Jonathan P. Baird

When it comes to corruption, it is impossible to keep up with the Trump regime. There is always more and worse. The corruption is constant and recurring and you don’t have to look hard to find it.

I would lead off with Trump’s scheme to obtain a $230 million settlement from the Department of Justice (DOJ) for alleged violation of his rights in the 2022 Mar-a-Lago search for classified documents and in the 2016 election. The chutzpah is unbelievable. Trump wants taxpayers to pay him back for the investigation into his bad acts.

On the classified documents case, Trump removed many boxes of federal records from the White House that were famously photographed in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom. No one knows what he was up to in snatching the documents because a poor-excuse-for-a-judge made the case go away in spite of the law. Then the Supreme Court compounded the injustice by granting Trump immunity.

Trump is now seeking payment from the DOJ attorneys who previously represented him. He filed an administrative claim for the money and under the DOJ manual, settlement of claims over $4 million “must be approved by the deputy attorney general or an associate attorney general”. These two people are former Trump lawyers who represented him and his closest associate.

You might ask: how can you be both the lawyer for the complaining party and the decision maker? Trump is shaking down the DOJ and getting his own former lawyers to decide the case. In America, the general rule in litigation is that parties pay their own costs and attorney’s fees but not here. The government is being treated like a personal piggy bank because Trump is in office to plunder.

Then there is the matter of his pardons. Pardoning white collar fraudsters who have demonstrated no remorse is the signature Trump move. The pardons come in two flavors: those who have provided financial support and those who have shown political loyalty.

To grease the process, Trump fired the highly ethical government pardon attorney Liz Oyer and replaced her with Ed Martin, a far right political operative. As Martin posted on X: “No MAGA left behind”. Trump fired Oyer after she refused to restore gun rights to actor Mel Gibson after he lost those rights due to a domestic violence conviction.

The outstanding example of misuse of the pardon power is Trump’s pardon of the Binance chief, Changpeng Zhao, known as CZ. Binance is a cryptocurrency exchange and CZ was possibly the most influential person in that entire industry. Forbes estimates his wealth at $89 billion making him one of the wealthiest people in the world.

CZ had pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective money laundering program. He paid a $4.3 billion fine and served four months in prison. CZ had been allowing drug traffickers, child sex abusers and terrorist groups like al Qaeda to move money on his platform.

In October Trump granted CZ a full and unconditional pardon. Binance and the crypto industry generally had poured money into the Trump coffers in the 2024 election campaign. During the campaign, Binance became the infrastructure provider for World Liberty Financial, a crypto business owned by the Trump family. Binance accepted World Liberty stablecoin as payment for a $2 billion investment by Abu Dhabi investment firm, MGX. That pay-for-play move, channeling $2 billion into Trump’s pocket, enormously boosted the family crypto business.

The connection between the CZ pardon and putting $2 billion into Trump family hands is no accident. When questioned about it on 60 Minutes, Trump said he didn’t know who CZ was. Even for someone who has such a loose relationship to the truth, that’s a stretch. If someone gave your family $2 billion, you wouldn’t remember who they were?

Crypto has become the preferred shadowy vehicle for contributing to the Trump regime. It is anything but transparent. It is the means to suck up and get favors with outsiders not knowing. Trump has made $3 billion since becoming president last January. Forgotten is the Domestic Emoluments Clause of the Constitution that prohibits presidents from receiving any benefit or payment other than their fixed salary. Trump pretends that clause of the Constitution doesn’t exist and no one has held him to account.

Along with using the pardon power to reward wealthy donors and to enrich himself, Trump has also used it to reward political loyalists like the January 6 rioters and 77 people associated with his fake electors plots from the 2020 election. This list included Rudy Giuliani and his former chief of staff Mark Meadows. He also pardoned MAGA ally, George Santos, who had barely begun to serve a 7 year sentence for fraud, identity theft and money laundering.

There are many other shady operators who Trump has inexplicably pardoned. Being a wealthy white collar criminal would appear to be the key qualification for pardon consideration. At least 8 people to whom Trump granted clemency in his first term have since been charged with a crime. That is also true for a number of the January 6 rioters who have again gotten into trouble with the law.

One irony is that there are many people rotting in prison serving long mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenses. They deserve consideration for a pardon but get passed over.

Americans of whatever political stripe have been conditioned to expect the office of the Presidency is about serving the national interest. Trump follows a different autocratic tradition rooted in looting. He is about serving himself by using the office to maximize personal and family wealth. This is the tradition of strongmen like Putin, Pinochet and Mobutu. The nation becomes an entity to be exploited for private gain.

In Trump corruption schemes, the DOJ deserves special mention. They have degenerated into a tool of the regime and the stink of corruption is all over them. Instead of prosecuting cases that demand investigation like Tom Homan’s potential bribery, they close investigations of their political ally while pursuing regime opponents. If there is ever accountability, many of these DOJ lawyers deserve disbarment.

The only thing we can be sure of is that while this regime remains in power, corruption will continue and repression will worsen. It is a law of life with autocrats.