Trump makes corruption great again: part 5
I didn't expect to need to post an update on this series already, but here we are.
President Trump signed an executive order Monday directing the Department of Justice to stop enforcing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977, which bars U.S. citizens from bribing foreign government officials to win business.Separately, Trump fired the head of the Office of Government Ethics on Monday. David Huitema was nominated by President Biden and confirmed last November by the Senate, before Trump fired him just weeks into his five-year tenure.
Meanwhile, Hampton Dellinger, the head of the independent federal agency that protects whistleblowers, filed a lawsuit Monday challenging his dismissal from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel by President Trump. The Project on Government Oversight called it an illegal firing that “undermines the office that investigates whistleblower disclosures of wrongdoing and enforces the law meant to keep partisan politics out of the federal workforce.”
Summarizing Trump's executive orders so far:
1. Trump fired most of the inspector generals.
2. Trump revoked Biden's rules against accepting gifts from lobbyists
3. Trump revoked Biden's rule against the "revolving door"
4. Trump replaced civil service classification with political appointees.
5. Trump revoked Biden's order that would allow Medicare to negotiate lower prices with Big Pharma.
6. SEC lawyers cannot investigate fraud without approval from politically appointed leadership.
7. Halted virtually all pending activities at the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, including investigations.
8. U.S. attorney general, Pam Bondi announced the end of the effort to battle high-level corruption worldwide and return ill-gotten funds to victims of financial crimes and laws concerning international white-collar crime.
And now he's pardoning corrupt Democratic politicians that take foreign bribes like former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich.
Mayor Adams was indicted in late September for allegedly doing favors for the Turkish government as payback for illegal campaign donations and travel perks. Almost instantly, he started floating Trump-friendly conspiracy theories that the prosecution was a Joe Biden revenge plot. He stood up for then-candidate Trump when his opponent dared to call him a fascist. Adams has now reportedly directed his subordinates to only say nice things in public about the president — anything, really, for the Don.On Monday night, Trump returned the favor, when his Justice Department ordered prosecutors in Manhattan to drop their charges against the mayor, two months before he was set to go to trial. This get-out-of-jail card isn’t free, though. It practically demands that Adams implement Trump’s deportation agenda, and it leaves open the possibility that Adams could be charged again if he doesn’t go along with the program.
Legal observers tell me they’ve never seen a deal quite like it before...
“It’s now a free for all for foreign intel services,” former head of FBI counterintelligence Frank Figliuzzi told NBC News.And if Bondi has her way, criminal investigations like the one that exposed that $10 million influencer network will be a thing of the past. Last week, Bondi ordered prosecutors to dramatically scale back their investigations of violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. That’s the law, passed after World War II, when the Nazis got a bunch of Congressmen to secretly push their agenda. The idea was to stop that kind of covert propaganda.
...
Some of those charges likely wouldn’t have happened under Bondi’s new rules. Or the one against Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), who got all those gold bars in exchange for doing favors for the Egyptian government? Or the one involving Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), who allegedly took $600,000 to covertly do the business of Azerbaijan? Same. Gone.
That's the key point. It isn't that you will be hearing about this new corruption, because Trump had made sure that there will not be any anti-corruption law enforcement.
Comments
It looks like it's time to
It looks like it's time to form a Cabal of poor and working class, so that we can run huge scams on corporate and "governmental" agencies. Its time to start dealing fent in rich neighborhoods.
Oh, come on, g...
haven't you been paying attention for the last three weeks? It's the Democrats that are corrupt, not the Republicans, they are squeaky clean. Sheesh.
Oh, by the way, did you purchase any $Trump or $Melania cryptos? If you didn't you really missed out on the opportunity to pad DJT's portfolio by several 10s of billions of dollars, overnight. And don't you dare say that DJT used his position to enrich himself. He did it right before he took office so that's not corruption, it's good old capitalism, don't you know.
If the Democrats are ever allowed to regain power again, I'm sure we'll hear all about how immaculately un-corrupt the Republicans have been.
Around and around the corruption merry-go-round we go.
As snoopy might say "Trump should look at the mirror".
This still strikes me
as the capitalist version of China after WW2. We've been going through a slow moving "Cultural Revolution" for years, and now the "Great Leap Forward", 1% style. Mao an old, senile dictator trashed China, but out of the wreckage came a modern China using capitalist methods to transform the nation. Maybe out of this the US will do the opposite and use socialist elements to transform our country and strengthen it for its citizens.
Nah, what am I smoking?
I'm not sure where you got this
In China, people busted for corruption get literally executed on a regular basis.
I don't see how Trump removing laws against corruption is anywhere close to the same thing.
