Wednesday, May 28, 2025. Annette’s Roundup for Democracy.
Meet the New “Tell It Like It Is” New York Times.
Here was yesterday’s digital headline on an I-Phone.
The article that fleshed the story out was quite explicit too. You might almost think the New York Times was a newspaper committed to truth.
Trump Pardoned Tax Cheat After Mother Attended $1 Million Dinner.
Paul Walczak’s pardon application cited his mother’s support for the president, including raising millions of dollars and a connection to a plot to publicize a Biden family diary.
Paul Walczak in 2011. His recent pardon by President Trump spared him from having to pay nearly $4.4 million in restitution and serving 18 months in prison.Credit...Bill Ingram/Palm Beach Post/USA TODAY NETWORK.
As Paul Walczak awaited sentencing early this year, his best hope for avoiding prison time rested with the newly inaugurated president.
Mr. Walczak, a former nursing home executive who had pleaded guilty to tax crimes days after the 2024 election, submitted a pardon application to President Trump around Inauguration Day. The application focused not solely on Mr. Walczak’s offenses but also on the political activity of his mother, Elizabeth Fago.
Ms. Fago had raised millions of dollars for Mr. Trump’s campaigns and those of other Republicans, the application said. It also highlighted her connections to an effort to sabotage Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s 2020 campaign by publicizing the addiction diary of his daughter Ashley Biden — an episode that drew law enforcement scrutiny.
Mr. Walczak’s pardon application argued that his criminal prosecution was motivated more by his mother’s efforts for Mr. Trump than by his admitted use of money earmarked for employees’ taxes to fund an extravagant lifestyle.
Still, weeks went by and no pardon was forthcoming, even as Mr. Trump issued clemency grants to hundreds of other allies.
Then, Ms. Fago was invited to a $1-million-per-person fund-raising dinner last month that promised face-to-face access to Mr. Trump at his private Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla.
Less than three weeks after she attended the dinner, Mr. Trump signed a full and unconditional pardon.
It came just in the nick of time for Mr. Walczak, sparing him from having to pay nearly $4.4 million in restitution and from reporting to prison for an 18-month sentence that had been handed down just 12 days earlier. A judge had justified the incarceration by declaring that there “is not a get-out-of-jail-free card” for the rich.
The pardon, however, indicated otherwise. The case of Ms. Fago and Mr. Walczak is the latest example of the president’s willingness to use his clemency powers to reward allies who advance his political causes, and to punish his enemies.
Mr. Walczak’s mother, Elizabeth Fago, in 2018. She raised money for Mr. Trump’s campaigns.
Mr. Walczak’s pardon application was described to The New York Times by a person who received it but was not authorized to share.
Ms. Fago, Mr. Walczak and his lawyer did not respond to questions.
A White House official echoed the framing in Mr. Walczak’s application, asserting in a statement to The Times that he was “targeted by the Biden administration over his family’s conservative politics.”
A $2 Million Yacht
Mr. Walczak, 55, joined his mother’s nursing home business after dropping out of college, eventually becoming chief executive. After she sold the company in 2007, they invested $18 million in a new nursing home venture based in South Florida, where they lived a luxurious lifestyle.
By 2011, prosecutors said, Mr. Walczak had stopped paying employment taxes.
Between 2016 and 2019, they said, he withheld more than $10 million from the paychecks of the nurses, doctors and others who worked at his facilities under the pretext of using it for their Social Security, Medicare and federal income taxes. Instead, he used some of the money to buy a $2 million yacht and to pay for travel and purchases at high-end retailers, including Bergdorf Goodman and Cartier, prosecutors said.
He was charged in February 2023 with 13 counts of tax crimes.
By the time he pleaded guilty to two of the counts and agreed to pay the restitution on Nov. 15, 2024, Mr. Trump had been elected for a second term in the White House.
The family had reason to believe the incoming president might look fondly on a pardon application.
Ms. Fago, 74, had helped host at least three fund-raisers for Mr. Trump’s campaigns. She and her son Joey Fago (Mr. Walczak’s half brother) and his wife attended V.I.P. events at Mr. Trump’s 2017 and 2025 inaugurations, according to social media posts, including one in which she was shown posing with Mr. Trump.
