Trump's Tyranny, Part II: It's the Corruption

Today is my second essay in a series examining the reign of Donald Trump and damage to our country, as we head into the two weeks before the midterm elections — when a lot of decisions about our country’s arc and fate as a democracy will be made individually and collectively across thousands of election races in every corner of the country. As I wrote in the first installment — focused on the rise and reign of terror by Trump’s secret police force — my hope is to emphasize that we’ve already gotten used to a level of fascism, authoritarianism, and corruption that would be unthinkable and shocking to us just a decade ago.

These essays specifically highlight five areas where I fear we’ve lost sight of the sheer scale and horrific departure-from-normality that we’re all living through: (1) The abuses of the regime’s secret police force, a.k.a. ICE and CBP; (2) the day-to-day petty crime and grand corruption infecting the operations of the US government; (3) the political weaponization of the Justice Department; (4) the president’s abuse of our “normal” process of government; (5) the squandering of our nation’s standing around the world.

Today, I want to tackle the middle two interrelated themes — the way that Donald Trump has weaponized the Justice Department to punish people he perceives as his enemies and political adversaries, even as he, his family, and cronies are corruptly abusing the power of government to enrich themselves.

Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote how “it turns out, in the end, that there’s only one check and balance that actually matters: Good character. Everything else in a constitutional system follows and relies on that simple foundation.”

Nowhere is that clearer when looking at intertwined issues of corruption and persecution. It is the American personification of the famous political maxim: “For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.”

First, the politicization of the Justice Department. As someone who has written a book on Watergate, others on the FBI, and spent much of the last twenty years covering federal law enforcement, it’s astounding to see that a half-century of hard-fought, carefully structured reforms and policies meant to secure the independence of the Justice Department just … evaporated in a matter of months.

We have the president’s personal defense lawyers — actually a succession of them! — installed to lead the department, a MAGA grifter leading the FBI, and both the attorney general and FBI director appearing at Trump campaign rallies. The president is personally involved in criminal investigations, and the Justice Department is and has repeatedly targeted “foes” of the administration with prosecutions so nakedly vindictive that they have been summarily and embarrassingly rejected by grand juries and the courts.

The Justice Department has for decades been viewed as the most prestigious law firm in the country, its work and employees held to the highest standards, and now the Department so routinely lies or obfuscates that judges across the country have stated they no longer trust its declarations in the courtroom. What is known as the “presumption of regularity,” the courts’ assumption that the Justice Department is operating in good faith and participating actively in proceedings, has broken down.

Here is the simplest possible statistic that underscores the gulf of criminal enforcement in US politics right now: CNN’s Aaron Blake found that “Trump has pardoned 9 of the last 11 GOP congressmen to be convicted of federal crimes. His DOJ has indicted, tried to indict, or taken investigative steps against 13 Democrats currently serving in Congress.”

Trump is offering pardons to any comer with cash — including in what one watchdog group defines as three specific types: “reward pardons,” “corrupt pardons” aka political loyalty pardons, and “brokered pardons.” The going-rate for these pardons appears to run from $300,000 up to an astounding $50 million.

Trump has repeatedly abused the Justice Department to persecute people who either embarrass the administration or just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong place. Amid the summer debacle of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, he had federal criminal charges brought against multiple individuals, including a former Olympian, for “vandalizing” the pool, when the damage to the pool was actually the result of the corrupt deal he made with a contractor to repair it.

He is continuing to persecute Fed governor Lisa Cook over invented accusations of mortgage fraud — a scandal itself that I previously described as Watergate-level. (There is no small irony, of course, in that it appears Trump himself has been involved in more flagrant mortgage fraud than those he’s targeting.) He has targeted New York attorney general Letitia James, former FBI director James Comey, and more. Protect Democracy has compiled a framework and database that shows a total of 37 vindictive prosecutions.

The latest high-profile target is Rep. Ilhan Omar, who is facing a fishing expedition by the Justice Department in the hope of corruptly revoking her citizenship. But there are others — including a Virginia state senator and her family charged within days of the election, a violation of a longstanding norm that Todd Blanche once used himself to argue against charges being brought against President Trump.

Trump sees all of this as well within her personal prerogative. As he himself said earlier this month: “I could've done very bad things to Hillary Clinton. I could've done very very bad things to Joe Biden. I could've done very bad things to Barack Hussein Obama ... I can do whatever I want, if I want.”

