CREW has their work cut out for them

It was January 15, 2021 when CREW released a report called “President Trump’s legacy of corruption, four years and 3,700 conflicts of interest later.” He never divested from his business interests and made uncounted millions from the money foreign and domestic players spent on his clubs, hotels and real estate—at least $5.5 million from China alone, based on a limited and partial House Oversight Committee investigation that Republicans halted when they took control of the chamber in January 2023.

This week, the CREW homepage featured an August 2024 report on “the intensifying threat of Donald Trump’s emoluments.” That’s the term used in the Constitution for corruption and self-enrichment. In other words, we can expect the president-elect to reach new heights of both during his second administration.

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Trump now has social media and crypto holdings that are particularly concerning. Any wealthy person or foreign country who wants to influence or get a favor from Trump could drive up his net worth by buying a ton of stock, or drive it down by threatening to sell. “In terms of the ability to really throw big money around to him or in his direction, the social media and crypto are really sort of unprecedented [...]”

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For the record: CREW won a clearcut victory for accountability in a case that removed and banned from office a New Mexico county commissioner who had participated in the Capitol riot on January 6th. It won many findings of Hatch Act violations, in which White House aides used their taxpayer-funded positions to promote Trump or disparage Democrats, including a recommendation that Kellyanne Conway be fired. And various courts kept its emoluments suit alive throughout Trump’s term.

But [...] the Supreme Court dismissed three emoluments cases, including CREW’s, when Trump left office.

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CREW suggested in an August 7 letter that he fill all federal ethics vacancies—fourteen open slots for inspectors general (the agency watchdogs who investigate waste, fraud, and abuse) and other “vacancies in key ethics roles throughout the government.” Trump will have authority to fire inspectors general and replace them with loyalists, [CREW president Noah] Bookbinder says, “but it’s not super easy to do,” and the president-elect shouldn’t get a pass.

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The wise course, he says, is to wait for Trump to take office: “I’m not positive that yelling and screaming in the next couple of months about the kinds of things that Trump might do will move a lot of people. But if and when stuff [eg. if he uses the presidency to make his social media holdings and his crypto holdings more valuable and line his pockets] starts happening, there will be an audience for that.”

  Bulwark

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