Maybe Corruption Really Is Bad
"Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible." - George Orwell
It is simply not a debatable proposition that the current U.S. administration is the most corrupt in American history.
The evidence is all about us.
Retire the traveling trophy of political corruption formerly held in order by Grant, then Harding and Tricky Dick Nixon.
Donald Trump, unlike the FIFA peace prize, now owns a real trophy.
He is the “Master of Corruption.”
It’s difficult to be an optimist in today’s world and I’m not all that optimistic, but I do focus on realism and try to populate my writing with solid sourcing and not merely opinion. I write these pieces to offer a perspective based on history and particularly American political history since 1900.
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The level of corruption burns
Trump’s pardon of convicted cocaine kingpin and former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández comes easily to mind as an example of the depth of the administration’s corruption.
As The Guardian reported at the time of the pardon.
… prosecutors maintained that Hernández accepted $1m from former Mexican cartel kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán in 2013 while successfully running for his first Honduran presidential term. They also said that Hernández’s government set up Honduras to serve as a pivotal waypoint – or “superhighway” – of cocaine coming from South American nations including Colombia and Venezuela.
Hernández was extradited to the US to face the drug and related weapons charges in April 2022, roughly three months after finishing his second presidential term. A jury convicted him on 8 March 2024 after a three-week trial.
He was being held at a federal prison in West Virginia when Trump pardoned him, leading to his release from custody …
So, Trump is blowing up boats and killing people in the Caribbean claiming he is stopping the flow of drugs, but at the same time he is pardoning a real drug kingpin.
Trump is well on his way to pardon or give clemency to a couple of thousand convicted criminals.
Getting one of these get out of jail cards isn’t free. From NBC News:
Seeking a pardon from President Donald Trump has become big business for lobbying and consulting firms close to the administration, with wealthy hopefuls willing to spend millions of dollars for help getting their case in front of the right people.
“From a lobbying perspective, pardons have gotten profitable,” said one lobbyist whose firm has received such calls.
Very profitable, as in up to $5 million per pardon profitable.
“It’s like the Wild West,” a Trump ally and lobbyist said. “You can basically charge whatever you want.”
The increased use of the pardon power has some familiar with the process concerned about the appearance of financial and political favoritism that can erode confidence in the clemency process.
I don’t know about you, but I’m the suspicious type and wonder if just a bit of all that money is ending up in, well, the pockets of a baggy blue suit.
And Trump is reportedly promising pardons to White House and administration enablers:
According to The Wall Street Journal, Trump has repeatedly promised pardons to administration officials on multiple occasions, including during one recent meeting at which he reportedly said he’d “pardon everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval” before he leaves office in January 2029.
Trump crime family
Then there are the crypto scams, the donation of a few tons of steel to Trump’s golden ballroom from a Luxembourg operation that then rather miraculously got a lucrative tariff break, the $400 million Qatar jet that Trump plans to make off with when he’s done pillaging the government, the outrageous commingling of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner’s business dealings with his wholly irregular and unofficial “diplomatic” role, Melania’s bribeumentary financed by Jeff Bezos, etc. etc.
Here’s Reuters on the Trump offspring cashing in on crypto:
The Trump brothers’ efforts have been a whopping success. In the first half of this year, the Trump Organization’s income soared 17-fold to $864 million from $51 million a year earlier, according to Reuters calculations based on the president’s official disclosures, property records, financial records released in court cases, crypto trade information and other sources. Of the first-half total, $802 million – more than 90% – came from Trump crypto ventures, including sales of World Liberty tokens.
That $864 million payday represents actual income – cash flowing, free and clear, into Trump family coffers. Reuters’ calculations were reviewed by half a dozen crypto and real estate experts and a certified accountant who has studied the U.S. Internal Revenue Service’s approach to crypto.
No one will mistake Don, Jr. and Eric Trump for brilliant business minds, and that fact clearly gets to the essence of Trump’s corruption:
“These people are not pouring money into coffers of the Trump family business because of the brothers' acumen,” said Washington University law professor Kathleen Clark, who specializes in government ethics and was commenting on Reuters’ findings. “They are doing it because they want freedom from legal constraints and impunity that only the president can deliver.”
It’s the corruption, stupid
I’m old enough to remember when Jimmy Carter’s brother, Billy, got in trouble for his cozy ties to the Libyan government. That low grade sleazy incident involved a fraction the money the Trump family has been raking in, yet resulted in a full-blown Senate investigation and a good deal of appropriate public shaming of both Carter brothers.
We clearly live in very different times. Ethics and propriety at the top of the government are now optional.
Even the Supreme Court seems to agree that almost anything goes.
But that still does not mean that corruption sells well politically.
The election results from Hungary on Sunday could represent more than just the ousting of a reprehensible rightwing authoritarian and signal a public reckoning with the fact that Viktor Orbán, like his pal Donald Trump, has been looting, grifting and corrupting in high office.
A POLITICO analysis concluded that Orbán’s corruption was a big part of what finally caught up with him:
The great populist had mislaid his popular touch and failed to appreciate that he was being undermined by some of the same failures that have weakened strongmen the world over: rampant corruption and cronyism, a kleptocratic ruling class, and deteriorating infrastructure. They all served to strengthen Magyar’s hand and intensify his challenge.
“You could see it and sense it at the campaign rallies, where there was a tangible enthusiasm at the opposition rallies, but not at the government ones,” Orbán’s biographer Pál Dániel Rényi told POLITICO.
It also meant that the outside interference of MAGA and European populists, such as France’s Marine Le Pen, the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders and Italy’s Matteo Salvini, who like Vance turned up in Budapest to campaign for Orbán, was just a wasted effort. So too the endorsement by Germany’s Alice Weidel, co-leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), who had told Hungarians in a video: “Europe needs Viktor Orbán.”
Orbán’s corruption, like Trump’s, extended to real estate, including a palatial mansion and a golf course. The parallels are striking, Orbán even demolished - East Wing-like - a 150 year old castle to build his mansion, adding a rail line and soccer stadium. He’s a big soccer fan.
Just before the decisive election in Hungary, NPR described some of the pushback against Orbán, particularly about the money he has lavished on himself:
Some of those [visiting Orban’s mansion] climbed up a ladder to see above the wall that encircles the Orbán family palace.
One by one, they peered into the landscaped and pool-filled grounds and beyond that — the Neoclassical mansion of their prime minister.
Júlia Molnár, 27 years old, stepped down from the ladder and shook her head. Her voice trembled with anger as she spoke about what she saw.
“It’s infuriating, and I’m very glad that people are finally brave enough and conscious enough to come here and actually put in the effort to show up and see for themselves and not let the media give them the perspective that they should have on this,” Molnár said.
She lamented the opulence of her prime minister’s residence when so many in her country are so poor.
Hungary’s lesson
Were I advising a Democrat running for Congress or the Senate this year I’d recommend ending every speech with something like this:
“I want to go to Washington end the wholesale corruption that Republicans have allowed and Donald Trump and his family have profited from. The country needs a deep cleaning.”
An anti-corruption message that includes ending stock trading for members of Congress, bans bets by public officials on political outcomes, and gets at least some of the corrupting influence of money out of politics, is a winning message.
Hungary offers a lesson. We shouldn’t miss it’s importance.
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Are the prediction markets opening bets on who does or does not get a pardon?