Garrett Graff: “A lot of attention has come in recent days to the sheer size of the corruption racket surrounding the president and the White House. The New York Times did a great piece this weekend about how Trump is pillaging the presidency, and Evan Osnos — the current reigning king of reporting on oligarchs and the super-rich — this week has a New Yorker piece about ‘Donald Trump’s Politics of Plunder.’ As one lobbyist told Evan, Trump’s influence-selling behavior in office is ‘outer-borough Mafia shit.'”
“But the spreading corruption around the presidency doesn’t stop with the president.”
“There’s also a broader, equally worrisome trend playing out at the margins of the national headlines: Day by day, we’re seeing the Justice Department effectively decriminalize and wave away crimes by Trump’s friends and instead selectively focus investigatory resources on Trump’s adversaries and enemies.”
“This is textbook authoritarianism, a classic example of what one-time Peru president General Óscar Benavides captured in his adage: ‘For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.'”
