“Several associates and supporters of Mayor Eric Adams are expected to face corruption charges in the coming days, in cases that could serve as a potent reminder of the scandals still marring his mayoralty,” the New York Times reports.
“The mayor, who is just months away from facing voters in his bid for a second term leading New York City, is not expected to be charged.”
“A federal grand jury returned a criminal indictment Friday of New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell, capping a years-long corruption investigation that had overshadowed the mayor’s second term,” the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports.
“The criminal charges — an apparent result of the wide-ranging probe into Cantrell’s spending, political activities and other alleged acts — mark a stunning low point for the Democratic mayor, a former neighborhood organizer who rose eight years ago from a seat on the City Council to New Orleans’ top office. Her ascent shocked the city’s political class and epitomized changes that swept New Orleans politics following Hurricane Katrina.”
Laura Loomer said that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) “is using her campaign fundraising to enrich her daughter Taylor Greene Robinson, who she has funneled over $113,279.09 in ‘staff payroll’ from her campaign funds since March of 2024 even though the daughter lives out of state in Yoakum, Texas.”
When Greene’s eldest daughter, Lauren Greene, responded, Loomer replied with additional attacks: “Your mom ruined your family. She cheated on your father. She is a skank. Don’t get mad at me for speaking the truth about your slut mom.”
David Kirkpatrick attempts an honest accounting of the Trump family’s profits from two presidencies — and conservatively estimates the sum to be $3.4 billion.
“By the time I finished adding up the Trump family’s profits, I was almost inured to it all.”
“If one theme has emerged in President Donald Trump’s second term, it’s this: He’s leveraged the power of his office for personal gain unlike anyone before in history,” the AP reports.
“From crypto coins to bibles, overseas development deals to an upcoming line of cellphones, Trump family businesses have raked in hundreds of millions of dollars since his election, an unprecedented flood of often shadowy money from billionaires, foreign governments and cryptocurrency tycoons with interests before the federal government.”
Casey Michel: “The White House has seen its share of shady deals. Ulysses S. Grant’s brother-in-law used his family ties to engineer an insider-trading scheme that tanked the gold market. Warren Harding’s secretary of the interior secretly leased land to oil barons, who paid a fortune for his troubles. To bankroll Richard Nixon’s reelection, corporate executives sneaked suitcases full of cash into the capital.”
“But Americans have never witnessed anything like the corruption that President Donald Trump and his inner circle have perpetrated in recent months. Its brazenness, volume, and variety defy historical comparison, even in a country with a centuries-long history of graft—including, notably, Trump’s first four years in office. Indeed, his second term makes the financial scandals of his first—foreign regimes staying at Trump’s hotel in Washington, D.C.; the (aborted) plan to host the G7 at Trump’s hotel in Florida—seem quaint.”
“Trump 2.0 is just getting started, yet it already represents the high-water mark of American kleptocracy. There are good reasons to think it will get much worse.”
“Virtually every week, the Trump family seems to find a new way to profit from the presidency.”
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“An Argentine judge on Tuesday put former President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner under house arrest to serve out a six-year sentence for corruption in a case that has effectively brought down the country’s most prominent politician in recent decades,” Reuters reports.
“For decades, Robert Menendez had the ear of presidents and prime ministers. He controlled the flow of military aid as the Democratic leader of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. A son of Cuban refugees, he was a go-to authority on immigration policy,” the New York Times reports.
“But on Tuesday, Mr. Menendez is set to become a ward of the same government that he once helped to lead when he enters a federal prison in Pennsylvania to begin serving an 11-year sentence for political corruption.”
“He will be known as prisoner No. 67277-050 when he enters Federal Correctional Institution Schuylkill in Minersville, Pa., roughly three hours away from the home he has shared in New Jersey with his wife, Nadine Menendez, who is expected to be sentenced in September for her role in the scheme.”
“He’s dismantling not just the means of prosecuting public corruption, but he’s also dismantling all the means of oversight of public corruption. The law is only for his enemies now.”
— Law professor Paul Rosenzweig, quoted by NBC News, on President Trump.
