That ain’t gonna happen under Trump
He is America’s Swamp Filler-in-Chief
Pilfering from Venezuela
One article, Trump Hit With Demand for Answers Over $13B Secret (and this), reports that about $13 billion collected by the US government from Venezuelan oil sales has "disappeared" somehow. Who controls that money and where it went has not been made public. Given Trump’s rock solid track record of shameless corruption, it is reasonable to believe that Trump or his family or allies have siphoned off a at least few billions of that, with most of it secretly falling under Trump’s control. Trump claims the money is controlled by Venezuela, but we all know he is a chronic liar in addition to being a thief.
That speculation could be mostly or completely wrong. However, in view of his track record of corruption the burden of proof is in Trump himself to prove he hasn’t stolen some or all of that loot. That’s the rational thing to believe in view of all available evidence.
One can also wonder why the US government, or MAGA thieves, collect money from Venezuelan oil sales. That’s another MAGA corruption mystery.
Corporate pardons for sale
In an unusually creepy and corrupt move, Trump has started issuing pardons for crimes by sleazy corporations. The “reasoning” is that since corporations are people, they can be pardoned too! Makes perfect sense. /s
An article, Trump Invents the Corporate Pardon, points out that corporate personhood dates back to a USSC headnote in an 1886 lawsuit. There, the high court, in its infallible wisdom, hinted in Santa Clara County v. Union Pacific Railroad that corporations were covered by the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law. That was in a headnote, not the holding of the case. But because kleptocrats, oligarchs, oligarchy, wealth and power all love the idea of civil liberties applying to corporations, the concept has somehow morphed into a legal precedent.
Remember Mitt Romney’s famous 2011 battle cry, “Corporations are people, my friend”. So there you have it, my friends. Reporting such as, The Most Corrupt Presidency in American History, by the Numbers, reminds us that Trump's pardons of human criminals as of last March included forgiveness of over $2 billion in fines and crime victim restitutions.
Anyway, the reporting notes that Trump has turned the presidential pardon into a tool for corporate clemency, including pardoning a corporation itself. He has granted nine corporate pardons, wiping out about $200 million in fines, with roughly half of that tied to BitMEX, arguably a corrupt bitcoin corporation. Secrecy and opacity are standard operating procedures for Trump and MAGA elites. The crypto industry staunchly supports Trump, and he staunchly supports crypto. This reeks of large-scale grifting and corruption.
Note that as has been the case for Trump’s pardons of criminals, his pardons of corporations wipe out culpability not only for crimes, but also for fines and restitution to victims the courts impose. Trump let BitMEX off the hook for $200 million. One has to wonder how much of that flows directly or indirectly, secretly back to Trump.
More crypto and crime shenanigans
In other reporting, US to Drop Charges for Alleged $722 Million Crypto Fraudster, Trump shows his support for crypto criminals. DOJ leaders are going to drop charges against Matthew Goettsche, the alleged mastermind of a $722 million crypto Ponzi scheme. That comes in 2026 after a 2019 indictment that had been slowly headed toward trial at the usual leisurely federal court pace. The DOJ dropping the case comes after Trump’s stopping enforcement of crypto crime laws. Not surprisingly, Goettsche’s lawyers had connections to the Trump administration while lobbying Trump’s DOJ for relief from prosecution.
As this reporting indicates, Trump Justifies Money Made as President With Inaccurate Claims. Trump falsely says the $2 billion he grifted during his second term was due to a hot stock market. He also lied when he said that he is the only president to donate his salary -- two others have done so before him. As usual for a shameless liar and crook, he rejects any notion of impropriety. He says he is just an honest guy doing honest work protecting us from criminals, thieves and all sorts of miscreants.
Note that he is a proven chronic liar, so that can be taken with a block of salt. One report summarizes the situation like this: “here we are in Trump's second term, so overwhelmed by dodgy-sounding deals that any attempt to measure or characterize the scope of corruption can seem preemptively futile. The numbers are too big, the conflicts too brazen, the examples too numerous”.
That sounds about right.
Q1: Does the public record contain enough evidence of corruption, concealment, and incentive structures, e.g., a corrupted rule of law and a corrupted USSC, to justify a presumption of bad faith and corruption by Trump and MAGA elites?
Q2: Is demanding disclosure, tracing money flows, and assuming that the absence of transparency is the primary means that Trump uses to get his bribes and payoffs, legal or not?**
** Lest we forget, in practice it isn’t illegal for Trump to take bribes and payoffs. The USSC has made damned sure that Trump is protected from liability for his crimes in office. In theory maybe some of it is illegal. But in practice under MAGA’s pro-corruption laws and MAGA’s corrupted DOJ and FBI, the reality is that Trump is not going to be prosecuted for any federal crimes he is involved in. That’s probably the sad case for as long as he lives.
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