WATCH: Rubashkin Celebrates Freedom With Wild Party Outside Brooklyn Home
At a late-night gathering outside his Brooklyn home, former Kosher meatpacking executive Sholom Rubashkin celebrated his freedom.
“Nobody could believe in the whole jail nobody could be believe that I walked out,” Rubashkin said, on video posted by the website COLLIVE. “They wanted to bury the guy for who knows how many years and he walked out.”
Rubashkin said that he left all of his personal effects at the prison, aside from his tallis and tefillin. President Donald Trump commuted Rubashkin’s sentence on Wednesday.
Rubashkin was convicted of 86 counts of bank fraud and sentenced to 27 years in prison. In 2006 and 2007, The Forward uncovered mistreatment of workers and animals at the kosher meatpacking plant he operated in Postville, Iowa.
Later, at Chabad headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway, Rubashkin publicly thanked Trump.
Contact Josh Nathan-Kazis at [email protected] or on Twitter, @joshnathankazis.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO