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DONALD TRUMP’S GOLDEN AGE OF GRIFT AND CORRUPTION

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Is Donald Trump the most corrupt President in U.S. history? There is some debate about that but one thing is certain: he is among the most corrupt chief executives the United States has ever had. The Daily Beast columnist David Rothkopf calls it Trump’s golden age of corruption. More accurately, it has been Trump’s golden age of grift and corruption and at this point it seems like there is little stopping him from continuing.
Rothkopf writes:

When it comes to corruption, Donald Trump is Michelangelo and da Vinci plus Bach and Mozart combined. He is a genius. He is creative in ways that make past generations of American grifters, robber barons, and mafia bosses seem like pikers.

Day in and day out, he has been robbing our country blind, in plain sight, and in ways no one else would dare to attempt.

Indeed, it is fair to suggest that if you took every other corrupt figure who stole from our public coffers from the first days of the republic until now and multiplied their larceny times that of every Gambino family capo di tutti capi, they still would not match the billions Trump has absconded with.

Monday’s news that somehow Trump and his family had reached a “deal” with the U.S. Department of Justice that follows his commands like a dutiful beagle to take $1.776 billion in tax dollars out of the U.S. Treasury and give it to his supporters and friends and co-conspirators and indeed, perhaps—because we do not have any information to the contrary—to his family and himself, is only his most recent achievement in criming, though certainly one of the most stunning.

With this bold stroke, Trump may well use taxpayer dollars—your money and mine, precious dollars from government accounts too depleted to allow us to pay for the care of our most needy citizens—to pay off members of the mob of thugs that attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

That’s right, Trump may well have found a way, with the help of Todd Blanche and other DOJ officials—who all ought to swiftly be disbarred—to arrange what almost certainly is the first taxpayer-funded domestic coup attempt in the history of the United States. (In the interest of fairness, we need to acknowledge that we have conducted many taxpayer-underwritten foreign coup attempts throughout our history.)

And:

The move is eye-wateringly audacious. Had Trump walked into Fort Knox with a shopping cart and walked out with it filled with gold bullion, the theft would not be more obvious or outrageous.

Yet Trump—and here is what is certainly part of his genius—has orchestrated a chorus of acceptance, support, and enabling from many of America’s most powerful leaders.

The hijacking of the DOJ to serve his personal interests would not have been possible without the six right-wing activist members of the Supreme Court, three of whom he appointed personally. The GOP “leadership” in Congress has remained supine, while the Republican Party nationwide has stood up and sought to be counted as his accomplices in this extraordinary heist.

The latest breaking news: the top Treasury Department lawyer has resigned after creation of the “anti-weaponization fund.”

The top lawyer at the Treasury Department stepped down on Monday in the wake of the creation of a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” that could soon make payments to President Trump’s political allies, according to three people familiar with the move.

Brian Morrissey, the Treasury’s general counsel, resigned from the position seven months after he was confirmed to it by the Senate and just hours after the Trump administration announced the fund on Monday.

Mr. Morrissey did not respond to requests for comment. A Treasury spokesman said, “Mr. Morrissey has served the United States Treasury with both honor and integrity. We wish him all the best in his next endeavors.” In his resignation letter, Mr. Morrissey said he was grateful to have worked for Mr. Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, according to two people familiar with the letter.

The Justice Department created the fund to disburse payments to people who claim that the Biden administration improperly targeted them — a population that includes supporters of Mr. Trump and former members of his staff. Among them are people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The Treasury Department is responsible for depositing $1.776 billion into an account that will be controlled by a group of people selected by the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, according to the terms of the fund released on Monday. That money will come from the Judgment Fund, an uncapped pot of funding that is available for the federal government to pay settlement claims without needing congressional approval.

Trump’s presidency is not the only one that has been seen as corrupt. Richard Nixon had Watergate. Warden Harding had Teapot Dome. Ulysses S. Grant’s administration was widely described as corrupt, although Grant himself was considered honest. The definition of corruption varies in different eras.

But there’s no question that when historians write about Trump and his administration and his administration will be high on the corruption list.