60 Minutes Exposed the Pardon Brokers. It Failed to Prove What They Could Deliver.
The 60 Minutes investigation catches something genuinely ugly: people are charging hundreds of thousands of dollars to navigate political connections in pursuit of presidential pardons. But the broadcast makes a mistake that weakens its central argument. It repeatedly moves from evidence that people are selling access to the much larger suggestion that money is buying presidential mercy, without consistently establishing the connection between the two.
There is a real scandal here. In fact, the public records contain evidence considerably stronger than some of the programme's most dramatic scenes. I find it frustrating that an investigation with access to this material chose to leave so much of its strongest evidence unexplored.
1. The hidden-camera sting proves a sales pitch, not a successful operation
The central undercover encounter involves Ammon Covino, who had previously been convicted of illegal wildlife trafficking and served 23 months in prison. After President Trump rejected his original pardon application in July 2026, 60 Minutes arranged for him to approach brokers Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl while secretly recording their sales pitch.
They offered to pursue a pardon for $300,000, describing a campaign involving Mar-a-Lago events, political influencers, congressional contacts and pressure on the president.
But there is a fundamental limitation: Covino was not actually hiring them. He was participating in a journalistic sting. No $300,000 changed hands, no genuine campaign was launched, and the investigation did not establish whether the promised contacts would materialise.
The recording proves that the brokers were willing to sell this service and make extraordinary claims about their influence. It does not establish that they could deliver the influence they advertised.
That distinction matters. A salesman claiming he can reach the president is not the same thing as a salesman demonstrating that he can.
CBS's account of the investigation confirms that Covino was a deliberately constructed undercover client.
CBS News+1
2. The Boosie case is presented more conclusively than its evidence allows
The programme features rapper Boosie Badazz, who says he paid Burkman and Wohl $600,000 for assistance securing a pardon.
He says they promised a refund of half the money if the pardon failed. They dispute the agreement, deny sending the controversial messages and have refused to return the money.
There is an important qualification missing from the broadcast.
In its accompanying written investigation, CBS reports that Burkman claimed the final agreement was never signed, leaving only an alleged oral agreement. That makes the existence and enforceability of the refund provision a disputed legal question, not an established contractual obligation.
The messages naming Laura Loomer, Erika Kirk, Mike Johnson and Natalie Harp are similarly contested. The named individuals or their representatives denied involvement, while the brokers disputed sending the messages.
Boosie's allegations deserve investigation. But the programme should not allow the emotional force of a $600,000 payment to substitute for establishing the underlying agreement and authenticating the disputed communications.
A failed business transaction is not automatically proof of political corruption. It may be evidence of an expensive and dishonest lobbying operation. Those are serious allegations, but they are not interchangeable.
CBS News+1
3. The Joseph Schwartz case contains stronger evidence than the programme reveals
Here is where the investigation should have spent more time.
Burkman and Wohl claimed to have secured a pardon for nursing-home operator Joseph Schwartz after receiving nearly $1 million.
This is not merely an undercover sales claim. There is an official lobbying disclosure.
On July 18, 2025, J M Burkman & Associates reported $960,000 in lobbying income from Joseph Schwartz for the second quarter of 2025.
The filing specifically identified the lobbying objective as:
Seeking a federal pardon.
It also listed the U.S. Senate, House of Representatives, Department of Justice and White House Office as government entities contacted, and named both Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl as lobbyists.
On November 14, 2025, President Trump pardoned Schwartz, who had been sentenced to 36 months in federal prison only seven months earlier.
That is a documented sequence involving a substantial payment, an explicitly declared pardon campaign and a subsequent presidential pardon.
It is considerably more persuasive than the undercover sales pitch.
Yet the programme does not identify Schwartz by name or walk viewers through the actual lobbying disclosure. It leaves the most important paper trail largely unexplored.
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There is another important omission.
Schwartz's nursing-home business was associated with a $39 million payroll-tax fraud scheme. Families of patients who died in his facilities had also obtained substantial civil judgments against him. One family received a nearly $19 million wrongful-death judgment and had collected nothing.
His federal pardon did not erase those civil proceedings. Nor could it erase his separate Arkansas state convictions.
Arkansas authorities subsequently required him to serve the remaining portion of his state sentence despite the federal pardon.
These are not minor technicalities. They determine what the pardon actually accomplished and who remained entitled to pursue him.
A presidential pardon is not an expungement, does not terminate ordinary civil proceedings and cannot pardon state offences.
The programme needed to explain these consequences rather than leave viewers with the impression that a presidential pardon simply wipes away every legal obligation.
ProPublica+2
4. The strongest documented access story was already available
The Binance example is perhaps the most revealing missed opportunity.
