Jonathan P. Baird

American history is replete with corruption scandals. There was the Credit Mobilier scandal in the 1870’s, Teapot Dome in the 1920’s during the Harding presidency, Watergate with President Nixon and Iran-Contra during the Reagan presidency. But nothing comes close to the open and massive corruption which characterizes Trump, the Sequel. At the same time, Trump corruption is an under-reported story.

It is hard to get a handle on this hydra-headed corruption beast. It is not hidden. I think its public nature is both overwhelming and anesthetizing. It is almost like too much to respond to.

This administration has meant the end of accountability and ethical standards in government. Ironically, Trump hired DOGE to find waste, fraud and abuse but instead the Trump/Musk joint venture has been clearing away any government entity that might investigate their financial improprieties and conflicts of interest. The combatting waste, fraud and abuse has been justification for eliminating thousands of federal jobs Trump/Musk were ideologicaly opposed to.

Trump/Musk have employed a two-pronged process. First has been the dismantling of financial and ethical oversight. This has been accomplished by firing Inspector Generals from 17 different federal agencies. The IGs have existed to root out corruption. They conducted investigations into potential ethical violations.

Then there has been the gutting of the Department of Justice’s Office of Public Integrity which handled prosecution of public officials accused of corruption.

Finally, there has been the elimination of entire independent agencies like the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) which looked after the public interest and the crippling of other agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) so they become toothless tigers. Trump issued an Executive Order to curtail SEC enforcement actions.

The harm of destroying the CFPB must not be minimized. With the CFPB gone, no federal government agency will protect the public from bank overdraft fees, credit card late charges, payday lenders, or mortgage fraud.

With oversight gone, the field is clear for criming. No regulation will be in place to stop any scam. The Trump message is “pay for play” and there are no shortage of avenues. Americans and foreigners can buy Truth Social stock, Trump meme coins, or Trump merchandise. Shelling out money as a way to curry favor is an old story. You scratch my back and I scratch yours. The Trump agenda is to use the presidency as a vehicle for getting his family as rich as possible as quickly as possible.

According to Wired, business leaders are paying $5 million to get a one-on-one meeting with Trump. I am not aware of any president ever merchandizing meetings with business leaders before. If they come with others, business leaders can get a group rate at a Million-Dollar-a-Plate candlelight dinner at Mar-a-Lago.

Crypto has turned into a new pathway for direct presidential access. Trump is advertising a May 22 VIP dinner for the top 220 $Trump meme coin holders. According to the Washington Post, the value of the Trump meme coin surged over 30% since the dinner announcement. Just the announcement of the May 22 dinner at Trump’s golf club boosted the value of the crypto wallets owned by a digital firm affiliated with Trump’s family business by roughly $100 million.

Investing in Trump’s meme coin has payoffs. Crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun was being investigated by the SEC for selling unregistered securities and for fraudulently manipulating the process of a digital token, Tronix. Sun pumped $75 million into World Liberty Financial, a Trump crypto project, and the SEC then killed the civil fraud case against him.

Fraudsters are buying pardons from Trump. Trevor Milton, convicted of securities fraud in 2022 and sentenced to four years in prison and a $700 million restitution fine, donated $920,000 to Trump’s PAC in October 2024. He never served time or had to pay the $700 million fine. Trump pardoned him. There has been a pattern of Trump pardoning white collar criminals as he did with BItMEX and the Ozy Media CEO.

The crypto industry lavished the Trump 2024 campaign with millions and gave his inaugural committee an additional $13 million. The SEC then turned around and dismissed actions against several crypto companies. Public Citizen found 58 corporations, facing 88 federal enforcement actions when Trump took office, gave $50 million to his inauguration committee. So far cases against 11 of these corporations have been dismissed or withdrawn.

Tracking the conflicts of interest of Musk and Trump could be a full-time job. Musk is the head of multiple companies that have billions of dollars worth of government contracts. He won’t be cutting his businesses. Musk tweeted “CFPB RIP”. He wants no regulation of any financial instrument he creates just as he didn’t want Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulation of SpaceX. The FAA had previously fined SpaceX $633,000 for launch violations. That won’t happen now.

Trump has been selling his name on branding deals where international developers want to stamp the family name on luxury hotels, residential and resort complexes and gold courses. He has such projects going on in sensitive Middle Eastern locations like Saudi Arabia and Oman. It is hard to know if Trump’s priority is his business or any national interest.

Because of his personal financial interest in golf, Trump has been trying to broker a deal between the U.S.-based PGA tour and LIV Golf League funded by Saudi Arabia. Such a deal helps to rehabilitate the Saudi image and it benefits the Trump family business as they manage golf courses around the world. LIV spent $796,000 on one tournament alone at Trump’s Bedminster New Jersey golf club in 2022.

