GRAFT RULES
Updated: Jul 27
TRUMP, HIS FAMILY AND FRIENDS TAKE THEIR CUT
One of the best barometers of graft and corruption is the rate at which those close to the original perpetrators become perpetrators themselves. The rate goes up when it becomes clear to those collateral beneficiaries that if they don’t actively collaborate now, they may not get another opportunity to max out. To them, it is simply not enough to be a beneficiary of the graft and corruption of others; they can only maximize their take by collaboratively adding to the overall pot from which the whole gang will ultimately feed.
In this context, Trump is the North Star for every thief, grifter, and influence peddler on the planet. What makes him different is that he is openly doing what others have dreamed of doing and then tried to do surreptitiously. Trump is a corrupt gift that keeps on giving to the lap dogs in his midst who facilitate the corruption and then line up to take their cut of the action.
Keeping track of the almost daily stench emanating from the White House and from the mansions of the cavorting and cowering tycoons is more than a full-time job. Luckily, others have been busy cataloguing Trump’s corruption and its reach. It seems safe to say that Trump is already the most corrupt president in US history, and he has not even completed half of his four-year term.*
Now that Trump’s grand 250th anniversary celebration of American independence has come and gone, it will be easier to watch the graft parade without the distraction of celebratory delusion. The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool scandal** is the perfect place to start because it is a big-time metaphor for so much that is plaguing today’s America, and it was branded as part of that big-time celebration.
That the Reflecting Pool scandal is such a comparatively small-time scam allows the absurd comedy at its heart to bring joy to all of us who believe that only Trump himself cannot see the absurdity of the moment. To recap this one, Trump probably on his own, decided that any cool pool has a blue bottom, and that “his” reflecting pool did not. Also likely, it then was decided in a close acolyte vote to give Trump alone the lead on this one.
And lead he did. He was in such a hurry to get this done in time for July 4th festivities that he found his own contractor and awarded a no-bid contract for what has now become a mere $16 million job to refurbish the Reflecting Pool, replete with an American-flag blue bottom.
Good plan, Sir. Only no one told the reflecting pool. So, right on cue and just in time for that July 4th celebration, the blue bottom began to peel off, the algae returned, and the pond turned a beautiful money green so consistent with that vaunted American freedom to grift.
However, this story is not over yet, so stay tuned to find out who got paid for what, how much Trump and his family and friends made on the deal, and the ongoing and costly effort to make American-flag blue the official color of the Reflecting Pool. And remember, every effort will be made by Trump and his lackeys to obscure the actual data from public view and blame someone else for the costly fiasco. Under any circumstances, the Reflecting Pool saga will stand as a symbolic trope for a nation in deep decline and a president unable to accomplish even the simplest of tasks.
Next up is family fun corruption. Enter the Trump family jewels, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, leading the way in making friends the world over. Unfortunately, their greedy eyes caught sight of a currently pristine piece of the coast of Albania and a nearby small island sanctuary. Jared and Ivanka, already awash in cash from dubious sources, perched in a yacht nearby saw yet another opportunity to cash in by turning natural beauty into environmental blight to create an upscale resort playground for the rich and corrupt.
So, build they must. Ivanka, in a moment of historic clarity was quoted as saying: “It’s an unbelievable, beautiful, 1,400-hectare private island in the middle of the Mediterranean. We were on a friend’s boat, and we stopped for a swim. Effectively, that’s how we found it. We swam to the island, we went on a hike — barefoot all the way, up to the top. And we were just captivated. And it stayed with us ever since.” ***
This is the longing of a tone-deaf rich kid who happens to be the daughter of the president of the United States and the wife of Jared of Arabia, the guy who managed to turn a multi-portfolio gig at the first Trump White House into multi-billion dollars in “investment” capital from the very Arabian officials he sucked up to on Trump’s behalf. So now, he and his wife are plying the Mediterranean in a yacht seeking further lucre at the expense of others. Fortunately, the Albanian populace has taken to the streets to send them elsewhere on their quest. This is another stay tuned moment.
While defiling the Reflecting Pool and trying to defile the Albanian Coast are a small part of the story, there is one item that stands out for its audacity and abject willingness to fleece the American public – the almost $1.8 billion public fund for wayward insurrectionists and other “suffering” loyalists. Further, hidden within the machinations of this grand grift is some form of immunity from tax audit for Trump, Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and the Trump Organization.
This is the story of the “settlement” of a lawsuit filed by Trump against the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) claiming that Trump’s privacy was violated by the IRS during the Biden presidency. In “normal” times the US Department of Justice is supposed to defend the interests of the US Government and protect public funds from spurious claims.
Instead, this time around, Trump’s Department of Justice worked out a crafty $1.776 billion settlement with themselves, establishing a compensation fund for those Trump acolytes "wrongly" investigated and prosecuted by the same institution that was supposed to defend against the very claim being settled. If this sounds like the creation of a slush fund for dangerous miscreants at taxpayer expense, try not to mistake it for anything else.
Then, just to make sure that there can be no mistake about whose interests are guiding those DOJ attorneys sworn to protect the public interest, DOJ attorneys slipped in a separate deal offering some kind of a tax fraud free pass for Trump and his family. This undoubtedly was welcome news in Trump family circles.
This scheme was so audacious that even a Republican or two objected, and then the judge who had the original case that was supposedly “settled” between the parties seems to have just ruled that the case filed by Trump and then “settled” with his DOJ was a sham from the outset. In other words, the judge found that the lawsuit was a shameful attempt to divert almost $1.8 billion in public funds for corrupt purposes. Further proceedings await. Also, it is unclear where Trump’s tax fraud free pass stands at the moment, but you can be sure that he and his family will do almost anything for a lifelong tax holiday.
As I noted above and cited in the footnotes, there are those hard at work every day trying to keep up with the daily grift, corruption, and influence peddling that seems to be the main substantive work of the Trump administration. Erratic, costly and deadly international adventures seem as amoral and slimy as the daily grift, and efforts to address domestic economic and social issues seem afterthoughts to the purposeful distractions of market manipulation, immigration round-ups, religious zealotry, and national chest-thumping.
Yet, there is still no accountability, still no rule of law, and still no uncompromised moral compass to be found in the land. Democratic Party leadership musters its almost daily dose of outrage without anything resembling a cohesive resistance to the sources of their outrage. Much of the nation complains about high grocery prices and extreme temperatures without any effort to even try to organize against the corrupt corporate and political interests largely responsible for both. So, still there is no accountability.
And then there is the Trump cryptocurrency/meme coin scam…
* https://www.americanprogress.org/feature/trumps-take/ https://campaignlegal.org/document/tracking-trump-administrations-most-corrupt-transactions
Settlement Agreement - https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1441201/dl?inline
Tax Liability Agreement - https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1441216/dl
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