{"id":9459,"date":"2025-05-11T19:02:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-12T00:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/?p=9459"},"modified":"2025-11-29T19:33:30","modified_gmt":"2025-11-30T00:33:30","slug":"open-corruption-a-compendium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/?p=9459","title":{"rendered":"Open Corruption, a compendium"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I keep a rather horribly written personal diary. During the first Trump reign, I would usually put up a paragraph or two about his most recent crime. A few years ago I began reading the \u201cOn This Day\u201d entries to my wife, though I always skip reading the Trump parts, though I skim them be myself. It always amazes me how unbelievably dishonest, corrupt or incompetent acts by the genius have slipped down the memory hole, something that would never have happened had he been a Democrat. Today we hear about a corrupt act that will possibly be mentioned in the New York Times tomorrow, and then forgotten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It occurred to me to keep a running tally of the corruption of Trump and his compatriots. My intention is to simply update this post on what will probably be a daily basis. So, here\u2019s the first, undoubtedly the most corrupt action any president has ever taken, and all out in the open because he\u2019s certain there will be no meaningful pushback, like, for instance the impeachment that should certainly follow. I will add more instances as they occur. I should have started this 100 days ago, so by now there\u2019d be at least 100 examples. So, let\u2019s start with today\u2019s corruption:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. Trump has taken a $400 million dollar bribe<\/a> in the form of a free airplane from the royal family of Qatar, which will supposedly be used as Air Force One but will then be transferred to the Trump Library once Trump\u2019s term in over. In other words, they\u2019re giving him a $400 million dollar plane in return for which they expect and will get something in return. As an aside, isn\u2019t it sort of weird that a guy who has never read a book intends to have a library named after him.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. (May 14th) This is one of many<\/a>, yet another bribe in the form of giant crypto purchases meant to line the geniuses pockets and assure favorable treatment to the buyer. A struggling tech firm with connections to China and a reliance on the Chinese social platform TikTok has reportedly secured funding to purchase up to $300 million worth of President Donald Trump\u2019s memecoin.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. (May 15th) Kristi Noem wants a $50 million dollar airplane for herself,<\/a> even though she already has one. So that makes Pam Bondi\u2019s grift look like small potatoes. All she did was sell between one and five million dollars worth of Trump Media shares<\/a> just before Trump sent the market, particularly the market for his stock, tumbling. I\u2019m sure she\u2019d say it was all coincidence, if anyone could get a direct answer out of her.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. (May 18th) Okay, this isn\u2019t exactly<\/em> an example of corruption, but it\u2019s illustrative of the Republican tolerance for corruption<\/a> so long as the corruption is Republican corruption. Mike Johnson says that the Trump corruption, as opposed to the (non-existent) Biden corruption is okay, because \u201cWhatever President Trump is doing is out in the open. They’re not trying to conceal anything.\u201d, which is quite true since they risk nothing by concealing nothing.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  5. A bit of a repeat, but now we know who\u2019s openly bribing<\/a> Trump through his crypto scheme.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  6. The Trump family is using its political clout<\/a> to force the Vietnamese to let it build a golf course in Vietnam, despite the fact that doing so means Vietnam must violate its own laws. Once again, all out in the open, though the White House \u201csaid, in an emailed statement, \u2018All of the president\u2019s trade discussions are totally unrelated to the Trump Organization.\u2019 It argued that there are no ethical issues as the president\u2019s family develops about 20 Trump-branded properties worldwide, because the president\u2019s sons run the businesses.\u201d Give the New York Times some credit, but not much, on this one. They sort of push the idea that it\u2019s corrupt, though they would never say that out loud.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  7. From Crooks & Liars<\/a>: Donald J. Trump pardoned tax cheat Paul Walczak after his mother, Elizabeth Fago, attended a Mar-a-Lago dinner that cost her $1 million to attend. His mother\u2019s support for Trump, including raising millions of dollars and a connection to a plot to publicize Ashley Biden’s diary, was cited in Walczak’s pardon application, The New York Times reports<\/a>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  8. Trump is looking to take advantage of the suckers yet again, by marketing a mobile phone<\/a> about which he and his offspring are making promises they, of course, won\u2019t keep. The phone itself is a rebranded Chinese T-Mobile, the price jacked up from $172 to $499. They\u2019re claiming it will be made in the USA, but those with knowledge universally agree that\u2019s pretty much impossible. They\u2019re also claiming<\/a> that the alleged $47.00 monthly fee will include 24\/7 telemedicine, which is also a con.