Donald Trump’s new administration is marred by corruption. (Photo: Getty)
Donald Trump has always been for sale, and so is his new administration. As always, money and blind loyalty are the coins of the realm.
Less than a month into his new administration corruption is beginning to surface all around the would be king.
Trump has a long history of odious dealings that trace back to his shady businesses in real estate, casinos, and his dealings with the mob. As such, Trump does not blanch at criminality on a resume.
After all, he was convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records for paying hush money to cover up a sexual tryst with porn star Stormy Daniels and a year-long affair with a Playboy model, all while married to First Lady Melania Trump.
The biggest scandal of his young administration exploded earlier this month in the Justice Department. Seven top prosecutors resigned rather than carryout what they viewed as an unethical order to drop corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams.
New York Mayor Eric Adams has become embroiled in a ‘quid pro quo’ scandal with the Trump
administration. (Photo: NYC MTA)
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The deal smacked of a “quid pro quo” to get Adams to cooperate with Trump’s immigration deportation effort.
At any other time in any other administration, the scandal would have led to at least the U.S. Attorney General’s resignation, if not higher. But Trump’s pick for the job, Pam Bondi doubled down.
After no other federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York would carry out the order, Bondi assigned the task to Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove III. He filed the motion, and it’s currently pending before a judge.
Bondi is also considering eliminating the Department’s Public Integrity Section, which investigates and prosecutes alleged misconduct by federal, state and local public officials.
“If you’re a prosecutor or an agent and someone brings you a public corruption case, you’d be crazy to even consider taking any action,” one former senior FBI official told CNN. “Maybe that’s the point of all this.”
Trump’s recent appointments of blind loyalists Kash Patel as FBI Director and Dan Bongino, a right-wing conspiracy podcaster, as Deputy Director, do not bode well for the agency’s independence.
Related: Pam Bondi Must Resign as New York Mayor ‘Quid Pro Quo’ Scandal Engulfs DOJ
Most recently, Trump took another step toward normalizing corruption by pardoning former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and Ross Ulbricht, who was sentenced to life in prison for creating a website to sell heroin, cocaine, LSD, and other illicit drugs, using cryptocurrency to keep the transactions anonymous.
“Make no mistake, Ulbricht was a drug dealer and criminal profiteer who exploited people’s addictions and contributed to the deaths of at least six young people,” said Preet Bharara, former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, whose office prosecuted Ulbricht in 2015.
The Ulbricht pardon, Trump admitted, was another “quid quo pro” deal in exchange for support from the Libertarian Party, which favors total drug legalization and considered Ulbricht’s prosecution “overreach.”
It’s a clear example of Trump’s transactional nature. Trump had previously vowed in Nov. 2022, to seek the death penalty for anyone who “sells drugs, gets caught selling drugs… because it’s the only way.”
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Trump pardoned Ulbricht only days after he pardoned roughly 1,500 Jan. 6, 2021, insurrectionists, many of whom violently assaulted law enforcement officers.
Attorney General Pam Bondi must resign in wake of Eric Adams scandal. (Photo: U.S. Justice Dept.)
Blagojevich, meanwhile, was an outspoken Trump sycophant during the 2024 election. In return for his loyalty, Trump wiped out his 2011 conviction for attempting to sell the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama.
Among other similar acts, the Justice Department last month moved to withdraw felony charges against former Rep Jeffrey Fortenberry of Nebraska. He was previously convicted in 2022 and charged again with lying to the FBI during an investigation concerning illegal foreign campaign donations.
Earlier this month, DOJ prosecutors filed a motion to withdraw from a campaign finance investigation into Trump ally Andy Ogles a Republican congressman from Tennessee.
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The move came months after the office obtained warrants to seize Ogles’ cell phone and email account which were then executed by the FBI, according to The Tennessean newspaper.
But Trump’s largess toward ex-convicts isn’t ending there. He’s considering appointing Blagojevich as the U.S. Ambassador to Serbia, according to Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan.
Trump has already appointed daughter Ivanka Trump’s father law, Charles Kushner, as Ambassador to France.
Kushner, a real-estate developer and the father of Jared Kushner, pleaded guilty to federal charges of tax evasion, campaign finance offenses and witness tampering in 2005. He was sentenced to two years in prison. Trump pardoned him in 2020.
In her blog, McQuade took an in-depth look at the corruption seeping into Trump’s new administration, and found staggering examples.
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Equally troubling is the Trump administration’s effort to knock down the guardrails on government corruption.
He signed an executive order last week halting enforcement of the “Foreign Corrupt Practices Act,” a measure that makes it illegal for U.S. companies to pay bribes to foreign officials to obtain business deals.
Rod Blagohevich, former governor of Illinois, earned a pardon from Donald Trump through unyielding fealty. (Photo: Facebook)
It also bans foreign companies from paying bribes in the United States. The act further requires businesses that are listed on U.S. securities exchanges to keep accurate accounting records to avoid the concealment of bribes.