An ‘Unbelievable’ Diary
Aimee Harris, right, discovered Ashley Biden’s diary.
During Mr. Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign, Ms. Fago tried to help the candidate in other ways.
Ashley Biden had left her diary and other belongings in a house where she had been staying in Delray Beach, Fla., when she moved to Philadelphia during the campaign, telling a friend that she planned to return to retrieve the belongings later. A woman who moved in, Aimee Harris, discovered the diary and enlisted Robert Kurlander, a longtime friend and former housemate, to help sell it.
Mr. Kurlander contacted Ms. Fago. When she was first told of the diary, she said she thought it would help Mr. Trump’s chances of winning the election, according to people familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the matter.
Mr. Kurlander and Ms. Harris brought Ms. Biden’s diary to a September 2020 fund-raiser at Ms. Fago’s home in the exclusive Admirals Cove community of Jupiter, Fla. The featured guests were Mr. Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. and the younger Mr. Trump’s girlfriend at the time, Kimberly Guilfoyle.
At the fund-raiser, the diary was shown to Caroline Wren, the campaign finance consultant who helped organize the event.
“So I go back there, I start reading through it, and there was just unbelievable stuff,” Ms. Wren recalled last year on a podcast. “I contacted the campaign attorneys, and then that campaign attorneys said, ‘Be very careful, don’t take possession of this.’ They wrote up a whole memo and then they contacted the F.B.I. and said, ‘You need to come pick this up immediately.’”
The F.B.I. did not retrieve the diary. Instead, Mr. Kurlander and Ms. Harris entered negotiations to provide it to Project Veritas, a Trump-allied undercover media group that had been tipped to the diary’s existence by Stephanie Walczak, Ms. Fago’s daughter.
Robert Kurlander pleaded guilty in 2022 and admitted to conspiring to steal, transport and sell Ms. Biden’s diary.
The Justice Department during Mr. Trump’s first term opened an investigation into the matter after a representative of the Biden family reported to federal authorities before the 2020 election that several of Ms. Biden’s personal items had been stolen in a burglary.
Ms. Fago and other family members spent election night 2020 at a White House watch party. After Mr. Trump lost, they were invited back the next month to attend a White House Christmas party.
During his final weeks in office, Ms. Fago was among a slew of loyalists tapped by Mr. Trump for appointment to government boards and commissions. She resisted an effort by the Biden administration to rescind her appointment to the National Cancer Advisory Board, according to her son’s pardon application, which said that she told a board representative that Mr. Biden did not have the right to remove her.
The scrutiny of the diary matter continued when Mr. Biden took office.
In November 2021, investigators obtained a search warrant related to a Project Veritas official that sought information about “potential co-conspirators,” including communications with Ms. Fago, Ms. Walczak, Mr. Kurlander, Ms. Harris and others “about obtaining, transporting, transferring, disseminating or otherwise disposing of Ashley Biden’s stolen property.”
Mr. Kurlander and Ms. Harris would later plead guilty, admitting to conspiring to steal, transport and sell the diary to Project Veritas. Ms. Harris was sentenced to one month in prison. Mr. Kurlander is scheduled to be sentenced next month.
A New Hope
When Mr. Trump won the presidency for a second time, it offered hope to Project Veritas, Ms. Fago and Mr. Walczak.
In January, with Mr. Trump preparing to move back into the White House, Ms. Fago and her family traveled to Washington for the inauguration. They got V.I.P. access to the Trump Victory rally at the Capital One Arena in Washington.
On Feb. 5, Mr. Trump’s Justice Department said it was closing the investigation into the diary. Ms. Fago and Ms. Walczak were not charged, nor was anyone from Project Veritas.
In the meantime, a pardon application was submitted on Mr. Walczak’s behalf. It suggested that Donald Trump Jr., as well as Ms. Guilfoyle and other Trump allies, supported his clemency.
They all agreed, according to the application, that the only reason Mr. Walczak was prosecuted criminally was that he was the son of a prominent Trump supporter.