To state it plainly: That’s not how the legal system and the power of the federal government is supposed to be, or historically has been, used. As Ami Fields-Myers wrote after the Omar raids, “The intellectual and political lineage is Soviet thuggery: ‘Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.’”

And, on the other side of the equation, Trump has been actively shutting down the FBI teams that investigate public corruption — including ending an investigation targeting GOP senator Susan Collins.

None of this is normal — and none of this would have accepted by any administration prior to a decade ago, and none of this would have accepted by any congress prior to Trump seizing control of the Republican Party in 2016. Each paragraph of the above is an impeachable offense under normal circumstances. All of this goes against the most basic precepts of US justice, which is supposed to pursue investigations “without fear or favor.”

Second, the corruption. The corruption and misconduct across the administration is so wide, deep, and broad that it’s almost impossible to capture in total. As Brian Buetler writes, “His first term corruption was historic. His second term corruption is much more extreme, and more salient.” Instead of even trying to capture everything, I wanted to zero in on eight scandals worthy of ongoing attention that focus on Trump and his family specifically:

• The Flying Bribe: He is flying around in a luxury Boeing 747 gifted him by the Qatari royal family, a plane that is clearly unconstitutional and unsafe for a president.
  

• Gifts All Around: The Boeing 747 is just one example of how gifts are flowing in and out of the Trump administration as if it is the most corrupt banana republic in history. The Swiss gave him a gold bar and a Rolex desk clock — and their tariffs went down. After their tariffs magically went away, the Belgians gifted him a gold ring, encrusted with 321 diamonds, 56 sapphires, 13 emeralds and six rubies. The president, in turn, is handing out massive cash gifts — up to $45,000 apiece — to aides like Natalie Harp, as well as two staffers, Walt Nauta and Chamberlain Harris, who now run Oval Office operations and were “allegedly involved in mishandling classified documents last term.”

• “Favors from Friends”: Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding was evidently paid for by a Russian oligarch. As ProPublica uncovered last month, “The oligarch, Umar Kremlev, spent hundreds of thousands on expenses like renting out a private island. He appears to have met Trump Jr. only recently, but he attended the intimate wedding with a large group of other Russian guests.” Don Jr’s wife didn’t exactly deny it. Many of these “favors” and foreign relationships seem to — totally coincidentally of course! — benefit Russia or Russian-backed companies. Like Trump’s aides doing business with some of the worst governments in the world, or the White House chief-of-staff’s daughter going to a pro-Russian militia’s training camp.

• Jared Kushner’s Business Ties: The president’s son-in-law is not a government employee, but has become—again—Trump’s favorite “negotiator-at-large,” but with even more complex business and foreign ties all over the globe than he had in the first term. He raised billions from the Middle East, and a new book excerpt published in Vanity Fair hints that it’s all even more corrupt than we believe. (Kushner and the White House are disputing the book excerpt’s allegations.) Kushner’s corruption is so repulsive that it is threatening to topple the government of Albania and “Trump Tower Belgrade” is a major part of the downfall of the Serbian president’s party in yesterday’s parliamentary elections.

• The Family Crypto Business: Next month, the president is hosting a cryptocurrency dinner — as part of his own offering of his own family-enriching cryptocurrency, itself a huge scandal and express opportunity for corruption — that appears to be drawing heavily from overseas cryptocurrency users. Trump made somewhere north of $600 million last year — and the family somewhere around $2 billion — from his cryptocurrency, which sold a 49 percent stake to a UAE sheikh days before the inauguration. It’s surely a total coincidence that months into the administration, after Trump met with that sheikh, the administration reversed course and allowed the UAE access to advanced AI computer chips.
  

• Insider Trading: Perhaps the most opaque — but obvious — scandal of the second Trump presidency is the wave of insider stock trading that’s swamped Wall Street and prediction markets since he took office last year. Trump, unlike all previous presidents, is continuing to actively trade stocks — stocks that in nearly all cases he can directly benefit, punish, or influence. He is directly investing in stocks of companies even as negotiates (or forces!) deals. And, in a surprising and increasing number of cases, he is forcing private companies to give the government stakes in their business in exchange for political favors. As a perennial reminder: Jimmy Carter had to sell his peanut farm, lest he be tempted by his personal stake to unduly influence the peanut market in the United States.

