DOJ to Retry Esformes
Health Care Fraud
CNBC reported that the Justice Department will retry sleazy nursing home owner Philip Esformes. Criminal charges include health-care fraud. The Justice Department obtained an indictment of Esformes for the largest health-care fraud scheme ever prosecuted by the department. The department said the scheme spanned two decades. The amount of the fraud exceeds an estimated $1.3 billion in taxpayer funds.
The indictment said Esformes bought a $360,000 Greubel Forsey watch, a $1.6 million Ferrari Aperta automobile and paid for female escorts. He also paid $300,000 in bribes to get his son into the Wharton School of Business. Esformes reportedly paid $400,000 for bribes and money laundering.
Deputy Special Agent in Charge Denise Stemen of the FBI’s Miami Field Office, said:
“Philip Esformes is a man driven by almost unbounded greed.”
Judge Robert Scola said that “the length and scope and breadth of the criminal conduct” of the defendant was “seemingly unmatched in our community, if not our country.” However, Donald Trump commuted his 20-year prison sentence.
Why?
Why would Trump help this POS. The New York Times published an article detailing the secret role of the Aleph Institute in getting Trump to act for this criminal. The Times noted that the Esformes family for years donated millions to Hasidic Jews known as Chabad-Lubavitch. That group has ties to Jared Kushner.
Trump also issued a pardon to Kushner’s father Charles. Prosecutors convicted him and sentenced him to prison in 2004 for tax evasion, witness tampering and making unlawful campaign contributions.
Charles Kushner hired a prostitute to lure a family member into a sexual tryst. Charles Kushner then sent a secretly recorded videotape of that account to the man’s wife, the sister of Charles. Sleazy.
Plan to Retry
The Justice Department’s plan to retry Esformes on six criminal counts that jurors at his Florida federal court trial deadlocked on. The jury convicted him of 20 other crimes. There is no federal statute that prohibit prosecutors from retrying a defendant on so-called hung counts. Even if they have had their sentence commuted by the president for counts on which they were convicted.
“The President’s commutation order does not impact any of the counts on which the jury failed to reach a verdict. By its plain terms, the President’s commutation order is expressly limited to the counts of conviction. If President Trump had intended to grant Esformes a pardon, or if the President had intended to grant Esformes clemency on the hung counts, he would have communicated as much in the clemency warrant.”
I hope they are able to prove their case this time.