It is hard not to think that any other administration that had one-tenth of this level of corruption would be toast but somehow the Trump administration skates. Conservatives have long talked about running government like a business. That is what we are seeing now: the pursuit of profit replaces the national interest.

When you are a law student, you don’t have to be far into your studies before you start reading opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court. One case that every law student reads is the 1803 case of Marbury v Madison. The case established the principle of judicial review and gave the Court the ultimate authority to interpret the law. That power includes deciding whether laws passed by Congress or actions taken by the President are constitutional.

Given the conduct of the Trump regime, you might think the Court doesn’t have the power to decide if presidential actions are constitutional but it still does. Defying the decision of the Court to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been a brazen act of Executive branch lawlessness. Abrego Garcia had been abducted off the street and disappeared out of the country with no due process.

This disappearing people is a practice that has become more widespread this year. In terrifying fashion, masked unidentified individuals in unmarked vehicles take people to places unknown away from family and friends. Think Tufts student Rumeysa Ozturk or Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil. Somehow the focus got away from removing criminals to removing graduate students.

This is the behavior of a fascist regime. We are witnessing kidnappings. In the case of Abrego Garcia, he was abducted to a foreign torture chamber where no one has gotten out, ever. It is essentially a death sentence. Abrego Garcia’s meeting with Sen. Chris Van Hollen is the first witnessing of the insides of CECOT. No one has yet told the world what it is like on the inside.

No court sentenced Abrego Garcia to this fate and, like the Venezualans renditioned to El Salvador, no one ever received notice or a hearing. It must not be forgotten that the Immigration Court in 2019 ruled exactly against the result the Trump regime imposed – removal to El Salvador. That court worried that, if returned, Abrego Garcia would be a victim of gangs.

The Trump regime has tried hard to obscure facts about Abrego Garcia. One legal fact that has been entirely overlooked is the fact the government failed to appeal the 2019 decision of the immigration court judge who ruled in favor of Abrego Garcia and granted him protection from deportation. If the government believed Abrego Garcia was so dangerous, they could have appealed that decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals but they did not.

During Trump’s first term, it was a common practice for the then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to appeal to that Board. Attorney General Sessions frequently appealed cases the government lost.

The fact that the government did not appeal in 2019 speaks volumes. Why is Abrego Garcia more dangerous now than he was then? Over the last six years Abrego Garcia has a record of no criminal convictions but without any evidence, they assert he was a gang leader.

We have seen Stephen Miller, Pam Bondi. J.D. Vance, Karoline Leavitt and Marco Rubio all make that assertion. Press Secretary Leavitt mocked Abrego Garcia calling him “a foreign terrorist and an MS-13…illegal alien criminal who was hiding in Maryland”. It would appear the Trump strategy is to repeat the term “terrorist” and “gang member” as many times as possible.

With people like Miller, Bondi, Vance, Leavitt or Rubio, words have little meaning. It doesn’t matter to them that there is no reality behind the use of the terms “terrorist” or “gang member”. The words are used to create an impression to justify a result. It a person can be dehumanized then the person deserves mistreatment.

This is the language of tyrants when words become meaningless. Words mean what the fascist leader says they mean. The labelling is fundamentally about denying the humanity of the other to justify punishment.

The mega-prison, CECOT, where Abrego Garcia has been held has a capacity for 40,000 inmates. Each of the 256 cell houses average 156 inmates with metal bunks with no mattresses or sheets and only two toilets and two sinks for the entire group. Artificial lights stay bright 24 hours a day under hyper-surveillance. Prisoners are restricted to their cells 23.5 hours daily with 30 minutes per day for exercise in a windowless corridor. They get no utensils to eat their under nourished meals.

On social media, I saw CECOT accurately described as a concentration camp. Quoting from the U.S. Holocaust Museum:

“What distinguishes a concentration camp from a prison (in the modern sense) is that it functions outside of a judicial system. The prisoners are not indicted or convicted of any crime by judicial process.”

The method the Trump regime has chosen to speed up mass deportations is to bypass judicial process for as many people as possible. In the Oval Office Trump talked favorably about sending “home-grown” Americans to El Salvador. He asked President Bukele of El Salvador if he could build five more prisons like CECOT. If you can abduct people like Abrego Garcia with no due process, what is to stop the regime from doing that to American citizens?

In the Abrego Garcia case, the government admitted it made an “administrative error” but at the same time they are saying it is fine to send him outside the country to a living nightmare where he would rot for the rest of his life. Where is the proportionality? How about recognizing the mistake you made and doing the right thing? What happened to any sense of decency?

A surprising aspect of President Trump’s second term has been the expansionist threats directed at Greenland, Canada, and Panama. During the presidential campaign last fall, Trump presented himself as a peace candidate. It is hard to know how seriously to take the imperialist talk.

