It doesn't get any more corrupt than this

 "Virtually won."   The only thing that stops this outrageous grift is if juries and judges rule against him.

Follow the money

Trump is the law now.
 

Oh what a surprise

Are we sure anybody still thinks we have any credibility to lose?

 

Lawless

 

Trump 2.0 - Burn it all down

 

And there's the payoff

 

Where's DOGE? I found some waste and abuse

 

The Trump administration plans to incinerate $9.7 million worth of contraceptives intended for poor nations, after declining offers from the United Nations and reproductive organizations to buy or ship the supplies instead, the State Department confirmed to Axios on Thursday.

  Axios

Jesus wept.

Epstein: the saga continues

If you thought the Trump squad’s deal to conditionally dismiss New York Mayor Eric Adams’s multiple corruption charges in exchange for assistance in the lawless onslaught against immigrants was a “corrupt bargain,” as many attorneys in the South District of New York U.S. attorney’s office and Main Justice did, buckle up. A potential, disgusting deal between the Trump regime and Ghislaine Maxwell. [...] Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years for conspiracy to entice minors to travel to engage in illegal sex acts, conspiracy to transport minors to participate in illegal sex acts, transporting a minor to participate in illegal sex acts, sex trafficking conspiracy, and sex trafficking of a minor.

[...]

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche (Trump’s former personal attorney) announced a meeting with Maxwell (whom Trump previously wished well). Maxwell is currently appealing her conviction. What could possibly be the basis for the number two person in the Justice Department to meet with the woman at the center of the criminal enterprise that now threatens to envelop Trump in a scandal like none other in his sordid career?

[...]

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) actually got something right when she proposed that Maxwell could be “bartering for something.” [...] This would be the height of corruption, raising the potential for impeachment and/or criminal investigation.

  Contrarian

Not as long as Republicans control the House and Senate.

On Tuesday, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) offered a motion in the House Oversight and Government Reform committee to subpoena Maxwell. It passed on a voice vote. Members of Congress will apparently be able to ask questions about Epstein’s associate, her contact with the Trump Justice Department, and the existence of documents.

She's in prison for 20 years for sex trafficking minors. I don't think she'd draw the line at lying.

“Republicans on the House Rules Committee continue to oppose allowing any legislation to reach the House floor for a vote this week,” the Washington Post reported. “That’s because they fear Democrats will introduce amendments related to Epstein. Democrats on the panel did so twice last week, and Republicans faced blowback from constituents and the MAGA base for voting against releasing the files.” The GOP chair of the committee said it might not meet again until September, and the House is set to scurry out of town for recess on Wednesday.

[...]

House members on both sides of the aisle are irate with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who refused to move forward with a vote to compel release of the documents. Rep. Tom Massie (R-Ky.) earned the ire of the Speaker (and Trump) after he scolded Johnson: “Who’s he gonna pick? Is he going to stand with the pedophiles and underage sex traffickers? Or is he gonna pick the American people and justice for the victims? … It’s irrespective of what the president wants.”

That comes close to the nub of the issue: Will Republicans go along with a massive coverup, the sort of corrupt self-protection racket that authoritarian leaders pull to defend indefensible conduct?

Yes.

If only

 

Waste, fraud, and abuse

 

Hearing on Kilmar Garcia abduction

“I do need evidence in this regard because to date what the record shows is nothing has been done,” US District Judge Paula Xinis said in a tense hearing Tuesday afternoon in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Xinis said she was unsatisfied with the sworn statements she’s been getting each day from Trump administration officials detailing what the government has been doing to carry out her directive.

[...]

Xinis said some of the discovery could come in the form of depositions taken by attorneys for Kilmar Abrego Garcia of the administration officials who have been submitting the daily sworn statements.

“Going to be two weeks of intense discovery,” the judge said at one point. “Once we have a record, we’ll take it from there.”

  CNN

Two weeks more in a torture camp for Garcia.

“It is a fact now of this record that every day Mr. Garcia is detained in CECOT is a day of irreparable harm,” the judge said at one point, referring to the Salvadoran prison where Abrego Garcia is currently being held.