Ms. Guilfoyle declined to comment. Mr. Trump did not respond to a request for comment.
The application cited Mr. Biden’s justification for issuing a sweeping pardon to his son Hunter Biden for tax and gun crimes in December. The elder Mr. Biden had claimed in a statement that Hunter “was singled out only because he is my son.”
As Ms. Fago and Mr. Walczak awaited word on the pardon, she was invited to the Mar-a-Lago fund-raiser with Mr. Trump.
An invitation billed it as an intimate “candlelight dinner” with “very limited” space available to people who paid $1 million each. It was sponsored by MAGA Inc., a political action committee that can accept unlimited donations to support candidates and causes backed by Mr. Trump.
The ask was far more than her previous largest federal donation on record — $100,000 to the Republican National Committee in 2002 — and dwarfed the more than $12,000 she had directly donated to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign committees.
Two people briefed on the candlelight dinner said that Ms. Fago attended. It is not clear whether she donated to MAGA Inc., or how much.
Representatives for MAGA Inc. did not respond to questions. The group has until the end of July to disclose the identities of donors from the first half of this year, which will most likely include those who paid to attend the dinner.
In a brief interview, Joey Fago downplayed the significance of his mother’s connection to the diary saga.
“There was like hundreds of pardons,” he said. “I’m sure there’s plenty of other people you can write about.”
The White House official cited the Biden administration’s effort to oust Ms. Fago from the cancer board as evidence of the political motivations that contributed to Mr. Trump’s decision to issue the pardon.
After Mr. Walczak was pardoned in the tax case, he celebrated with his mother and family while wearing a red Trump-style hat reading “Make Paul Great Again,” according to a social media post capturing the celebration.
In the post, Joey Fago wrote, “What God has ahead of you, is greater than what is behind you,” along with the hashtag “MAGA.”
One more thing.
This appeared on the digital Times front page too.
Take heart. Trump is losing on the law firms.
‘Absurd!’ Judge blasts Trump executive order targeting top law firm.
A federal judge on Tuesday angrily tore into President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting the top law firm WilmerHale and struck down the entire order as unconstitutional.
“The cornerstone of the American system of justice is an independent judiciary and an independent bar willing to tackle unpopular cases, however daunting. The Founding Fathers knew this!” wrote Judge Richard Leon in the scathing, exclamation-point-filled opinion in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.
To let Trump’s order stand, Leon wrote, “would be unfaithful to the judgment and vision of the Founding Fathers!”
The judge, who was appointed to the federal bench by former President George W. Bush, suffused his 73-page order with a tone of open fury rarely seen in judicial pronouncements.
“Please—that dog won’t hunt!” Leon wrote in response to arguments from the Trump administration that WilmerHale’s claims of harm resulting from the executive order were merely speculation.
“This argument is absurd!” the judge later wrote, balking at the administration’s attempt to dispute whether Trump’s order caused WilmerHale to lose clients.
Since becoming president a second time, Trump has issued a laundry list of presidential orders and memos targeting law firms that have either worked on cases brought against him or hired his political enemies.
Trump’s order targeting WilmerHale explicitly criticized the firm for hiring Robert Mueller, who served as Department of Justice special counsel and oversaw a probe of possible coordination between Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia.
As part of the order, Trump instructed the U.S. attorney general to suspend security clearances for the firm’s lawyers and he commanded federal agency heads to terminate WilmerHale’s government contracts. Trump’s order also barred WilmerHale employees from entering U.S. government buildings and prohibited federal agencies from hiring the firm’s lawyers.
The law firm sued in late March, calling the order an “unprecedented assault” on the foundations of the judicial system and seeking to have it invalidated.
″The Court’s decision to permanently block the unlawful executive order in its entirety strongly affirms our foundational constitutional rights and those of our clients,” WilmerHale said in a statement after Leon’s ruling Tuesday afternoon. “We remain proud to defend our firm, our people, and our clients.”
The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on Leon’s opinion. (CNBC)
Read Judge Leon’s opinion. Here.
One more thing.
Remember - This is the 3rd Judge who rejected Trump’s orders punishing law firms.
