All posts tagged: pardoned

Trump pardoned nursing home owner who owed almost  million to a grieving family

Trump pardoned nursing home owner who owed almost $19 million to a grieving family

When Amanda Coulson was a child, she visited her mother at work at a hospital in Little Rock, Arkansas. Doris Coulson was a nurse, and one memory never left her daughter. A code blue was called, and suddenly her mother was racing alongside a patient’s bed. “She jumped into the middle of the bed and was doing CPR in the bed as it flew down the hallway,” Amanda Coulson said years later in court. “I realized she didn’t play at work all day.” That was the kind of caregiver her mother was: someone who understood what quality care meant because she had spent her life giving it to others. After Doris Coulson retired, she became a patient at a nursing home owned by Joseph Schwartz, a New Jersey businessman who was buying up nursing homes across the country. The staff wasn’t supposed to serve her solid food, but they did, and she died. Doctors told the family they found scrambled eggs in her lungs. Nine years after Coulson’s death, President Donald Trump pardoned Schwartz in …

Lobbyist for Man Pardoned by Trump in Plea Talks on Extortion Charges

Lobbyist for Man Pardoned by Trump in Plea Talks on Extortion Charges

NEW YORK, April 7 (Reuters) – A lobbyist who helped a ⁠nursing ⁠home owner convicted of tax fraud ⁠secure a pardon from President Donald Trump is in talks with prosecutors ​over a potential plea agreement to resolve extortion charges, court records showed.  Attorney Joshua Nass, founder of lobbying firm Merkava ‌Strategies, was arrested on March 13 ‌on charges of hiring someone to intimidate a former client and his son into paying him $500,000. ⁠Court papers do ⁠not identify the former client, but two people familiar with the matter ​said it was Joseph Schwartz, the nursing home owner who received the pardon last year.  In a court filing on Monday night, Nass’ lawyers asked Brooklyn-based U.S. Magistrate Judge James Cho to push the deadline for prosecutors to secure ​an indictment to April 27 from April 13 as talks continue. “This additional time is necessary to afford ⁠the parties ⁠time to confer regarding ⁠a potential resolution ​of the case,” Nass’ defense lawyers wrote, adding that prosecutors consented to the request.   Nass has not ​entered a plea. His lawyers …

Cuba begins prisoner release after announcing more than 2,000 pardoned

Cuba begins prisoner release after announcing more than 2,000 pardoned

Cuban authorities began to free prisoners on Friday after announcing it would pardon 2,010 inmates, the second release in less than a month as it faces heightened US pressure. More than 20 inmates came out of La Lima penitentiary in east Havana, holding their release papers, crying and hugging relatives who had been waiting for them all morning, AFP journalists said. “Thank you for this opportunity that they gave us,” said Albis Gainza, 46, who had served half of a six-year sentence for robbery. He said he could not sleep after learning he would be released. “This needs to keep going … (and) more are released,” Gainza told AFP. The Cuban government announced late Thursday that it would pardon 2,010 prisoners as a “humanitarian and sovereign gesture” to mark Holy Week. It did not link it to talks with the United States, but the move came days after US President Donald Trump eased a de facto oil blockade of Cuba by allowing a Russian tanker to deliver crude to the fuel-starved island. Read moreRussian tanker …

Pardoned Jan. 6 rioter gets life in prison for child abuse : NPR

Pardoned Jan. 6 rioter gets life in prison for child abuse : NPR

Andrew Paul Johnson was sentenced to life in prison for sexually abusing children. Johnson received a full pardon from President Donald Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 riot. Dozens of former Capitol rioters have gotten into legal trouble since their pardons. Hernando County Sheriff’s Office hide caption toggle caption Hernando County Sheriff’s Office Just months after President Trump’s mass pardons for Jan. 6 rioters freed him from prison, a Florida man repeatedly sexually abused two middle-school aged children. On Thursday, the man, Andrew Paul Johnson, was sentenced to life in prison, after a Florida jury found him guilty of five criminal charges, including molestation, lewd and lascivious exhibition and transmission of material harmful to a minor. Police reported that Johnson, 45, tried to keep the children quiet by telling them he would share millions of dollars in restitution money he expected to receive from the Trump administration in connection with his Jan. 6 case. “He said not to tell anybody,” one of Johnson’s victims testified. Both children later testified that they were too …

Election Denier Tina Peters Was ‘Pardoned’ by Trump. She’s Still in Prison

Election Denier Tina Peters Was ‘Pardoned’ by Trump. She’s Still in Prison

Throughout this period, Trump has continued to post about Peters’ cause on Truth Social, specifically targeting Polis, whom he called “the SLEAZEBAG Governor of Colorado” on December 3. On New Year’s Eve, Trump wrote on Truth Social: ”Hard to wish [Peters] a Happy New Year, but to the Scumbag Governor and the disgusting “Republican” (RINO!) DA … I wish them only the worst. May they rot in Hell. FREE TINA PETERS!” (Trump has posted about Peters’ cause eight times on Truth Social over the last nine months.) At the time, Peters’ legal team, led by Peter Ticktin, who attended the New York Military Academy with Trump, were putting in the work. On December 7, Ticktin sent a nine-page letter to Trump outlining his client’s case and seeking a pardon. Four days later, on December 11, Trump wrote on Truth Social: “Today I am granting Tina a full Pardon for her attempts to expose Voter Fraud in the Rigged 2020 Presidential Election.” Though Trump has no power to pardon those convicted on state charges, Ticktin claimed …

Five years after Jan. 6, dozens of pardoned insurrectionists have been arrested again

Five years after Jan. 6, dozens of pardoned insurrectionists have been arrested again

This story was originally reported by Mariel Padilla of The 19th. Meet Mariel and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy. When President Donald Trump on the first day of his second term granted clemency to nearly 1,600 people convicted in connection with the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, Linnaea Honl-Stuenkel immediately set up a Google Alert to track these individuals and see if they’d end up back in the criminal justice system. Honl-Stuenkel, who works at a government watchdog nonprofit, said she didn’t want people to forget the horror of that day — despite the president’s insistence that it was a nonviolent event, a “day of love.” Honl-Stuenkel, the digital director at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW) in Washington, D.C., said the Google Alerts came quickly. The list eventually became a more formal report, published in December, that identified at least 33 insurrectionists who have been rearrested, charged or sentenced for other crimes since January 6, 2021. The charges range from possession of child pornography to sexual assault, child …