The aggressive rhetoric harkens back to a 19th century-like world view when colonial powers sought to carve up Africa, Asia and Latin America. In that era, the colonial powers saw the Third World as a source of raw materials, cheap labor and a market for manufactured goods. The colonialists scrambled for power and control over territories.

That world order was rooted in colonial imperialism. Imperialism has been the most powerful political force in the world over the last 400 years. Imperialism can be defined as the process whereby the dominant politico-economic interests of one nation expropriate for their own enrichment the land, labor, raw materials and markets of another people.

While Trump’s imperialist threats are shocking, they are not inconsistent with America’s imperialist past and our unique form of empire. Our imperialism has had a different operational mode than classical European colonialism.

Our imperialism has been more about maintaining freedom of capital access so American business can expand and do business wherever. For the most part, we have not needed colonial imperialism where colonizers engage with a host of ugly problems like control of riots and rebellions. That level of control has mostly not been needed.

American control is insured by our network of hundreds of military bases around the world. We have our own rapid response teams where Special Forces or other military can be employed to put down unrest. Our rulers also effectively work with leaders who will collaborate with American interests. People like Chilean Gen. Augusto Pinochet or President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador are examples. Economic self-interest is often the glue that promotes American imperialism.

Of course, our history does have its colonialist period. Leaving aside the settler-colonialist aspects of our country’s origins which could be considered, I would cite the William McKinley presidency in 1898 when the U.S. annexed Hawaii, seized Puerto Rico and the Philippines after the Spanish-American War. We also took Guam. The war with the Philippines dragged on because Filipino nationalists were no more inclined to accept being an American colony than being a Spanish colony.

President McKinley is the president Donald Trump reveres. He was both a protectionist famous for his tariff policy and an imperialist.

For the Americans, the Filipino war was fought in the name of civilizing and uplifting the Filipino people. It was a time when empire was less ambiguously viewed and racism was a core value in the white world. Rudyard Kipling, a strong advocate for empire, wrote his poem “The White Man’s Burden: An Address to the United States”. The poem begins:

“Take up the White Man’s burden –
Send forth the best ye breed –
Go, bind your sons to exile
to serve your captives need;
To wait, in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild –
Your new-caught, sullen people
Half-devil and half-child”

Mark Twain was a friend of Kipling but he became so horrified by the war in the Philippines that in 1900 he declared himself “an anti-imperialist”. Twain became Vice-President of the Anti-Imperialist League of New York and the most famous anti-imperialist in the country. Twain wrote:

“There must be two Americas. One that sets the captive free, and one that takes a once-captive’s new freedom away from him, and picks a quarrel with him with nothing to found it on; then kills him to get his land.”

Since the era of Twain and Kipling, America has tried to hide its empire. But whenever countries have tried to escape the imperialist straitjacket they have paid a heavy cost. Vietnam and Chile during the Salvador Allende period immediately come to mind. The United States could not tolerate the existence of a possibly successful state with a nationalist identity outside of imperialist control.

Because the United States was born in an anti-imperialist revolt against Britain, our self-image doesn’t include our imperialism. Also, the map of the United States is often seen as the lower 48 states (with Alaska and Hawaii sometimes thrown in). It doesn’t include the many other territories (Guam, American Samoa, Northern Marianas Island, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands) that are like colonies. The people who live in these territories don’t possess full constitutional rights.

Our history of imperialism is full of invasions, wars and misadventures but I doubt in 2025 it will act as a caution against aggression. President Trump has shown that he means what he says. He has said one way or another he will “get” Greenland. He has freaked out the entire nation of Canada with his talk of the 51st state. He talks about “reclaiming” the Panama Canal even though our Congress voted to transfer the canal to Panamanian ownership in 1978.

In his second term, Trump has thrown caution to the winds. He is swinging for the fences acting like he is Alexander the Great, not a mere president. Surrounded by sycophants and stooges who lavish praise, he sees himself as a Caesar unbound by law or courts that he treats with contempt. Unlike his first term, there are no grown-ups in the room.

Everything in his administration is about showing his dominance over others and his personal self-aggrandizement. This is a presidency without guardrails.

Such grandiosity does not bode well for Greenland, Panama or Canada.

During the President George W. Bush war on terror years, the term “black site” entered the American lexicon. Black sites were clandestine detention centers around the world where prisoners were held and tortured. The people taken to these secret locations were held incommunicado. They had no access to lawyers or any legal protection.

For almost twenty years, mention of black sites disappeared from our public life but under the Trump administration, they are back. The mega-prison in El Salvador where the Venezuelan migrants were taken is a black site. It is a well-known hellhole, recognized for slave labor, torture and the worst cruelty.