As Common Dreams noted, “the Big Law firms that settled [Paul Weiss, Skadden Arps, Kirkland, & Ellis and other settling firms] face new uncertainties about their attorneys, their clients, and their futures. They could admit their monumental mistakes, cut their losses, and walk away from a bad deal that is becoming worse by the day. But that would require humility, sound judgment, and a spine.”
New fights start.
NPR sues Trump over executive order cutting federal funding.
NPR President and CEO Katherine Maher testifies during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing at the U.S. Capitol on March 26, 2025. NPR and several member stations are suing the Trump administration over an executive order directing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to stop funding NPR and PBS.
- National Public Radio sued President Donald Trump over his executive order to cease all federal funding for the broadcaster.
- The order "threatens the existence of [the] public radio system that millions of Americans across the country rely on," NPR wrote in the lawsuit.
- Trump asserted in the executive order that government funding of the news is "not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence."
National Public Radio on Tuesday sued President Donald Trump over his executive order to cease all federal funding for the nonprofit broadcaster.
Trump's May 1 order violates the First Amendment's protections of speech and the press and steps on Congress' authority, NPR and three other public radio stations wrote in the lawsuit filed in federal court in Washington, D.C.
The order "also threatens the existence of a public radio system that millions of Americans across the country rely on for vital news and information," according to the legal complaint against Trump and a handful of top officials and federal agencies.
NPR and three of its member stations — Colorado Public Radio, Aspen Public Radio and KSUT Public Radio — want Trump's order permanently blocked and declared unconstitutional.
It "expressly aims to punish and control Plaintiffs' news coverage and other speech the Administration deems 'biased,'" attorneys for the news outlets wrote. "It cannot stand."
NPR and the Public Broadcasting Service, or PBS, had previously vowed to challenge Trump's order, which asserts that government funding of the news is "not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence."
Founded in 1970, NPR says it employs hundreds of journalists whose work is broadcast by more than 1,000 local stations. While most of its initial funding was allocated by Congress and delivered through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, or CPB, the arrangement was changed in the 1980s as the Reagan Administration sought to shrink public media funding.
Now, the CPB sends federal money to local member stations, who then buy NPR programming. Those member station fees comprise 30% of NPR’s funding, while just 1% of NPR’s revenue comes directly from the federal government, according to the organization. The largest share of its funding, 36%, comes from corporate sponsorship, NPR says.
The CPB “is creating media to support a particular political party on the taxpayers’ dime,” White House spokesman Harrison Fields said in a statement to CNBC.
“Therefore, the President is exercising his lawful authority to limit funding to NPR and PBS. The President was elected with a mandate to ensure efficient use of taxpayer dollars, and he will continue to use his lawful authority to achieve that objective,” Fields said.
The lawsuit argues that Congress has long recognized that the speech it supports with public funding “remains private—and thus fully protected from censorship, retaliation or other forms of governmental interference.”
“Yet the President—criticizing what he perceives as ‘bias’ in the award-winning journalism and cultural programming produced by NPR—has issued an Executive Order that thwarts Congress’s intent and the First Amendment rights of Plaintiffs to be free from the government’s attempts to control their private speech, and their rights to be free from retaliation aimed at punishing and chilling protected speech, journalistic activities, and expressive association,” the attorneys wrote.
“The Order is textbook retaliation and viewpoint-based discrimination in violation of the First Amendment,” they wrote.
The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on the lawsuit. (CNBC)
According to Newsweek, this was true. NPR uses conservative Supreme Court justice's words against Donald Trump.
A lawsuit filed Tuesday by National Public Radio (NPR) against the Trump administration quotes words scribed by former conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia nearly 40 years ago.
On the sixth page of the 43-page suit, plaintiffs cite the words of Scalia from his dissent in the June 1988 decision Morrison v. Olson: "It is not always obvious when the government has acted with a retaliatory purpose in violation of the First Amendment. 'But this wolf comes as a wolf.'"
That case determined that the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, a federal law passed after the Watergate scandal, was constitutional. Scalia argued for the separation of powers, claiming the law deprives the president of "exclusive control."
