A year and a half into Donald Trump’s second term as president, the Trump family’s net-worth has increased by billions, making his the most blatant and prolific use of the presidency for personal enrichment.
Yet, as Reason magazine editor Matt Welch put it, “The 47th president has serially exceeded the most infamous corruptions in U.S. history while generating a fraction of the outrage.”
So far, Trump’s corruption has been alleged to span everything from selling sensitive semiconductor technology to the United Arab Emirates after an Emirati official purchased a $500 million stake in the Trump family’s crypto business, to awarding no-bid contracts to his donors like a $1.6 billion border wall contract to Barnard Construction Company, Inc., whose chairman (along with his wife) donated over $1 million in support of the president.
Pardons have also routinely gone to wealthy individuals with financial ties to Trump, including Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire founder of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, who was pardoned after he brokered a $2 billion deal with the Trump family crypto business.
Three Southern Californian congressmen working to expose this corruption detailed the extent of Trump’s use of the presidency to enrich himself and his family. I spoke to members of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Robert Garcia of Long Beach and Rep. Dave Min from Irvine, along with Rep. Mike Levin, who represents portions of Orange and San Diego Counties, who is a member of the End Corruption Caucus.
Pay-to-Play Corruption
The pervasiveness of the Trump administration’s abuses was evidenced by some of the congressmen needing to gather themselves before attempting to condense Trump’s vast corruption repertoire into a digestible summary.
“Yeah, it’s hard because it’s just like so much, right? It’s like shock and awe,” said Rep. Min.
“There have been allegations that Trump and his close circle have engaged in a pay-to-play scheme … Allegedly, the dozens and dozens of pardons that have been awarded by Trump in his year-and-a-half here have … been negotiated or presented to him by people in his inner circle who have typically received money payments to Trump’s campaign or to any one of his super PACs that he set up or to his own financial interests directly.”
Though the president of the United States has expansive pardon powers via the Constitution, norms and procedures have been in place to check potential abuses of that power. Trump has bypassed any such constraints to reward loyalists and wealthy donors.
Apart from rewarding loyalty as with the sweeping pardons and commutations of January 6th insurrectionists, wealthy individuals who have helped Trump’s campaigns or business interests have lined up to receive pardons.
It’s a pattern that developed in his first term. For instance, the family of business owner Paul Pogue donated over $200,000 before his sentence for tax crimes was commuted.
He has only built on that with pardons of people who committed even more egregious offenses. Tech executive Trevor Milton defrauded investors and was convicted of securities and wire fraud in 2022 but was pardoned after contributing over $3 million to Trump’s reelection campaign and pro-Trump PACs. The list goes on and it grows with every pardon announcement.
Under Trump, presidential clemency has been transformed from a tool for mercy into one that enriches the president in exchange for excusing wealthy criminals from repaying their debt to society and erasing billions in restitution for their victims.
Trump has also appeared to use government actions like contract allocations and policy concessions to secure investments into the Trump family businesses.
“Whether it’s the real estate deals, his sons are cutting across the country. Whether it’s Jared Kushner, his investment deals. There’s so much blatant corruption,” Rep. Garcia told me.
In Trump’s second term, the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has served as a global collection basket for his family, going from foreign government to foreign government soliciting investments in his firm, Affinity Partners – all while simultaneously leading negotiations at virtually every high-profile international crisis as Trump’s “Special Envoy for Peace”.
While negotiating with countries like Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates in the last year, those same nations have invested $1.2 billion into Affinity Partners. Given that Kushner had no investment or diplomatic experience before Trump came to power, questions arise about whether Kushner serves as an avenue for foreign governments to purchase their preferred outcome during international disputes.
If one were president, there are few simpler ways to exploit the office for personal gain than handing out lucrative government contracts to businesses that you or your family have invested in.
Rep. Levin detailed an instance of the Trump administration’s self-dealing: “The Vulcan Elements contract … $620 million that went to a start up company that had very little experience with rare earths … And it turns out that just before that, Donald Trump Jr. took a stake in the firm.”
As Rep. Levin made clear, this was no mere insider trading. It’s not as if Don Jr. received insider information that Vulcan Elements would be receiving the contract and then invested in the company. Instead, the Trump administration directly intervened to ensure that the contract benefited the Trump family.
According to ProPublica sources inside the Pentagon, the White House instructed staff to strike a deal with Vulcan. This is substantially more troubling than mere insider trading because critical decisions are being made according to whether they benefit the president and his family rather than advancing American interests.
Rep. Levin also points to how Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Trump personally intervened to secure a tungsten mining deal between Kaz Resources and the government of Kazakhstan, along with approving billions in federal financing for the company. Amid those negotiations, entities linked to sons of both Lutnick and Trump became involved in the resulting business deals.
“I bring all this up because if any of them had happened in any other administration, I think it would be the end of that administration,” said Rep. Levin.
Reporting by the Washington Post found that companies that Trump’s sons have invested in have collected $3.2 billion in direct government contracts, “and an additional $3.1 billion in future contract options. Some have gained coveted spots on shortlists of preapproved contractors that can bid exclusively on up to nearly $200 billion in future work.”
How Congress is addressing this corruption
Despite this abundance of impeachable behavior, Congress has done very little to exert its oversight powers and rein in Trump’s abuses. With a minority in both chambers of Congress, Democrats are unable to exercise subpoena powers to conduct proper investigations.
Rep. Min and other Democrats are currently struggling with this lack of cooperation from Republicans in their investigation of Trump’s pardons. “We sent out seventeen letters to seventeen people who had received pardons from Donald Trump,” said Rep. Min. “And we just wanted to know from them, who did you talk to? Did you pay anyone? … Only three of the seventeen have responded … They don’t have to under the law.”
Rep. Garcia faced similar stonewalling when questioning the White House about Kushner’s suspicious dealings with Middle East nations. For their part, the White House denied the existence of any wrongdoing and moved on.
“You’ve got Republicans in control of the House and Senate. They don’t really desire to do any sort of real oversight or hold him to any kind of real accountability,” Rep. Levin told me.
With few Republicans willing to publicly acknowledge this corruption, let alone willing to investigate it, Democrats are pinning their hopes on regaining a majority in the House and therefore regaining their subpoena power – in the meantime, they are limited to documenting as much of the Trump family’s abuses as possible.
The consequences of this on our society extend far beyond the bad optics of Trump and his family using the presidency to enrich themselves. Trump governs by placing the interests of his family above the interests of the public and his ability to avoid accountability signals to future administrations that they may do the same.
If Democrats retake the House in November, their next steps will dictate how much we can limit the damage – I will cover their strategy in an upcoming column.
Rafael Perez is a columnist for the Southern California News Group. You can reach him at rafaelperezocregister@gmail.com.