WASHINGTON-While Paul Walczak awaited the sentence earlier this year, his best hope to avoid arrest was in the hands of the newly deposed president.
Walczak, a former countenance of a nursing home that declared themselves to blame for tax crimes days after the 2024 election, sent a request for forgiveness to President Donald Trump around the inauguration day. The request was not only focused on Walczak’s crimes, but also on his mother’s political activity, Elizabeth Fago.
According to the request, Fago had raised millions of dollars for the campaigns of Trump and other Republicans. The document also highlighted its connections with an effort to sabotage Joe Biden’s campaign in 2020, promoting Biden’s daughter’s dependence diary Ashley Biden – an episode that attracted the authorities’ attention.
Walczak’s request for forgiveness argued that his criminal accusation was motivated more for his mother’s efforts for Trump than for the use of money for employees to fund an extravagant lifestyle.
Even so, weeks passed without the forgiveness being granted, while Trump granted mismatch to hundreds of other allies.
So Fago was invited to a $ 1 million fund collection dinner per person last month, which promised direct access to Trump at his private Mar-A-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.
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Less than three weeks after she attended dinner, Trump signed a total and unconditional forgiveness.
Forgiveness came at the exact time to Walczak, sparing him to pay nearly $ 4.4 million in refund and to serve an 18-month prison sentence, imposed only 12 days earlier. A judge had justified the arrest stating that “there is no letter to get out of jail for the rich.
Forgiveness, however, indicated otherwise. The case of Fago and Walczak is the latest example of the president’s willingness to use his clemament powers to reward allies that promote his political causes and punish his enemies.
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Walczak’s request for forgiveness was described to The New York Times by a person who received him, but was not allowed to share.
Fago, Walczak and his lawyer did not answer the questions.
An White House employee echoed the argument of Walczak’s request, telling the teams that he was “target of the Biden government because of his family’s conservative policy.”
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A $ 2 million yacht
Walczak, 55, entered the mother’s rest homes business after leaving college, becoming CEO. After she sold the company in 2007, they invested $ 18 million in a new resting home development in southern Florida, where they lived a luxurious life.
In 2011, according to prosecutors, Walczak stopped paying labor taxes.
Between 2016 and 2019, he retained more than $ 10 million of wages of nurses, doctors and other employees, under the pretext of using them for Social Security, Medicare and federal taxes. Instead, he used part of the money to buy a $ 2 million yacht and for travel and shopping at luxury stores such as Bergdorf Goodman and Cartier, according to prosecutors.
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He was accused in February 2023 of 13 tax crimes.
When he said he was guilty of two accusations and agreed to pay the refund on November 15, 2024, Trump had already been elected for a second term.
The family had reason to believe that the president -elect could welcome the request for forgiveness.
Fago, 74, helped organize at least three collection events for Trump’s campaigns. She, her son Joey Fago (Walczak’s half brother) and his wife participated in VIP events on Trump’s possessions in 2017 and 2025, according to social media posts, including one in which she appears alongside Trump.
A “unbelievable” diary
During Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign, Fago tried to help the candidate in other ways.
Ashley Biden left her diary and other belongings in a house in Delray Beach, Florida, when she moved to Philadelphia during the campaign, telling a friend she intended to go back to pick them up later. A woman who moved to the house, Aimee Harris, found the diary and asked for help from longtime Robert Kurlander Robert Kurlander to sell it.
Kurlander contacted Fago. When he learned of the diary, Fago thought he could help Trump win, according to people close to the case.
Kurlander and Harris took the diary to a collection event at Casa de Fago in September 2020 in Jupiter, Florida. The main guests were Donald Trump Jr. and his then girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle.
At the event, the diary was shown to Caroline Wren, the campaign’s financial consultant.
“I started reading and there were unbelievable things,” Wren recalled on a podcast last year. “I contacted the campaign lawyers, who said, ‘Be very careful; don’t take it.’ They wrote a memo and warned the FBI to get immediately. ”
The FBI did not recover the diary. Instead, Kurlander and Harris negotiated with Project Veritas, a trump -coupled media group, who heard from the Diary by Stephanie Walczak, daughter of Fago.
The Justice Department, during Trump’s first term, opened an investigation after a Biden family representative reporting Ashley Biden’s theft of belongings before the 2020 election.
In November 2021, investigators obtained a search warrant related to a Project Veritas employee, seeking information on “possible co-conspiring”, including Fago communications, Walczak, Kurlander, Harris and others about the obtaining, transportation, transfer, dissemination or disposal of Ashley Biden’s stolen goods.
Kurlander and Harris declared themselves guilty of conspiracy to steal, transport and sell the diary to Project Veritas. Harris was sentenced to a month in prison. Kurlander will be sentenced next month.
A new hope
When Trump won the presidency for the second time, this brought hope to Project Veritas, Fago and Walczak.
In January, with Trump preparing to return to the White House, Fago and his family traveled to Washington for inauguration. They had VIP access to Trump’s victory rally in the capital One Arena.
On February 5, Trump’s Justice Department announced the closure of the Diary investigation. Fago and Walczak were not accused, nor anyone from Project Veritas.
While Fago and Walczak awaited news about the forgiveness, she was invited to the collection dinner in Mar-Lago with Trump.
The invitation announced an intimate “candlelit dinner”, with “very limited” vacancies for those who pay $ 1 million. The event was sponsored by Maga Inc., a political action committee that can receive unlimited donations to support Trump candidates and causes.
The amount was far higher than the largest previous federal donation of Fago – $ 100,000 to the Republican National Committee in 2002 – and exceeded the more than $ 12,000 that she had directly donated to Trump’s presidential campaigns.
Two people informed about dinner said Fago attended. It is unclear if she donated to Maga Inc. or how much.
Representatives of Maga Inc. did not answer the questions. The group has until the end of July to publicize the identity of donors in the first half of this year, probably including those who paid to participate in dinner.
After Walczak’s forgiveness in the fiscal case, he celebrated with his mother and family wearing a Trump -style red cap with the sayings “Make Paul Great Again”, according to a post on social networks.
In the publication, Joey Fago wrote: “What God has for you ahead is greater than what’s been behind,” along with the “Maga” hashtag.
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