"Frequently an issue of this sort will come before the Court clad, so to speak, in sheep's clothing: the potential of the asserted principle to effect important change in the equilibrium of power is not immediately evident, and must be discerned by a careful and perceptive analysis," Scalia wrote in his dissent. "But this wolf comes as a wolf."
Plaintiffs argue that Trump's executive order "violates the expressed will of Congress and the First Amendment's bedrock guarantees of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of association, and also threatens the existence of a public radio system that millions of Americans across the country rely on for vital news and information."
The three Colorado-based news stations are Aspen Public Radio, Colorado Public Radio, and KSUT Public Radio.
Theodore J. Boutrous, Jr., a partner at Gibson Dunn and counsel for NPR, told Newsweek on Tuesday that Trump's executive order "is blatantly unconstitutional."
"It contravenes the will of Congress and violates the constitutional rights of NPR and its member stations," Boutrous said. "The Public Broadcasting Act and the First Amendment both protect the editorial independence of NPR and local public radio stations that receive federal funding from precisely this kind of governmental interference.
"And, by seeking to halt federal funding to NPR, the executive order harms not only NPR and its member stations, but also the tens of millions of Americans across the country who rely on them for news and cultural programming, and vital emergency information."
The suit references Trump's past statements about NPR and PBS, including that their news and other content is not "fair, accurate, or unbiased." The president has also said that they spread "radical, woke propaganda disguised as 'news.'"
NPR CEO Katherine Maher, in a statement issued Tuesday, called Trump's executive order an "affront" to NPR and its 246 locally owned, nonprofit, noncommercial member stations across all 50 states and territories.
Attorney Bradford Cohen, who has represented Trump as a client, told Newsweek that lawsuits against Trump traditionally fall by the wayside and "for the most part" are unsuccessful against him and his policies.
"I think the lawsuit lacks substance and teeth and is most likely for press purposes. ... I believe with the current case law this lawsuit is ripe for a motion to dismiss," Cohen said. "I am sure the president is apprised of the lawsuits filed against the administration, and the DOJ takes a very aggressive stance in terms of dealing with them.
"I wouldn't be surprised if NPR ends up in a worse legal position than they are currently facing."
Former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani views the suit differently, saying that the First Amendment argument at the core of the litigation is probably NPR's best legal avenue forward.
"I do think NPR does have a very strong argument," Rahmani told Newsweek. "These similar cases have been winning in the courts, and I expect NPR to win as well."
He said other factors that could impact the case include the appropriations clause in the Constitution, which essentially states that Congress has "the power of the purse."
What People Are Saying
President Donald Trump on Truth Social in April: "NO MORE FUNDING FOR NPR, A TOTAL SCAM! EDITOR SAID THEY HAVE NO REPUBLICANS, AND IS ONLY USED TO 'DAMAGE TRUMP.'" THEY ARE A LIBERAL DISINFORMATION MACHINE. NOT ONE DOLLAR!!!"
Katherine Maher, CEO of NPR, in a statement on Tuesday: "This is retaliatory, viewpoint-based discrimination in violation of the First Amendment. The Supreme Court has ruled numerous times over the past 80 years that the government does not have the right to determine what counts as 'biased.' NPR will never agree to this infringement of our constitutional rights, or the constitutional rights of our Member stations, and NPR will not compromise our commitment to an independent free press and journalistic integrity."
PBS President and CEO Paula Kerger, earlier this month: "The president's blatantly unlawful executive order...threatens our ability to serve the American public with educational programming, as we have for the past 50-plus years." (Newsweek).
Read the NPR lawsuit here. 👇
NPR’s Lawsuit against Trump.
Winning Advice.
To Take On Trump, Think Like a Lion.
One late afternoon long ago at the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania, I was with a group of birders when we located a pride of sleeping lions. As evening approached, they yawned big-fanged yawns and slowly roused. About 10 in total, scarred veterans and prime young hunters.
It was time for them to hunt. But first they licked one another, pressed bodies and indulged in much face rubbing. They reaffirmed, “Yes, we are together. We remain as one.” Only then did they set off.