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  9. This one\u2019s a bit different in that the corruption is of a different sort. Not selling out for money, but for a judicial appointment. Full story here<\/a>. A Florida state judge who ruled in Trump\u2019s favor in his bogus claim against the Pulitzer Prize Board angled for, and got, a nomination to be a federal district court judge in Florida, clearly in return for his vote. If he\u2019s looking to step up to the Supreme Court he\u2019s probably going to be disappointed, because Eileen Cannon probably has a lock on that.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  10. Okay, technically this doesn\u2019t count, as the corruption took place before the election, but I\u2019ll include it anyway. I\u2019m sure this is going on behind the scenes today, because, after all, it\u2019s not like the DOJ will ever prosecute any of this stuff. Pro Publica Reports<\/a> that \u201c[I]n 2023, while Kristi Noem was governor of South Dakota, she supplemented her income by secretly accepting a cut of the money she raised for a nonprofit that promotes her political career, tax records show.\u201d The nonprofit is a dark money group, yet another bribery conduit for which we have to thank John Roberts, so we don\u2019t know who the bribers were, but rest assured she knew where the money was coming from.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  11. I don\u2019t think there has ever been a bribe paid to a president in such an obvious fashion as this, and that includes anything in items 1 to 10 above. Paramount\u2019s owners are looking to make a couple of billion dollars by selling their business, but they need governmental approval and they know they won\u2019t get it without paying for it. So they agreed to pay $12 million dollars to settle what must be one of the most meritless lawsuits ever filed in the United States, that being Trump\u2019s suit claiming that CBS (a Paramount subsidiary) edited an interview of Kamala Harris in a way that hurt Trump\u2019s fee-fees. Bernie Sanders\u2019 statement<\/a> on the bribe<\/del> \u201csettlement\u201d puts things well.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  12. A bit late on this. Trump used<\/a> at least $10 million dollars of taxpayer\u2019s dollars to market a golf course in Scotland.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  13. You can\u2019t get more corrupt than this<\/a>. Trump has demanded $230 million from the DOJ as compensation for the investigation into his obviously actual ties to Russia. The DOJ is now run by the lawyers who represented him. The article to which I\u2019ve linked claims he is under fire for making the demand, but my guess is that won\u2019t stop him from pressing for the money nor his lickspittles from giving it to him.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  14. Remember when Google\u2019s motto was something to the effect: \u201cFirst, do no evil\u201d. Something like that, I\u2019m too lazy to google it. I guess they\u2019ve left that behind, as they\u2019ve contributed about 10% of the open bribe to Trump<\/a> for his White House destruction project. Oh, some of the above was a bit misleading. I don\u2019t google things, I DuckDuckGo them, and so far as I know the DuckDuckGo folks have not signed on to the Let\u2019s All Bribe Trump team.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  15. Someone else is doing a better job of this. Check it out<\/a>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  16. Okay, I realize that this could easily be updated with a new bit of corruption every day, but there’s only so much I can do. I did run across [this](https:\/\/truthout.org\/articles\/kristi-noem-linked-firm-secretly-got-money-from-220-million-dhs-ad-contracts\/) today. Kristie Noem used a bullshit excuse to avoid competitive bidding for an equally bullshit advertising campaign she initiated, so she could steer the money to a “Republican consulting firm with long-standing personal and business ties to Noem and her senior aides at DHS”. Well, of course she did.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  17. I freely admit that the quid pro quo is not totally out in the open on this one, but I think we can agree that given Trump’s modus operandi, it is unlikely that he would have pardoned the former president of Honduras<\/a>, currently serving time for “facilitating the import of some 400 tons of cocaine into the United States,\u201dfacilitating the import of some 400 tons of cocaine into the United States,”facilitating the import of some 400 tons of cocaine into the United States” if there weren’t something in it for him. After all, this is the guy who is ultimately responsible for the murder of people in the Caribbean who he sees fit to convict without trial.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I keep a rather horribly written personal diary. During the first Trump reign, I would usually put up a paragraph or two about his most recent crime. A few years ago I began reading the \u201cOn This Day\u201d entries to my wife, though I always skip reading the Trump parts, though I skim them be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-impeachable","category-republican-corruption"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9459"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9536,"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9459\/revisions\/9536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}