The programme tells viewers that Binance supported a Trump family cryptocurrency venture before its founder, Changpeng Zhao, received a presidential pardon. It acknowledges that both sides deny a connection.
But the broadcast leaves out the most important part: the lobbying operation and the documented access to Trump.
In an investigation published on April 27, 2026, The New Yorker examined the activities of lobbyist Ches McDowell and his firm, Checkmate Government Relations.
The reporting established a much more detailed sequence:
- Binance hired Checkmate to lobby the Trump administration.
- The lobbying included a request for executive relief, meaning a pardon.
- Checkmate received more than $1.3 million for its services.
- McDowell described obtaining direct access to Trump and personally advocating for Zhao.
- Trump signed Zhao's pardon seven days after that encounter.
The lobbying disclosures independently identify Binance as Checkmate's client, list executive relief among the lobbying issues and identify the White House as a government entity contacted.
The Justice Department records confirm Zhao's pardon on October 21, 2025.
This is precisely the sort of investigation 60 Minutes should have pursued in depth. It has a named intermediary, a documented lobbying relationship, substantial payments, an identifiable route to the president and a closely timed pardon.
It still does not establish a quid pro quo. But it provides a far stronger basis for investigating whether paid political access influenced a presidential decision.
The programme mentions Binance but fails to give viewers this chain of events.
That is a serious editorial omission.
The New Yorker+2
5. The $1 million fundraiser deserved more than a rhetorical question
The programme also examines healthcare executive Paul Walczak, who received a pardon after his mother, Elizabeth Fago, attended a million-dollar-per-person fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago.
The broadcast asks former pardon attorney Ed Martin:
Why isn't that a quid pro quo? Why isn't that pay-to-play?
Martin responds that he does not know enough about the example.
But the investigation could have gone considerably further.
The New Yorker had already published a detailed account of the episode months before the 60 Minutes broadcast.
Walczak's pardon application specifically cited his mother's political fundraising for Trump. On April 3, 2025, MAGA Inc. reported receiving a $1 million contribution from Fago.
The following evening, she attended the Mar-a-Lago fundraising dinner and personally made her case to Trump, according to someone familiar with the event.
The New Yorker reported that Trump subsequently spoke to his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and fundraiser Meredith O'Rourke, instructing them:
Get it done.
Walczak received his pardon the following week.
Fago declined to comment through her attorney, and the White House did not respond to the New Yorker's detailed questions.
This is substantially more revealing than simply saying that a donation preceded a pardon.
It establishes a reported personal appeal, an identifiable financial contribution, presidential involvement and a subsequent decision.
It still does not establish that the donation purchased the pardon. But it provides evidence that deserves direct examination.
Instead, 60 Minutes presents the chronology, asks a rhetorical question and moves on.
The New Yorker
6. The 70% and 92% figures are not evidence of a broker-controlled system
One of the programme's most dramatic claims is that approximately 70% of Trump's second-term clemency decisions bypassed the Department of Justice, rising to 92% when January 6 cases are included.
But the broadcast does not provide the underlying counts, denominator, classification method or a detailed breakdown of the decisions.
There is also a fundamental distinction between bypassing the DOJ and using a broker.
The January 6 pardons were a mass presidential action. They did not require individual applicants to purchase access through lobbyists. Including them substantially changes the percentage of clemency decisions made outside the ordinary application process.
The DOJ's own budget documentation recognises that special clemency initiatives, including presidential proclamations, can operate outside the ordinary application process.
Furthermore, the DOJ's regulations are advisory. They provide internal guidance but do not restrict the president's constitutional pardon authority or give applicants an enforceable right to a particular review process.
The administration can legally issue pardons without following the ordinary DOJ recommendation procedure.
That does not make every decision wise, fair or ethical. It does mean that a percentage measuring DOJ bypass cannot independently establish that political brokers are influencing presidential decisions.
Frequently Asked Questions+2
There is also a genuine administrative problem that deserves separate examination.
The DOJ's FY2027 budget submission reported more than 19,000 pending clemency applications in March 2026. It attributed the increase to a surge in applications and major staffing attrition.
The broadcast later cites approximately 16,000 pending applications but does not investigate the staffing problem, processing capacity or how the backlog affects ordinary applicants.
Those questions matter.
A broken administrative pipeline and a market for political lobbying can exist simultaneously. But proving the first does not establish that the second determines presidential outcomes.
The programme repeatedly places these two problems beside each other without adequately separating them.
Justice.gov
7. The opening historical comparison confuses different kinds of pardons
The broadcast begins by placing Ford's pardon of Nixon, Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich and Biden's pardons of Hunter Biden and Anthony Fauci into a common historical sequence.