Their tawny bodies flowed up into the tall golden grass along the ridge of a low hill. One sat; the others kept walking. Ten yards on, another sat while the others walked. And so on until the ridge was lined with a hidden picket fence of hungry lions all attentively gazing onto a plain where a herd of unsuspecting zebras grazed. Then one, who’d remained standing, poured herself downhill. Her job was to spook the zebras into running uphill, directly into her veteran sisters and their spry younger hunters.
Rubbing noses does not catch a zebra. But only after the lions rubbed noses and reaffirmed a shared identity were the zebras in any danger. Those lions showed me that a sense of community is prerequisite for coordinated strategy. They did not succeed in that hunt. But they would try again. Failure, these lions had learned, is necessary for success.
Like the lions, I learned about success through failures. My earliest lessons were in seemingly lost causes. As a child poring over picture books in Suffolk County on Long Island, N.Y., my favorite was about birds of prey — eagles, ospreys, peregrine falcons — all endangered at the time. By my teens, I’d read sickening accounts of how DDT was causing their eggs to break. I assumed I’d never see any of these magnificent raptors: Extinction was expected. I had seen landscapers in our neighborhood spraying trees, insects raining down and robins eating those insects and going into convulsions right in the street while I was walking home from school.
But in 1966 several adamant people sued the county’s mosquito commission to stop the indiscriminate spraying of DDT in our salt marshes. They shocked everyone by winning, a prelude to the banning of the destructive pesticide nationwide in 1972 when I was in high school. Half a century later, those doomed birds have recovered. Art Cooley, a high school biology teacher who led the effort in Suffolk County, reflected years later, “It’s possible for a small group of people who are committed and have their facts right to really make a change in the way society does business.” Sometimes facing what seems hopeless is how we realize what is possible.
As individuals, we cannot always formulate the full fix. But we can be a part of a movement to forge one. And I believe a fix to correct the depredations of the White House’s current occupant is coming.
The Trump administration continues slashing funds and services that have protected families and seniors; kept our land, air and waters clean; kept poor children fed and vaccinated; enabled American science to be on the cutting edge of medicine and technology; honored the nation’s social safety net; and on and on. Summer jobs that our students had lined up on public lands and in laboratories have been canceled, and former students have lost their full-time dream jobs. Everyone will be touched by one or more of these assaults.
We have seen acquiescence by tech billionaires, big law firms caving to the president and dozens of colleges and universities abandoning their commitment to diversity.
But acquiescence is futile. Keeping one’s head down is stupid. As the historian Timothy Snyder noted in his book “On Tyranny,” appeasement is how people cede their power to would-be tyrants.
The public, states, the judiciary and private institutions are stepping up. The administration is facing a barrage of legal challenges to its policies. As of May 22, in at least 170 rulings, courts have stayed some of the administration’s policies. We are now seeing united opposition by 150 universities and several big law firms.
As the administration dismantles agencies and policies that protect people, we must all say, very publicly, what is on our minds. We must support the courts and people skilled at defending the Constitution. We can reverse fear and acquiescence, energize public engagement and demonstrate how unpopular these moves are. If the rule of law holds, if voters wake Congress, the country will come back on keel.
We need a laser focus on election integrity for 2026 and 2028. Without functional elections, we’re lost.
We must support independent media.
The huge cuts to scientific research and government agencies threaten to derail cutting-edge medical and environmental research that can save lives and perhaps protect agriculture and coastal communities from the chaos of warming and extreme weather. We must loudly oppose those cuts. Already universities are slowing admissions of Ph.D. students. One missing generation of scientists means the end of U.S. dominance; no one will be on hand to train a new generation.
Like those waking lions, we don’t know how the coming challenges will play out. We know that there will be failures and that success is possible. But it’s important that we now reaffirm our sense of pride, our shared purpose, our dedication to our common good. As the lions showed me, community comes before strategy.
So many people are waiting in the tall grass of decency, ready to rush out to restore the nation that we have all loved, the great America that promises liberty and justice for all.
So let us rouse and rub noses and greet and remind ourselves who we are. (Op-Ed, Carl Safina, New York Times).
