During the first term of President Trump, the idea that special interests and governments bought meals and devise rooms in his hotels of legal and ethical alarms about the potential for corruption.
Mr. Trump’s second term ensures that those worries look trivial.
The plan of the administration to accept a luxury Jet of $ 400 million from the Royal Family of Qatari is just the newest example of an increasingly non-starting atmosphere in Washington under Trump 2.0. Not only could the famous transactional chief executive use the plane while he is in office, but he is also expected to transfer it to his presidential foundation as soon as he leaves the White House.
The second Trump government shows striking contempt for one -off standards of decency and for traditional legal and political guardrails on public services. It is clearly encouraged, partly because of the ruling of the Supreme Court last year that granted immunity to presidents for their official actions and because of the political reality that Mr. Trump’s grip on the Republican Party means that he does not have to fear fear.
Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee Repeated $ 239 million of rich business interests Hoping to take advantage of his advantage or at least avoid his wrath, more than double the previous record, $ 107 million, determined by his inaugural committee in 2017. There is no way to issue a quarter of a billion dollars in dinners and events, and the committee did not say what will happen with remaining funds.
Before he returned to the office, Mr Trump also started a meme cryptocurrency, $ Trump, allowing crypto investors around the world to enrich him. His family has already done millions on transaction costs, and his own reserve of the digital currency is worth billions on paper.
This month Mr. Trump continued by Face-to-face access to him auctioning by the sale of the coinAnnouncing that top buyers would get a private dinner at one of his golf courses and that the biggest holders would be given a tour of the White House. The competition injected new interest into the currency, although it has no intrinsic value.
The removal of such restrictions extends to law enforcement.
In April, the Trump administration Satisfied a unit of the Ministry of Justice that focuses on investigating cryptocurrency crimes.
Previously Mr. Trump that too the department ordered the enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act to suspendWhat makes it a crime for companies that operate in the United States to buy foreign officials.
And attorney -general Pam Bondi, himself A former well -paid lobbyist For Qatar, Limited enforcement of a law Demanding lobbyists for foreign governments to register such relationships and to announce what they are paid.
The administration did not make its legal analysis with regard to the agreement with Qatar public.
A person who was familiar with the case said that Mrs. Bondi personally signed a memo of the Ministry of Justice that the plan was legally blessed, although the person added that it had been drawn up and deleted in the office of legal adviser of the department.
Certainly, aspects of the cultural shift date from before Mr Trump. In 2016, the Supreme Court made it unanimously more difficult to prosecute civil servants for corruption by limiting what counts as an “official act” for federal bribery laws, Leaving the transplant order of a former Governor of Virginia.
And Washington has always been a place where money and politics can mix in inappropriate ways, without a party that has a monopoly on people who would like to exploit a public office for private profit.
Last year, for example, a democratic senator from New Jersey, Robert Menendez, resigned from his office after they have been convicted of taking bribes.
And Hunter Biden was given a lucrative seat on the board of a Ukrainian gas company, while his father, Joseph R. Biden Jr., was vice -president. In this way, acting on the status of his father was generally seen as indecent, even if the facts of the scheme were overshadowed by a Conspiracy theory, through the right, that it also meant bribes By a Russian oligarch.
But the present moment, which comes together when Mr. Trump’s Crypto -Gambit goes together in his intended acquisition of a Qatari plane, is particularly remarkable for the openness with which the president, his direct family and entities in his job, undoubtedly use his position to build his position to build his personal benefits from the government’s personal agenda.
Mr. Trump has put pressure on several large law firms To donate tens of millions of dollars to free legal services for his favorite causesThe use of the threat of official actions, such as prohibited for them and their customers of government affairs, as a bat. (Other law firms have fought his guidelines in court, With growing success.))
He has also found other ways to extract money from technology companies. Amazon Allegedly $ 40 million paid For the rights to stream a future documentary about the First Lady, Melania Trump.
Meta agreed to pay $ 25 million According to the non -profit organization that will build and Leiden’s future Presidential Museum of Mr. Trump, who arranges a lawsuit on the suspension of his Facebook account after his lies about the 2020 elections, culminated in the attack on the Capitool on 6 January 2021.
Business owners of news media organizations also arrange lawsuits with Mr Trump that many media lawyers were considered winning. ABC News agreed to pay $ 15 million On the Trump Museum Foundation.
Paramount, which Trump administration needs approval for a sale to a Hollywood studio, is Consider a similar arrangement With Mr. Trump in a lawsuit that he set up against one of her subsidiaries, CBS News, about how “60 minutes” last year an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris.
Mr. Trump’s plan for the Qatari plane seems to use it as Air Force One until the end of his presidency, while Boeing has finished building a new generation of presidential planes. The Pentagon would then transfer it to his Museum Foundation. (He called it his ‘library’, but presidential libraries are research facilities run by the National Archives. They often border museums that are run by private foundations dedicated to former presidents.)
Mr. Trump compared that plan with the Museum of Ronald Reagan in Simi Valley, California, where a presidential Boeing 707 is Now a star attraction. But that plane was at the end of its lifespan – it was used as Air Force One from 1973 to 2001 before it was dismantled. It remains the property of the Air Force and is only on permanent loan.
The Qatari plane will still be almost new in 2029, so that the question raises whether Mr Trump’s Museum Foundation, which is run by his allies, would allow Mr Trump to continue to use the plane after leaving the office. On Monday Mr. Trump that this was his intention.
Even if so, it was unclear why it would benefit the US government to dismantle an expensive and almost new plane. However, parking in a future Trump Museum would contribute to the glorification of Mr Trump.
Monday, Mr. Trump also spotted That he considered the offer of Qatar of an aircraft as something of a Quid Pro quo, and emphasized that the United States had offered safety to the golf country and “we will stay.”
He added that he considered the gift as ‘a very nice gesture’ of the Qataris. Only a ‘stupid person’, he said, would reject a ‘free very expensive plane’.
- Advertisement -