Prisoners have no access to the telephone, the internet or any means of communication with the outside world. No one, including lawyers, can reach these prisoners. Because they have had no legal process, they are held indefinitely. They are entirely at the mercy of their jailers.

Part of the dehumanization process is shaving the prisoners’ heads, reducing any individuality like they were prisoners at Auschwitz. The infamous prison picture of the DHS Secretary Kristi Noem showcased that reduction. In this process the prisoners lose their status as human beings. They become an undifferentiated mass who can be labeled terrorists, dismissed and forgotten.

This is our American gulag. Sending Venezuelan migrants to such a fate without any due process or hearing reflects a ramped-up lawlessness worthy of Kafka.

The case of a Maryland man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was removed to El Salvador, perfectly illustrates the wrongfulness of black sites. The government mistakenly deported Abrego Garcia to the notorious prison, CECOT, in El Salvador. An immigration judge had previously granted Abrego Garcia withholding of removal from the United States to El Salvador. Ironically. Abrego Garcia left El Salvador to escape a gang that was extorting his family’s business. He faced death threats. The immigration judge was concerned Abrego Garcia might be tortured if returned to El Salvador.

Abrego Garcia made it to the U.S. in 2011. He moved to Maryland where he worked in construction. He met his future wife, an American citizen, and they started a family. In March 2019, he went to a Home Depot looking for day labor. The police picked him up and turned him over to ICE. They asked him if he was a gang member and he denied he was.

For the next six months, federal agents sought to deport Abrego Garcia, saying he belonged to MS-13, a street gang. In court proceedings, the government produced the evidence they had compiled to prove Abrego Garcia was a gang member. They had an accusation from an uncorroborated confidential informant. They also argued that at the time of his arrest, Abrego Garcia was wearing a Chicago Bulls hat which the agents said was proof of gang affiliation.

In October 2019, the immigration judge found the evidence was insufficient and ruled that Abrego Garcia could not be deported to El Salvador. For the next six years, he worked as a sheet metal worker and he started taking college courses at the University of Maryland. He and his wife had a third child. Between 2019-2025, he was never accused of or charged with any crime.

On March 12, everything changed. After finishing his shift at work and picking up his youngest child from his grandmother’s house, immigration agents stopped him on the way home. They told him he no longer had protected status in the U.S.. They said his wife had to be there in ten minutes or his five year old would be put in child protective custody. His wife arrived in time to see her husband handcuffed and taken away.

ICE shuffled Abrego Garcia around to different detention centers but for the first two days he was able to call his wife. Then the calls stopped and his whereabouts were unknown. It turned out he was on the third plane that sent the Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador even though there was a court order that precluded that. The plane Abrego Garcia was stuffed into was one of the planes Federal Judge James Boasberg had ordered to turn around. In bad faith, the government disregarded the court order.

There were actually two court orders which should have prevented Abrego Garcia’s removal to El Salvador, the immigration judge’s 2019 order and Judge Boasberg’s order. Also, there is a class action currently in effect which precludes deportation to a third party country without notice and a meaningful opportunity to argue that such a deportation would jeopardize personal safety. Although Abrego Garcia is from El Salvador, he never got notice and never had a chance to argue.

The Trump administration admitted in court that Abrego Garcia’s presence on the plane to El Salvador was an “administrative error” but then it took the position that it could do nothing to return him to the U.S. The same government that placed DHS Secretary Noem inside CECOT for a photo op and wheeled and dealed with El Salvador’s president to receive the prisoners could do nothing to rectify Abrego Garcia’s situation. Even worse, without any evidence, Vice President Vance and Press Secretary Leavitt have doubled down on the idea Abrego Garcia was a gang member.

A Maryland federal court judge, Paula Xinis, has ordered that the Trump administration must return Abrego Garcia by midnight on April 7. But at the time of this writing, the government told an appeals court that the federal judge didn’t have the authority to order the Trump administration to return the man they wrongly sent to El Salvador. They were not willing to ask El Salvador to return him even though the U.S. has enormous leverage over El Salvador.

Left out of the government argument is the fact they never appealed in 2019 when the immigration judge granted withholding of removal. They could have appealed and that was frequently done in other cases during the first Trump administration when Jeff Sessions was Attorney General.

Removal to a black site is un-American and entirely offensive to any notion of due process. The Trump administration appears to believe it is fine to label someone a terrorist and based on the label, deprive them of all rights, without needing to prove anything. That is what they are doing to all the Venezualans sent to El Salvador.

Black sites are characteristic of fascist regimes, not democracies. Everyone who cares about the rule of law must push back hard on the Trump administration’s lawlessness. If they can disregard court orders, that practice could become the norm. What happens to Abrego Garcia is of great concern to all Americans.