Trump pardons nursing home owners after endangering adults and stealing millions

ProPublica reported on Joseph Schwartz. Schwartz was found guilty for running a $39 million payroll tax scheme connected to his nursing home. He was sentenced to 3 years in prison.

A content and fairly young Doris Coulson liked to watch cooking shows and show her granddaughter off at Hillview Post Acute and Rehabilitation Center. Unfortunately, a few months after she was admitted, the nursing home was bought by Joseph Schwartz’s for-profit company and Coulson soon started to feel the changes. A few months after the purchase, Coulson was found unresponsive and hanging off the side of her bed—despite her medical records reading “NPO” (nothing by mouth) she had been fed scrambled eggs, and the meal was later found in her lungs. She was transported to the hospital and soon entered a coma, dying a few days later at only 71 years old.

As one of many victims of the for-profit nursing home switch, Coulson’s family took the case to New Jersey court where owner Joseph Schwartz was easily found guilty for eliminating life-saving care in search of profit. The judge awarded the family nearly $19 million in damages.

Yet after serving just 3 months, he received a full and unconventional pardon from President Donald Trump. Coulson’s family never received the damages they were owed for the life of their loved one, nor did the taxpayers receive their tens of millions they were robbed of. Contrary to the ruling of American courts, but thanks to the President, Schwartz has been reunited with his millions of unlawful dollars and is free to continue hurting vulnerable Americans.

This is just one out of numerous examples where Trump has pardoned malicious nursing-home owners such as Philip Esformes, and Judith Negron, among others. In fact, after nursing homeowner Benjamin Landa was suspected of stealing $20 million from Medicare, Trump generously rewarded him by appointing him to ambassador to Hungary.

As Americans get accustomed to President Trump’s normalization of corruption in politics, they should also settle in for increased greed in their hospitals and nursing homes; when the bar is lowered for our nation’s leaders, it is placed on the ground for our profit-seekers.