as I was reading this story, which is just complete and utter frustration. I mean, there are so many different examples of hypocrisy that I could point to, but the first one that comes to mind is the fact that Trump has this, you know, hysterical troll row of presidential portraits outside the White House. He literally has the auto pen for Biden as a nod to the insane pardons that he issued his last day in office. And then here Trump is pardoning awful people. And you might go, brett, Brett is just one guy. Were they fret, it's not the first time. Because in addition to Joseph Schwartz, Trump pardoned another nursing home mogul who defrauded the government of $1.3 billion that makes Joseph Schwartz look like cheap pennies. Nothing. Then there was another one who had a $200 million scheme, also pardoned, and then even nominated a man to be ambassador to Hungary after he had his own 31 million million dollar Medicaid scheme. All of that has happened, and yet we're still supposed to sit here and believe all of the fun little press announcement about how he's gonna crack down on the Somali Medicaid fraud in Minnesota? Got it. Okay, cool. Like, do you see why so many voters feel bamboozled? They thought that we had turned a new leaf. You know, focus was on America first and the American people. Justice for the American people. After decades of tyranny and having the rug pulled over our eyes, focus on transparency and cleaning up corruption, and yet people are sitting here going, has anything really changed? Is this any different than, you know, the Republicans of yesteryear, the Democrats of yesteryear? Is it really all just the same?
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Why are we still here?
- [11:48]
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Just to suffer now, in the most perfect, ironic, depressing turn of events, literally as this story in that article, we're picking up steam. Yesterday, the Trump administration launched their task force to eliminate fraud. Like the jokes literally write themselves. Look at what they released just hours after this article was published. What we're gonna actually do is force the bureaucracy to take this seriously and work together as political principles to make sure that we stop allowing fraudsters to steal the American people's money. Is Trump committed? Are you actually committed? I'm not seeing anything really happen. Like, cool hype video. Love that you did a press release and you had the fact sheet about everything you're gonna be going after. But I. The American people are going, okay, like, I'll see it when I believe it. Cool video. But we're all reading this article about how Trump pardoned a guy who defrauded the elderly and American taxpayers of $36 million, $35 million, whatever it is. And every single comment under that video was pointing to this story and the other 88 white collar fraudsters who have gotten pardons from Trump starting in his first administration. One person commented about the hypocrisy and just the irony of the timing and said making a big deal about going after fraud, standing up a task force headed by the VP hammering Minnesota for not going hard against fraud, taking advantage of the and then this just looks terrible. Another person said, I'll be honest, one of the things that Trump can legitimately be criticized for is blatant corruption like this. There is no reason to give pardons to scumbags like Joseph Schwartz or that asshole who was employing illegals at his kosher meatpacking plant. The Democrats are obviously far worse on this score. Trump does not pardon convicted terrorists like Biden, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama or Jimmy Carter did. But it is still a terrible look and smacks of quid pro quo. And I think that last point is really important to note because nothing that's happening right now is specific to Trump. It is not revolutionary. Like people on the left cannot point to Trump and say, ha ha ha. We're so much better than you like. No bullshit. You are not. You all did it too. Welcome to the Uni party, where everybody gets to play and profit except for normal Americans. We just get to sit and watch as all of this transpires. And what's so frustrating is that voters genuinely believed that this time would be better and would be different. For example, just a couple months ago, they hoped that when Nick Shirley broke the Internet talking about the Minnesota Somali fraud that something would actually happen, that arrests would really be made. But instead they got to watch Kristi Noem do glam photo shoots in Minnesota. They got to watch hype tiktoks of ice running through the streets of Minneapolis. They're watching hype videos about a task force while a story of glaring hypocrisy goes viral, and they wonder why people are tired.
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Eritard they're exhausted. Like even James o', Keefe, who has spent his entire career trying to expose corruption and fraud on every side of the political aisle. Even he is questioning why he and so many other investigative journalists continue to Put their lives and reputation and finances on the line when nothing actually happens, when no arrests are made. Just watch this.
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I guess the question for your audience is a rhetorical question, is do you want me to continue doing this? Do you want me to continue exposing it? Does it even matter? I mean, that's a rhetorical question. I'm not going to answer that. Because I can stop, I can give up, I can retire, but I'm not gonna put my life in harm's way. And my people's life because they were almost killed for nothing. It's not worth it. I think you would agree with that. So I can go away. I can be on a sabbatical until someone is arrested, but I'm not gonna put my people's life in danger every week for nothing to happen.
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And he makes a great point, and I don't blame him in the slightest because the American people are watching as James o' Keefe and my friend Savannah Hern and Nick Shirley and Cam Higbee expose all of these things while nothing happens. Meanwhile, we are still dealing with Iran, and the goalpost continues to be moved and shifted. The government is still shut down. Republicans cannot get the SAVE act passed. We can't even get basic voter id. Trump is saying that he's done with mass deportations, but sure got a task force to handle fraud. I'm just. I'm tired. I'm tired. Essentially, what I'm trying to say is we'll believe it when we see it. Anyway, guys, I'll see you tomorrow. We will talk about Big Booby Noem. I'll see you then.