Lawyer Arrested for Allegedly Extorting Client He Successfully Got a Trump Pardon For

(AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

A lobbyist and lawyer who successfully lobbied President Donald Trump to pardon his client for committing tax crimes, has been charged with trying to extort money from that same client.

Josh Nass, 34, was arraigned Saturday in Brooklyn after being taken into custody by FBI agents in Midtown Manhattan on Friday.

An associate told The New York Times that Nass had been meeting at a hotel with other clemency seekers when he was arrested.

Court papers showed that Nass had been paid $100,000 by his client Joseph Schwartz, “who was convicted of tax crimes related to a nursing-home empire that had collapsed amid allegations of endangering the residents and defrauding his employees,” the report said.

Schwartz had pleaded guilty in 2024 to tax crimes in federal and Arkansas courts for “failing to pay nearly $40 million in employment and payroll taxes, as well as to a state Medicaid fraud charge in Arkansas,” The Times said. “He was sentenced to three years in federal prison.”

Schwartz reportedly retained multiple lobbyists and lawyers “to push for clemency from Mr. Trump.” He reported to begin his prison term in August, but received President Trump’s pardon in November and was set free, the report said.

Schwartz then reported to state prison in Arkansas but was released on parole in January “after only two and a half weeks by a board appointed by the governor,” the report said.

“The White House has denied that Mr. Trump’s clemency decisions are shaped by lobbyists,” The Times wrote.

Nass was apparently owed an additional $500,000, and instructed someone he hired for $3,000 to “do anything and everything” to collect the outstanding funds, the court filing showed. Nass eventually agreed to pay the individual $15,000 to finish the job, the papers said.

“The papers strongly suggest that the targets of Mr. Nass’s threats were Mr. Schwartz and one of his sons, though they are not named,” The Times reported.

In a statement, Joseph Nocella Jr., the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, accused Nass of having “plotted the violent extortion of one of his own clients.”

Neither Nass nor Schwartz responded to The Times’s requests for comment.

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