The comparison is too compressed.
Consider Marc Rich.
The $450,000 in Clinton library donations came from Rich's ex-wife, Denise, not Marc Rich himself. The Washington Post reported that the contributions were made between July 1998 and May 2000, before she became active in the successful pardon campaign later in 2000.
She subsequently lobbied Clinton, and a friend spoke with him ten days before the pardon.
That remains a legitimate historical controversy. But the distinction between the donor, the beneficiary and the timing of the lobbying matters.
Anthony Fauci presents a different problem.
Biden's January 2025 pardon was preemptive. It covered possible federal offences related to Fauci's government service, rather than following a criminal conviction.
Hunter Biden, by contrast, had been convicted in one federal case and pleaded guilty in another before receiving his pardon.
These decisions can all be criticised. They should not be presented as though they represent identical circumstances.
The programme uses a compressed historical montage to establish that presidential clemency has long been controversial. But it sacrifices distinctions that an investigative report should preserve.
The Washington Post+2
The verdict: A real scandal deserves better than a half-finished investigation
I do not dispute the existence of a commercial market for pardon lobbying.
The $960,000 Schwartz disclosure is real. The Boosie dispute is serious. The Covino recordings demonstrate how aggressively brokers sell political access. The Binance and Walczak cases deserve much deeper scrutiny.
But 60 Minutes does not consistently distinguish between selling lobbying services, claiming access, obtaining access and influencing the final presidential decision.
Those are four different things.
The strongest evidence was available in public records and previous investigative reporting. The programme could have followed the money, identified the intermediaries, reconstructed the communications and examined precisely what happened between a payment and a pardon.
Instead, it relies heavily on a hidden-camera sales pitch and leaves several of the most revealing connections unexplored.
The danger is not that the programme has invented a pardon economy. The danger is that it has identified one without properly investigating how it works.
A $960,000 lobbying payment followed by a presidential pardon deserves an investigation. A million-dollar political contribution followed by a personal appeal and a pardon deserves an even harder one. The public needs to know who opened the door, who walked through it, and what happened inside.
That is the investigation 60 Minutes should have delivered.
References
Original reporting and official records
1. Paid Brokers Tout Ties to Trump's Orbit to Lobby for Presidential Pardons — CBS News, September 13, 2026. The original broadcast transcript and its claims about the brokers, donations and DOJ bypass.
2. Pardon Brokers Offer to "Put Pressure on the President," at Sky-High Costs — CBS News, September 13, 2026. The accompanying investigation contains additional details about Schwartz, Boosie, the disputed contract and the brokers' claimed successes.
3. Lobbying Disclosure: J M Burkman & Associates — Joseph Schwartz — U.S. Senate Office of Public Records and House Legislative Resource Center, July 18, 2025. Records $960,000 in lobbying income and explicitly identifies seeking a federal pardon as the lobbying objective.
4. Clemency Grants by President Donald J. Trump — U.S. Department of Justice, 2025–present. Confirms the dates and federal sentences associated with the Schwartz and Zhao pardons.
5. Frequently Asked Questions: Office of the Pardon Attorney — U.S. Department of Justice. Establishes the legal distinction between pardons and commutations, the president's authority to bypass DOJ recommendations, and the limits of presidential pardons.
6. FY 2027 Performance Budget: Office of the Pardon Attorney — U.S. Department of Justice, 2026. Documents the application backlog, staffing attrition and administrative pressures affecting ordinary clemency processing.
Independent investigative and historical reporting
7. Donald Trump's Pardon Economy — Ruth Marcus, The New Yorker, April 27, 2026. Documents the Binance lobbying campaign, Ches McDowell's access to Trump, the Walczak fundraiser and the political connections behind other pardon efforts.
8. A Nursing Home Owner Got a Trump Pardon. The Families of His Patients Got Nothing — Jeremy Kohler, ProPublica, March 30, 2026. Documents the Schwartz case, unpaid wrongful-death judgments and the financial consequences for nursing-home patients' families.
9. Denise Rich Gave Clinton Library $450,000 — James V. Grimaldi, The Washington Post, February 9, 2001. Establishes who made the donations and when they were made in relation to the Marc Rich pardon campaign.
10. Executive Grant of Clemency — Dr. Anthony S. Fauci — The American Presidency Project, January 19, 2025. Provides the actual language and scope of Biden's preemptive pardon.
11. Circuit Court Orders Joseph Schwartz to Report to Arkansas Department of Corrections — Arkansas Attorney General, December 18, 2025. Confirms that Schwartz's federal pardon did not eliminate his separate state prison sentence.