“The purpose of the 1977 law is to deter unethical practices that reward corruption over the efficiency that is expected from free market forces,” writes McQuade on her blog.
“A system that permits bribery increases the cost of doing business, which gets passed on to consumers. And when funds are used to grease the palms of government officials, they are diverted from economic development.”
The law is also intended to level the playing field for American companies that play by the rules. “But the Trump administration is giving the black market the green light,” she adds.
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The administration has declared a moratorium on new case and frozen existing cases until it can review enforcement guidelines.
“Current FCPA enforcement impedes the United States’ foreign policy objectives and therefore implicates the President’s Article II authority over foreign affairs,” Trump’s executive order states.
It calls enforcement under the law “over expansive and unpredictable, ” a waste of prosecutorial resources and “actively harms American economic competitiveness and, therefore, national security.”
“In other words, profits are power, regardless of how they are obtained,” McQuade asserts.
“The order suggests that bribery is necessary for American businesses to compete in global markets, but it ignores the fact that their competition includes other U.S. companies.
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“It further ignores the legislative consensus expressed in 1977 that honest business practices enhance America’s foreign policy objectives.”
Tump has also knocked down other key government guard rails.
On the night of Jan. 24, Trump announced the immediate firing of 17 inspectors general from various agencies. They were responsible for government oversight and ferreting out waste and fraud in the Departments of Defense, State, Housing and Urban Development, Veterans Affairs, Energy, and Transportation.
“This blatantly illegal and incredibly concerning mass firing removes the only independent offices within agencies designed to protect taxpayer money and root out corruption, fraud, waste and mismanagement,” wrote Danielle Caputo, for the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan legal organization.
Trump appears to be grinding an ax and seeking revenge for IG investigations during his first term. At least eight Trump appointees were investigated for allegations of unethical and/or illegal conduct in almost precisely the same departments — Transportation, State, Veterans Affairs, Interior, Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, and Commerce.
“Now in his second term, Trump’s decision appears to be part of an effort to replace independent IGs with individuals who may be more inclined to look the other way when the president’s appointees are violating ethics laws,” Caputo writes.
The move followed Trump’s recent revival of Schedule F, which has been viewed as an attempt to politicize the nonpartisan federal workforce.
Trump also moved to dismiss without cause the head of the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), a key federal whistle blower agency.
Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger sued, claiming the administration broke a 1978 law creating the position. It prevents the president from removing the special counsel for reasons other than inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance.
Federal District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson recently extended a temporary block on the firing to review the matter.
Trump is facing pushback in Congress and the federal workforce.
On Friday (Jan. 21), Democratic Reps. Gerald E. Connolly, Jamie Raskin and Summer Lee, and Lucy McBath, wrote a letter to Attorney General Bondi requesting information on the Trump Administration’s rapid-fire efforts.
They said Trump was “clear a path for corruption” by endorsing bribery, quid-pro-quos, and related crimes and “undermining the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) commitment to good government and the rule of law.”
In a stunning move, 21 civil servants whose team was folded into Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) resigned on Tuesday (Feb 25). In a joint letter posted publicly, they refused to use their skills to put Americans’ data at risk and “dismantle critical public services.”
DOGE has laid off thousands of workers and moved to dismantle entire agencies in a slash-and-burn campaign. The so-called hunt for waste and fraud, is turning out to be more like an ideological cleansing of the goverment.
Trump’s quest to profit personally from the presidency began on his first day in office in 2017.
In an unprecedent move, he refused to divest from his private businesses.
“His administration has been characterized by an unending effort by him, his family, and his senior advisers to abuse their political power for personal gain,” the Center for American Progress reported in November.
“These actions, and many more, send a clear signal: In the Trump administration, corruption is not just accepted, it is encouraged.
“Trump has created a culture of corruption, where it’s expected that those with public power will wield it for private gain.
“And this culture has, in turn, attracted those who are themselves corrupt and seeking to profit from this opportunity,” the Center noted.
Indeed, Trump has expanded his personal conduits for corruption during his second term.
He founded a publicly traded social media company, and cryptocurrency ventures that can be used to conceal payments from oligarchs, corporations and foreign governments.
The moves fit a pattern established in his first term. Trump leveraged his various properties to collect payments from federal, state, and foreign government officials.
Trump also hosted lavish events at Trump properties for political groups, special interests, and foreign government-connected bodies and Trump administration officials shamelessly promoted Trump properties while speaking in their official capacity.
Special interest groups held 137 events at Trump properties, likely paying him more than $13 million. His tax returns shows that he made up to $160 million from international business dealings during his presidency, according to the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group.
The truth already is out on Trump, his long association with Epstein, his bankruptcies, his serial philandering, his sex assaults and his voyeurism involving underage girls, which he once bragged about, and his business corruption.
But his lasting legacy may be the damage he does to the office of the presidency.