Yeah, so two weeks is too much to gather a record.

The judge also rejected the Trump administration’s argument that her order that officials “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return only means “removing domestic obstacles” that would impede his ability to return to the US.

“When a wrongfully removed individual from the United States is outside the borders it’s not so cut and dry that all you have to do is remove domestic barriers,” she said.

Hold the administration in contempt and put aome DOJ attorneys behind bars.

UPDATE 04/16/2025:

     CNN article

Backroom corruption

 From a Public Citizen newsletter:

[T]he person in charge of the Internal Revenue Service announced that she will resign.

The announcement followed the disclosure of a secret deal between Donald Trump’s sycophantic Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, and Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem (former governor of South Dakota and self-professed dog killer) for confidential taxpayer info to be handed over to immigration enforcement agents.

How did this unprecedented, illegal, and totalitarian plot come to light? Because the Trump regime disclosed it in court papers they filed as part of a lawsuit from Public Citizen to prevent them from violating the privacy of American taxpayers.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking this only affects undocumented workers. Here’s what I told the national news media following the announcement that acting IRS Commissioner Melanie Krause will be resigning:

“Our laws were intended to keep taxpayer data confidential. This backroom deal by Secretary Bessent and Secretary Noem, partly disclosed in a court filing, violates those laws. The Trump administration’s political efforts to use immigrants’ tax data against them should send chills down the spine of every U.S. taxpayer who disagrees with this administration. Undermining the legal protections for sensitive taxpayer information is dangerous, and Krause’s resignation signals the severity of this unconscionable move by the Trump administration.”

UPDATE 04/16/2025:  I thought we already knew this, but maybe I dreamed it.

Trump 2.0 - Get rich quick

 

Corruption in all things

 The history books - if they're allowed to be written and published - will be huge volumes on the corruption of the Trump 2.0 administration.  You may not be able to read them in English.

Somewhat, or radically, corrupt?

 

Again, it's never been about efficiency or saving government money.  It's always been about robbing the treasury to enrich Trump and Elon.

And, in related news...DOGE is claiming savings they didn't instigate.

UPDATE 03/03/2025:

Will Verizon sue or bend the knee?

Oh, FFS

 

Yes, he can be impeached more than once

Hopefully, he won't have to be. He'll be gone.

In 2016, Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan asked then-Vice-President Joe Biden to lean on federal prosecutors who were investigating a Turkish bank for financial crimes and to hand over a dissident cleric living in the United States. The requests seemed to be on Biden’s mind when he publicly addressed reporters and piously explained that, in the United States, the justice system doesn’t work like that. “I suspect it’s hard for people to understand that as powerful as my country is, as powerful as Barack Obama is as president, he has no authority under our Constitution to extradite anyone,” Biden explained to reporters. “Only a federal court can do that."

  NY Magazine Intelligencer

I think you can see where this could be going.

Well, the justice system works like that now.

The New York Times has a comprehensive report on Erdogan’s successful efforts to recruit top Trump administration officials into his corrupt scheme.

Scandals tend to be complicated, especially scandals involving banks. But this one is extremely simple. The basic elements:

1) The Justice Department was prosecuting financial crimes by a Turkish bank.

2) Turkey’s president asked President Trump to quash the investigation.

3) Trump has personally received more than $1 million in payments from business in Turkey while serving as president. 4) Two attorneys general loyal to Trump, Matthew Whitaker and William Barr, both pressured federal prosecutors to go easy on the Turkish bank.

[...]

“In mid-June 2019, when [Geoffrey] Berman met with Mr. Barr in Washington, the attorney general pushed Mr. Berman to agree to allow the Justice Department to drop charges against the defendants and terminate investigations of other suspected conspirators,” the Times reports. When Barr subsequently fired Berman, who resisted his pressure, Justice Department officials cited his stubbornness on the Turkey case “as a key reason for his removal.”

[...]

The misconduct found by the Times is actually much worse than the hypothetical behavior Biden said would lead to impeachment for two reasons. First, it undermines Trump’s own foreign policy.

