“I think we essentially have become a kleptocracy that would make Putin blush. I mean, keep in mind that in the first three months, the Trump family has become $3 billion wealthier, so that’s a billion dollars a month.”
— Business school professor Scott Galloway, quoted by the New Republic.
“A $2 billion crypto deal involving President Trump’s family and a foreign government is threatening to derail bipartisan stablecoin legislation that Congress has been working on for months,” Axios reports.
“Democrats see the potential for gob-smacking corruption in Trump’s lucrative crypto projects, which they consider to be the clearest conflicts of interest in a sea of new business ventures launched by the president and his inner circle.”
“The Trump family’s crypto dealings could now jeopardize legislation that the crypto industry has aggressively lobbied for as a way to gain legitimacy and legal clarity in the U.S.”
“There’s nothing like it.”
— Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, quoted by the New York Times, on the financial conflicts of interest in Donald Trump’s White House.
“The New Jersey Attorney General’s office will seek a court order to permanently bar former U.S. Senator Bob Menendez from ever holding public employment in the state following his conviction on federal corruption charges last year,” the New Jersey Globe reports.
“Some Senate Republicans are raising concerns about an exclusive dinner and White House tour President Donald Trump is offering top investors in his $TRUMP meme token,” NBC News reports.
Said Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY): “This is my president that we’re talking about, but I am willing to say that this gives me pause.”
Added Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK): “He’s got to remember that he’s living there, but it’s the people’s house, right?”
“Sitting in front of a packed auditorium in Dubai, a founder of the Trump family cryptocurrency business made a brief but monumental announcement on Thursday. A fund backed by Abu Dhabi, he said, would be making a $2 billion business deal using the Trump firm’s digital coins,” the New York Times reports.
“That transaction would be a major contribution by a foreign government to President Trump’s private venture — one that stands to generate hundreds of millions of dollars for the Trump family. And it is a public and vivid illustration of the ethical conflicts swirling around Mr. Trump’s crypto firm, which has blurred the boundary between business and government.”
“When Donald Trump agreed to attend a dinner with the largest investors in his own-brand cryptocurrency, he transformed the TRUMP coin into something else entirely: a means of access to the sitting president,” Wired reports.
“As a consequence, Trump could find himself at odds with constitutional prohibitions of bribery and corruption, experts claim.”
“Trump’s dinner announcement on April 23 instigated a trading frenzy that, on paper, added hundreds of millions of dollars to his net worth. Two subsidiaries of the Trump Organization, a conglomerate owned by the president, control 80 percent of the total supply of the coin, which shot up in price by almost 60 percent after the announcement. Those subsidiaries also profit from any surge in trading volume as rent-seeking intermediaries.”
“Three of the Manhattan federal prosecutors who worked on the criminal case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams resigned Tuesday, accusing the Justice Department of trying to force them to admit wrongdoing in connection with their resistance to dropping the charges,” Politico reports.
“The wife of former U.S. senator Bob Menendez was found guilty on Monday of helping her husband generate a steady flow of bribes and gifts that totaled about $1 million and included gold bars, cash and a luxury car,” the Washington Post reports.
“Nadine Menendez, 58, was convicted of bribery, obstruction of justice, conspiracy to commit those crimes and related counts after a roughly month-long trial in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. She faces the possibility of decades in prison.”
Anne Applebaum: “Once upon a time (and not even that long ago), blatant conflicts of interest, especially involving foreign entities, were something presidents sought to avoid. No previous inhabitant of the White House would have wanted to be seen doing personal business with companies from countries that seek to influence American foreign policy. Such dealings risk violating the Constitution, which prohibits government officials from accepting ‘gifts, titles or emoluments from foreign governments.'”
“But during Trump’s first term, the court system largely blew off his commercial entanglements. Now he not only does business with foreign as well as domestic companies that have a direct interest in his policies, he advertises and celebrates them. We know the identities of the golf-tournament sponsors not because investigative journalists burrowed deep into secret contracts, but because they appear on official websites and were displayed on a billboard, observed by The New York Times, at his golf course.”
“Former Rep. George Santos (R-NY) should be sentenced to more than seven years in prison for committing fraud while campaigning for Congress, federal prosecutors said,” Bloomberg reports.
“A federal judge on Wednesday permanently dismissed the sweeping public corruption charges against Mayor Adams — denying an effort by Trump’s Justice Department to have them, tossed ‘without prejudice,’ or keeping open the possibility of bringing them again,” the New York Daily News reports.
A Republican Board of Elections employee in New York City was charged with taking kickbacks in exchange for jobs working the polls, the New York Times reports.
“Less than two months after former Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey was sentenced to 11 years in prison on federal corruption charges, the trial of his wife, Nadine Menendez, begins on Tuesday in Manhattan,” the New York Times reports.
“The Trump administration is gutting the Justice Department’s unit that oversees prosecutions of public officials accused of corruption,” NBC News reports.
“The unit, the Public Integrity Section, has overseen some of the country’s most high-profile and sensitive prosecutions. Now, though, only a small fraction of its employees will remain, and the unit will no longer directly handle investigations or prosecutions.”
“A judge has dismissed indictments against New Jersey Democratic power broker George Norcross and his five co-defendants, potentially ending a case that rocked New Jersey politics and boosted the profile of Attorney General Matt Platkin,” Politico reports.
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.