Under Trump, the swamp gets thicker still

All the MAGA claims about “draining the swamp” in Washington have proved empty in this first year of President Donald Trump’s final term. Quite the opposite has occurred. Under an increasingly aggressive executive branch, the swamp has deepened and widened, becoming stocked with new metaphoric crocodiles and mosquitoes.

For the notoriously acquisitive president, and his unquestioning relatives and appointees, disturbing signals of self-dealing have multiplied. The nonpartisan Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington flatly calls Trump “the most corrupt president in American history,” saying his conduct in both of his terms gave no assurance of “putting the national interest over his bottom line.”

Multiple signs of self-dealing are going unaddressed. Nowhere is this clearer than in the way the Trump administration — and the Trump business interests — interact with the Persian Gulf states.

SAUDI REAL ESTATE DEAL

The Trump Organization is reportedly negotiating a deal to include one of its branded properties in a massive Saudi Arabian government-owned real estate development. Word of this latest venture spread just days before Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Nov. 18 White House visit. Trump said he and MBS, as the royal is known, were not just meeting but “honoring Saudi Arabia, [and] the Crown Prince.” The president’s show of solidarity included a side-by-side appearance in which Trump attacked a media question over the scandalous 2018 murder of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Embassy in Turkey.

Trump volunteered to insist that the strongman he honored “knew nothing” about the killing — which is not what U.S. intelligence agencies reported in 2021.

For the Trump family’s private dealings, any line between his diplomacy and potential profits has become obscured. In 2022, the private equity firm of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner got a $2 billion investment from a Saudi-backed fund — in a deal advisers to the fund opposed. Also, the Trump Organization gains from Saudi-backed LIV Golf tournaments at its U.S. courses, providing rental income, in addition to real estate licensing deals.

Controversy remains unresolved over the $400 million luxury Boeing 747-8 aircraft gifted by the government of Qatar to the United States for use as a new Air Force One. The plane has begun to be modified. A thicket of issues surround the ethics, national security and costs. Its planned transfer, one day, to Trump’s future presidential library especially raises eyebrows. Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution bars his acceptance of gifts from kings, princes and foreign states without congressional consent.

If the Mideast is the geographic capital for Trump’s ability to make big money off his elected status, the global rise of cryptocurrency is the big financial engine. In May, Trump hosted an invitation-only dinner for more than 200 top investors in his personal $TRUMP meme coin at his golf club in northern Virginia. There was also a VIP reception and a White House tour for these clients.

In October, Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the founder of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, who had pleaded guilty to money laundering violations and served 4 months in prison. Binance paid $4 billion in fines, but reportedly had business with the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial crypto venture. Asked by CBS News’ “60 Minutes” after the pardon about Zhao, Trump said “I don’t know who he is” and that his sons Eric and Donald Jr. were more involved with the crypto business. Sen. Elizabeth Warren calls the family ventures “corruption, plain and simple.”

Trump’s personal interest in crypto hovers like swamp gas over administration policies. The president has chafed against regulators denying banking services to the digital assets industry. The administration has sought to blend crypto into the financial and tax systems. In March he signed an executive order creating a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. How disinterested and impartial could these policies be?

CYNICISM REACHES APPOINTEES

The president’s cynicism about potential conflicts appears to seep down to his appointees. The New York Times this month detailed how Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick used his clout to push foreign investment in AI data center projects — while Cantor Fitzgerald, run by Lutnick’s sons Brandon and Kyle, got millions in fees from those investments.

Meanwhile, congressional Democrats are seeking to investigate how a consulting company with close ties to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem received money from a $220 million public ad campaign, as ProPublica reported. Noem’s top aide is Corey Lewandowski, who was Trump’s first campaign manager in 2016.

Border czar Tom Homan was cast in a grim spotlight in September with news reports that before he was in the job, he had been the target of a federal sting and was recorded accepting $50,000 in cash from agents posing as business executives seeking government contracts. The operation was shut down when Trump took over the Justice Department. At first Homan said he did “nothing criminal” but has since shored that up to say he did not take the money. Without a full investigation, how will we ever know?

With both houses of Congress beholden to Trump an independent search for proof of corruption is unlikely unless Democrats win back the House, or federal prosecutors regain some independence, or the “in” party takes a more professional and impartial view of the White House.

Bright sunlight is needed on the Washington swamp to really disinfect it.