Trump pardons Paul Walczak, a top executive whose family tried to leak Ashley Biden's paper

President Donald Trump indicted a top health care executive whose mother was linked to the attempted leak of the diary of Ashley Biden, daughter of former President Joe Biden.

He is Paul Walczak, a businessman who, according to the Justice Department, was sentenced to 18 months in prison, two years of supervised release and ordered to pay $4.381,265.76 in restitution to the federal government "for willfully failing to pay over employment taxes and willfully failing to file individual income tax returns."

In total, Walczak would have failed to pay about $10 million in taxes. According to prosecutors, this money not paid to the government caused the businessman to finance a luxurious lifestyle, including the purchase of a yacht.

According to the New York Times, Walczak's pardon was signed privately on Wednesday and posted on the Justice Department's website this Friday, two weeks after he was sentenced to two and a half years in prison.

The pardon became controversial because Walczak's mother, Elizabeth Fago, who also works in healthcare in Florida and is tied to the Republican Party through donations, played a role in the effort to leak Ashley Biden's diary to favor President Trump during the 2020 election.

According to the NYT, in the midst of the 2020 election campaign, Fago was contacted by a man who claimed to have in his possession an Ashley Biden's personal diary, written while she was going through addiction recovery.

According to two sources cited by that media outlet, upon learning of the diary's existence, Fago thought its dissemination could benefit President Trump in the election.

The man in question, Robert Kurlander, went so far as to display the diary during a fundraising event held at Fago's home in Jupiter, Florida, in September of that same year.

It was Fago's own daughter who provided a tip about the diary to Project Veritas, the conservative group of independent journalists who generated exclusives through cheating and hidden cameras.

Later, Project Veritas paid $40,000 to Kurlander and his associate, Aimee Harris, in exchange for the material.

The Justice Department investigated the theft and subsequent handling of the diary, including the alleged involvement of Fago and his daughter. Although neither of them nor members of Project Veritas were charged, Kurlander and Harris were convicted for their involvement in the scheme.

Investigations showed that Paul Walczak, son of Fago, was not linked to the attempted acquisition of the newspaper, and the charges he faced for tax matters were unrelated to that case.