Thread by @jriddlecult

"President" Donald Trump is sort of the latest escalation of a process that really began with Reagan, where corruption in the executive branch is so endemic it's the natural state and anything else the exception.

This is often one of the best-kept secrets in the corporate press, which, for most of his administration, has devoted an absurdly inordinate amount of attention to "Russia, Russia, Russia" rubbish. But the stories do get reported, even if they are immediately left behind.

Within a few days of its birth in 2016, Trump had hired a slew of lobbyists and top donors for senior roles in the transition team, assigned to staffing departments that oversaw their employers:
politico.com/story/2016/11/…

Trump later made a show of purging those lobbyists, in accordance with this stated ethics policy, but Trump was ignoring those rules before the ink dried.
blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2016/…

Executive nominees that have to be conformed are required to "submit their employment, earnings, investment, and clients to the [Office of Government Ethics]." From the beginning of his transition, Trump was simply ignoring the OGE:
vox.com/policy-and-pol…

Trump simply decided to begin appointing people without ethics vetting, a move the head of OGE called "unprecedented." The Trump team also refused to communicate with OGE, also unprecedented.
nbcnews.com/politics/white…

Later, when the Government Accountability Office attempted an audit of the transition, Trump's team refused to even be interviewed--ignored GAO. Noting the obvious, GAO found that Trump's team had, in the transition, broken precedent with his predecessors.
thehill.com/business-a-lob…

The results of all this was entirely predictable: an administration full of grifters, crooks and conflicts of interest. After less than a year, the Daily Beast found that more than half of Trump's appointees had "notable conflicts of interest."
thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-p…

To be the nation's top mining regulator, Trump picked David Zatezalo, the head of a mining company! If that wasn't bad enough, Zatezalo's company had illegally retaliated against a foreman who blew the whistle on unsafe working conditions:
propublica.org/article/trumps…

To head the EPA's office of emergency response to hazardous spills and clean-ups, Trump picked a longtime lawyer for Dow Chemical.
apnews.com/cf2a6a09bfe345…

To head the Department of Health and Human Services, Trump nominated Alex Azar, who had been president of Eli Lilly and a board member of "the primary lobbying group for the biotech industry."
ibtimes.com/political-capi…

Azar was Trump's 2nd HHS Secretary; the first, former Republican congressmen Tom Price, had been forced to resign in scandal after it was revealed that he had inappropriately spent over a million taxpayer dollars on fancy private flights.
theguardian.com/us-news/2017/s…

Multiple Trump figures have pulled similar stunts. For example, David Shulkin, Trump's Veteran's Affairs Secretary, used an official trip to essentially take his wife on vacation at taxpayer's expense:
thehill.com/homenews/admin…

To head the EPA, Trump chose Scott Pruitt, an outspoken climate-change denialist who had been one of a group of Republican attorneys general who had teamed up with polluting industries to fight Obama environmental regulations:
nytimes.com/2014/12/07/us/…

This is the sort of thing Pruitt was up to as head of the EPA:
politico.com/story/2018/06/…

Pruitt was a source of constant scandal:
vice.com/en_us/article/…

He eventually left in disgrace too:
cnn.com/2018/07/05/pol…

To replace Pruitt as head of the EPA, Trump chose--and I'm sure this will shock you--a lobbyist for the coal industry:
reuters.com/article/us-usa…

Ryan Zinke, Trump's Interior Secretary, was up to his neck in dirty dealings, which resulted in his being up to his neck in investigations:
thinkprogress.org/zinke-11-feder…

Zinke managed to hold his job for less than two years before he, too, was--say it with me--forced to resign in disgrace:
washingtonpost.com/national/healt…

Mick Mulvaney was involved in a very questionable land deal and stiffed one of his creditors for over $1 million; Trump thought that made him just perfect to head the Office of Management and Budget.
mavenroundtable.io/theintellectua…

Mulvaney hates the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; among other things, he's said it is a "joke" that shouldn't exist. So Trump appointed him to run it. Into the ground, that is.
washingtonpost.com/news/business/…

A full accounting of Trump's corrupt appointees would take a great deal more time than this writer has. As suggested earlier, the Trump appointee who hasn't been a walking scandal is almost like a unicorn.

Trump's business empire has been a constant source of scandal. In 2016, he was using it to funnel an inordinate amount of money raised for the campaign back into his own pocket and the pockets of other members of his family--his properties charging his campaign millions.

Rachel Maddow--back before she became a complete joke--put together a good segment in which she suggested the Trump campaign may not be a campaign at all but just a moneymaking scheme for Trump.

Trump didn't divest himself of his business interests after he was elected. He made a big show of resigning from his many positions within it--produced a 19-page letter covering this matter.