Not meant as the same outcome
but the scope of change, with the same methods, taking a society and transforming it from within. Instead of communism we have capitalism. The republicans have shifted the country away from serving it's citizens well being to a 1% central authority and a reverse "great leap" away from science and education. The democrats by not opposing pretty much allowed it to happen. Now we're in the "cultural revolution phase" Where it's of the utmost importance of how you go pee pee and where and there is no discrimination against anyone, and if you disagree you'll be purged. I don't see fighting in the streets, but I could see a Tiananmen Square. I can't see the country coming back to anywhere near where it was. What it will be I can't imagine.
And the so-called "Fourth Estate" is helping
old tRump-the-turd and Muskcrap as much as possible. Nothing like network "News" bloviating crap like "Musk holding court in the Oval Office...". And then there's the image of the booger eating monkey slung around Musk's neck named X. Seriously. Nice to know both yahoos have poisoned the human gene pool. No matter. The climate crisis will finish a lot of this scum off. Rec'd!!
Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.
Were those rules and institutions actually stopping corruption?
Your premises seems to be that those acts and institutions were actually stopping corruption. And that Trump is opening the flood gates to corruption. Seems to be a theme that all things bad started with Trump. Were those Inspector Generals doing their jobs? So lobbyists were just stymied in giving gifts gosh darn it. Revolving door? Janet Yellen had strong ties to Wall Street through her lawyer husband. In fact, when companies were investigated by Treasury, they would hire the law firm and claim conflict of interest so Yellen had to remove herself. Is stopping the revolving door going to stop industries from controlling the state and Congress? Shit the reason America was late in Covid test kits during Biden was because the guy approving them I believe was in involved with Abbot, the great testing company. At that time, Europe had something like 26 companies producing kits.
What is listed does from what I can tell does not personally affect me one bit. As a matter of priorities, I would say go fer it if Trump can destroy USAID which has caused destruction everywhere in the world and is the front for the Deep State that even turns on Americans.
What are Trump's motives? Really mostly payback from the organizations and people that he thinks backstabbed him during his first term. Look at what he did to Pompeo and Bolton and those 50 some former intelligence executives who push Russiagate over the Biden laptop. And Fauci no longer has a protective detail paid by the government.
Ah one thing which has personally effected me were the H1a visas which flood America with low paid, and for the most part barely qualified engineers primarily from India. The policy will go on just as it did under the democrats.
As for Blagojevich. He was a big pro union governor. His down fall came after he supported I believe it was union shop making windows which was a controversial decision of sorts. The corruption he was accused of seems like ordinary stuff that happens everywhere. Clintons did way worse things.
Yes, it does effect you
Let's look at just the CFPB. This one agency has returned $21 Billion to consumers from financial scams. They managed to rewrite rules on bank junk fees and overdrafts. Most likely you benefited and didn't notice, unlike USAID which there is a 99% chance it hasn't affected you.
Who exactly are these Trump enemies people that get screwed by rolling back these anti-corruption laws?
It's curious that you note COVID tests, but don't seem to be aware that Trump is known to have shipped them overseas.
Even if there weren't ready examples, you are still asking the wrong questions. If these anti-corruption laws have no real impact then why is Trump/Musk bothering to remove them? You seem to be saying if there is any corruption then why bother to try to stop it. So let's get rid of all the guardrails.
When Trump ran for office in 2016 everyone who voted for him wanted him to "drain the swamp". He didn't. Nor did he even try. Now his supporters act like they don't care. To me, that is openly dishonest and hypocritical.
YOU CAN"T MAKE THIS UP!
https://x.com/endwokeness/status/1889756543773454728?s=61
The title is incorrect, but he is the Director of Government Affairs for an NGO called POGO (Project on Government Oversight), a pretty big oversight watchdog. I am thoroughly enjoying this movie!
unbelievable
.
.
another NGO figurehead bleating about their humanitarian aims
why the hell is he wearing shades? Perhaps he is aware AI can read
dishonesty in eye movements. POGO sticks stuck.
question everything
FWIW
I have represented 2 clients whom I had to seek court approval to allow them to wear sun glasses in court due to some eye condition that caused them extreme pain in lights. The condition has a convoluted name, but when the sun comes up, the lights go on, they had to don dark shades or they could barely see, and experienced temporary near-blindness. The condition can lead to blindness if they do not protest themselves from light.
The dude may have that condition.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
I am aware of that condition
.
as my eyes are also extremely sensitive to light
good on you to plead for accommodation!
question everything
I actually got into a loud
argument recently with opposing counsel in court, during trial. It got loud, on my part.
I am very sensitive to handicaps of any kind. My late friend/client in the 90s was wheelchair bound. Hell, I threatened the county for not spending their years-old Federal grant money to install an elevator in the courthouse. Before the trial was set for him, they scheduled the installation, made the front page of local news.
My Mom and Dad had minimal handicaps, and all my life it was just a "thing" to see them make the effort to be perfectly normal.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Photophobia?
I’m very photophobic after I burned my corneas when I forgot my sunglasses and skied on a sunny day. Owie! The cornea is the most sensitive part of our bodies.
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.