I think that's a misreading of Trump's foreign policy. His foreign policy is to get whatever he can personally out of foreign connections.

The crimes for which the bank, Halkbank, was being investigated relate to violating American sanctions on Iran. After the Obama administration relaxed sanctions on Iran as part of a nuclear deal, the Trump administration ramped up those sanctions and used them as the lynchpin of its strategy in the region.

[...]

And second, Trump’s own financial interest is a factor Biden did not imagine in 2016. When Trump was asked about Turkey in 2015, he conceded that he had a conflict of interest. “I have a little conflict of interest because I have a major, major building in Istanbul,” Trump told Breitbart. “It’s called Trump Towers — two towers, instead of one. … And I’ve gotten to know Turkey very well. They’re amazing people. They’re incredible people. They have a strong leader.”

Now that's his foreign policy.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Wealth redistribution

The Trump cabal has spent his term enriching themselves.  Putting your tax dollars in their bank accounts.

The consulting firm where the wife of acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf is an executive has been awarded more than $6 million in contracts from the Department of Homeland Security since September 2018.

[...]

Wolf's wife, Hope Wolf, is vice president of professional staff operations at Berkeley Research Group, a consulting firm. Although the company has a long history of federal contracts, it did not do work for DHS until after Wolf became the TSA's chief of staff in 2017.

[...]

Wolf became chief of staff at the Transportation Security Administration, a DHS agency, in 2017 and chief of staff to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen in 2018. He took over as acting secretary in November and has been nominated to become secretary. His confirmation hearing before the Senate is scheduled for 10 a.m. Wednesday.

[...]

"At no time in any of his positions since joining DHS has Acting Secretary Wolf been involved in awarding any contracts," the spokesperson said. "Even if he were involved with the procurement process for this particular contract, which he was not, he would have had to recuse himself due to even the appearance of impropriety."

  NBC

So, purely coincidental.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

If you didn't already know, you're on your own

It's impossible to trust this administration about anything, up to and including your life.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday retracted new guidance on how the coronavirus spreads, raising questions about whether the guidelines were removed for political reasons.

The CDC on Friday published guidance indicating that the novel coronavirus could spread through aerosol droplets, acknowledging that the virus could transmit beyond six feet and suggesting that proper indoor ventilation is a key way to slow the spread of the virus.

The CDC said the virus was known to spread “through respiratory droplets or small particles, such as those in aerosols, produced when an infected person coughs, sneezes, sings, talks or breathes.”

The update was not publicly announced, but it was first noticed by CNN on Sunday.

By Monday morning, the agency had removed the language on airborne spread from its website and reverted to the previous guidance.

At the top of the webpage, the CDC explained the guidance on airborne transmission was a “draft” that had been “posted in error” and that the CDC was still updating its recommendations regarding airborne transmission.

  The Hill

It was probably a hail Mary thrown up by a concerned staffer.

“The CDC just published scientifically valid information and then pulled it off their website and this is very likely a scandal,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) tweeted Monday.

Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), a member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, responded: “One way or another, we’re going to investigate it and find out.”

[...]

Olivia Troye, a former aide to Vice President Pence and the White House coronavirus task force, tweeted she has seen some of these “changes” in guidelines occur firsthand.

“This is likely what happened: @CDCgov tried to warn & tell the truth, it didn’t fit the President’s narrative & someone got an angry call. This is so dangerous for the American people,” Troye wrote.

Of course, this is just the latest such incident.

Last Friday, the CDC revised controversial guidance from August that stated people without COVID-19 symptoms did not necessarily need to be tested, even if they had close contact with confirmed cases.

The original language was deleted, and the update was applauded by public health experts, who warned that the CDC’s changes last month would be a step backward in the nation’s COVID-19 response.

The New York Times reported that the initial change in guidance was written by Department of Health and Human Services officials — the CDC’s parent agency — and not by scientists. The August guidance was posted despite objections from CDC scientists, according to the Times.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

If you're surprised by this, you've been living in a cave

[...]

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

complete thread

ICIJ article