Evan Osnos: “In a matter of weeks, the flood of cash swirling around the White House swamped whatever bulwarks against corruption remained in American law and culture.”
“For decades, the FBI and the Justice Department have been the main enforcers of laws against political corruption and white-collar fraud in the United States. In four months, the Trump administration has dismantled key parts of that law enforcement infrastructure, creating what experts say is the ripest environment for corruption by public officials and business executives in a generation,” NBC News reports.
“Trump aides have forced out most of the lawyers in the Justice Department’s main anti-corruption unit, the Public Integrity Section, and disbanded an FBI squad tasked with investigating congressional misconduct. They have issued a series of directives requiring federal law enforcement agencies to prioritize immigration enforcement. And they have ended a 50-year policy of keeping the Justice Department independent of the White House in criminal investigations.”
Dan Pfeiffer: “Trump is the most corrupt president in history, here’s why he keeps getting away with it.”
George Stephanopoulos opened his Sunday show with a scathing accusation of corruption by Donald Trump and his family – just six months after ABC agreed to a $16 million payment to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by the president for the anchor’s comments, The Wrap reports.
Said Stephanopoulos: “The scale is staggering. Donald Trump and his family are making hundreds of millions, potentially billions of dollars, as Trump and his administration are taking official actions that benefit contributors and investors.“
David Frum: “During his first presidency, Donald Trump collected millions of dollars of other people’s money. He charged the taxpayer nearly $2 million to protect him during the hundreds of times he visited his own properties. He accepted millions of dollars of campaign-related funds from Republican candidates who sought his favor. His businesses collected at least $13 million from foreign governments over his first term in office.”
“When it was all over, Trump apparently decided he had been thinking too small. In his first term, he made improper millions. In his second term, he is reaching for billions: a $2 billion investment by a United Arab Emirates state-owned enterprise in the Binance crypto exchange using the Trump family’s stablecoin asset. An unknown number of billions placed by Qatar in a Trump-family real-estate development in that emirate, topped by the gift of a 747 luxury jet for the president’s personal use in office and afterward. Government-approved support for a Trump golf course in Vietnam while its leaders were negotiating with the United States for relief from Trump tariffs. Last week, Trump hosted more than 200 purchasers of his meme coin, many of them apparently foreign nationals, for a private dinner, with no disclosure of the names of those who had paid into his pocket for access to the president’s time and favor.”
David Frum: “Nothing like this has been attempted or even imagined in the history of the American presidency. Throw away the history books; discard feeble comparisons to scandals of the past. There is no analogy with any previous action by any past president. The brazenness of the self-enrichment resembles nothing seen in any earlier White House. This is American corruption on the scale of a post-Soviet republic or a postcolonial African dictatorship.”
“Donald Trump’s dinner is an orgy of corruption. Donald Trump is using the presidency of the United States to make himself richer through crypto and he’s doing it right out there in plain sight.”
— Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), quoted by Time.
New York Times: “It was a spectacle that could only have happened in the era of Donald J. Trump. Several of the dinner guests said that they attended the event with the explicit intent of influencing Mr. Trump and U.S. financial regulations.”
“Mr. Trump and his business partners organized the dinner to promote sales of his $TRUMP cryptocurrency, a memecoin launched just days before Mr. Trump’s inauguration. A memecoin is a type of digital currency tied to an online joke or mascot; it typically has no function beyond speculation. But Mr. Trump’s coins have become a vehicle for investors, including many foreigners, to funnel money to his family.”
“As jaw-dropping presidential activity goes, this one takes some beating,” Politico reports.
“Tonight, Trump will host more than 200 wealthy crypto bros for a private ‘dinner with the president’ as a special reward for their $400 million investment in his personal memecoin. Trump will head to his D.C.-area golf club at 7 p.m. as the star guest at what the distressingly garish official website describes as ‘the most exclusive invitation in the world.’”
NBC News reports the 220 “winning” investors at tonight’s dinner have collectively spent an extraordinary $394 million between them, with several spending more than $10 million a head.
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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