• The Corruption-Powered Ballroom: Leaving aside the almost-certainly-criminal destruction of the East Wing, the actual construction of his White House ballroom stands as one of the biggest presidential influence scandals of all of American history. A recent Washington Post investigation of the ballroom’s opaque financing shows that the “the vast majority of the funds raised came from companies and wealthy individuals with interests before the federal government.” In just one specific instance, a European company is donating tens of millions of dollars in foreign steel to the ballroom — and just days after the donation, magically the company received a break on Trump’s steel tariffs.

• “Trump Inc.”: Separate and distinct from all of the above, we’ve also seen widespread corruption — and apparent corruption — in the day-to-day business dealings of the Trump Organization. Some examples: FIFA has signed a $4 million lease at Trump Tower in New York, that apparently sits empty; the administration intervened to deliver a $620 million loan last year to a small defense startup tied to Donald Trump, Jr.; or take the “hot mic” moment when the Indonesian president asked the best way to do business with Trump and he said, “I’ll have Eric [Trump] call.” Now corruption and criminality circling Trump Tower is hardly new: When Russia’s top organized crime bosses, known as vory v zakone (“thiefs-in-law”), first expanded into the United States, at least two of them set up shop in Trump Tower. But it seems clear we’re only skimming the surface at the depth of corrupt foreign influence and money flowing into the Trump Organization these days.

Put all of this together and it’s clear that Donald Trump has made BILLIONS from his presidency while in office for less than two years. Whether it’s $3 billion or “merely” $2 billion—or maybe more!—is somewhat academic. The presidency of the United States should not be an office where its holder can “create” opportunities to make billions while in office.

Now there’s a whole more than this, up, down, and across his administration. Hundreds of government officials appear to be involved in business dealings with companies where they have financial relationships. FCC commissioners took luxury gifts from Paramount while they weighed allowing the company’s merger to go through. Like an RFK Jr.-linked nonprofit group that solicited payments, up to $300,000, for access to top US officials. And it’s clear the culture of corruption and abuse-of-power permeates his whole orbit. His Labor Secretary was forced out this spring after creating what an investigation found to be a “toxic, intimidating and humiliating” work environment. Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle was forced out in recent weeks after a strange set of leaks, including that she pressured a donor to pay her $100,000 Amex bill. These firings underscore what Tom Nichols calls the one rule of Trumpland: He doesn’t care about the corruption, he cares about the embarrassment.

It appears that Corey Lewandowski might be the next to face that music — as the Justice Department has now picked up an investigation from the DHS inspector general that he was involved in self-dealing at DHS — but Trump’s remarks about that case only underscore the inherent corruption: “[If] people are not honest, they're stealing from me as president. They're stealing from me. So, I want my people to be honest, and if they're not honest, I'll have my DOJ go and do whatever they have to do.”

Just think about that — stealing from me as president. Trump, in so many words, is making clear that he believes he’s the only one entitled to steal and profit from the government.

Now of these eight family-focused bullet points, it’s worth pointing out that each and every one of these scandals is larger than the largest scandal of either the Obama and Biden presidencies. (Remember how much hay Republicans made about Hunter Biden selling some seemingly overpriced paintings?) All them are obviously impeachable offenses — as is the president’s weaponization of the Justice Department against political enemies — and all of these would, on their own and properly investigated should rank on par with the largest modern presidential scandals, a la Watergate or Iran-Contra.

All of the above is also clearly leading us toward a new, dangerous road: Everyone involved is operating with so little regard for or fear of future accountability that it’s obvious everyone is banking on personal and blanket presidential pardons and official sanction for their actions. In fact, over the weekend, the Washington Sun reports that the White House is weighing blanket pardons for junior staff.

All of the above has also undermined the moral standing of the US government’s corruption-fighting efforts abroad. It will be hard to put this genie back in the bottle overseas.

The good news is that this corruption is so endemic and obvious that it has broken through to voters. Corruption is a top issue for voters in next week’s midterm elections: As CNBC reports, “Voters are more concerned about government corruption than any other issue, including high grocery and gas prices, according to the latest CNBC All-America Economic Survey.”

Read this — forward to a friend — and then go vote. My hope is that the American public’s outrage and appetite for this level of corruption is at least as high as those in Serbia and Albania….

GMG