But if Trump isn't running his businesses, who is? Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington did some digging and found that--surprise, surprise--no one has filled his positions.
citizensforethics.org/donald-trump-r…

Trump's grift has continued. In March, Forbes reported that Trump has charged his own reelection campaign $1.3 million for expenses at Trump properties, funneling donor money straight back to himself:
forbes.com/sites/danalexa…

Trump has used his office to peddle Trump merchandise.
citizensforethics.org/trump-hat-hurr…

And want an appointment to the Trump administration? Just go drop a bundle at Trump's properties.
citizensforethics.org/trumps-nominee…

During Trump's presidency, lobbyists, political groups, representatives of foreign governments and foreign-government-linked orgs have suddenly come to see the merits of spending a great deal of money at Trump properties.

"President Trump has tallied more than 2,300 conflicts of interest resulting from his decision to retain his business interests, according to a report released today by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)."
citizensforethics.org/press-release/…

This patronage arguably violates both the foreign and domestic Emoluments clauses of the U.S. Constitution. Multiple lawsuits pursuing that point have been making their way through the courts.

Undeterred, Trump announced, earlier this month, a plan to hold next year's G-7 summit at his own Doral golf resort in Florida:
newyorker.com/news/daily-com…

There's no accountability for any of this. Trump had granted more waivers from his own ethics rules in his first four months in office than Obama did in his entire 8 years:
vox.com/2017/6/1/15723…

(Trump, btw, issues such waivers in secret; it took negotiation by congress and the Office of Government Ethics to even learn how many there were and who.)

Without consequence, Trump officials openly admit they've violated his ethics rules. Sometimes, Trump even promotes them:
readsludge.com/2019/02/14/emb…

Inspectors general are ethical watchdogs inside any administration. Trump has allowed 11 IG vacancies to go completely unfilled throughout his tenure, including those over most of the major cabinet departments:
pogo.org/database/inspe…

Of course, if you donate a big bundle to Trump's campaign and the Republican National Committee, Trump will happily swing you a job as an IG:
citizensforethics.org/interior-inspe…

Wilbur Ross, arguably the most corrupt Trump official, has managed to continue in his position as Secretary of Commerce to this day.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilbur_Ro…

Most recently, Ross threatened to fire employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration if they didn't back up Trump’s entirely false claim a few weeks ago that Hurricane Dorian was headed for Alabama:
thenation.com/article/wilbur…

During the Mueller probe into potential Russian interference in the 2016 election, the special counsel wanted Trump to testify. Trump's lawyers, realizing this would end their client, were having none of that.
chicagotribune.com/nation-world/c…

Special counsel Robert Mueller didn't have the power to compel Trump to testify and eventually just dropped the matter. Having gotten away with this, Trump apparently decided he could just extend this practice to congress, which DOES have the power to compel testimony.

Democrats took the House last year and opened numerous investigations into the Trump administration. Trump announced total resistance; administration figures are illegally defying congressional subpoenas, refusing to testify or turn over documents, etc.
usatoday.com/story/news/pol…

The final Mueller report offered a portrait of a "president" behaving like a gangster--constantly trying to obstruct the investigation, destroying evidence, witness tampering, creating (and attempting to create) false records to mislead investigators, etc.
justsecurity.org/65021/mueller-…

Unfortunately, more than 2 years of crackpot conspiracy-mongering over Russia by the press and less-than-sharp congressmen had raised expectations for the report to an impossible level.

Trump had been portrayed as an agent of the Kremlin. Trump's gangster behavior would have buried any prior president but compared to being a foreign agent, it seemed much more small-potatoes. It wasn't the story Trump's critics had been feeding the public.

Because of that, Trump's team was able, through some often dishonest scheming, to completely outmaneuver his critics. Trump's own take was that he had been exonerated of all wrongdoing.
npr.org/2019/04/30/718…

This year, Trump's policy of total resistance to the constitutionally-granted oversight authority of congress has rather quietly precipitated a major constitutional crisis.

The House Oversight and Reform committee subpoenaed Trump's accounting firm to turn over Trump's financial records as part of an investigation of possible emoluments clause violations. Trump's lawyers threatened the firm with legal action if it complied:
politico.com/story/2019/04/…

Trump then sued the committee's chairman in an effort to block the subpoena.
politico.com/story/2019/04/…

That lawsuit was quickly laughed out of court; Judge Amit Mehta not only upheld the subpoena but took the extra step of denying Trump's team a stay of the decision pending appeal (Trump has appealed).
politico.com/story/2019/05/…

During the Mueller probe, Trump had told then-White House counsel Don McGahn to fire the special counsel. Recognizing the very questionable legality of such a move, McGahn had refused. Later, Trump instructed McGahn to lie to investigators and deny this. McGahn again refused.

The House Judiciary committee subpoenaed McGahn to testify about this. Trump moved to block this, asserting that senior advisers to the president are immune from such subpoenas from congress, and that this continues even after the advisers leave office.
npr.org/2019/05/20/725…

George Bush Jr. had attempted a similar sweeping privilege claim; it was rejected by the courts. The notion that privilege covers illegal activities is as dubious as the activities themselves. In August, House Democrats sued to compel McGahn's testimony.
time.com/5646802/house-…

In April, the House Oversight and Reform committee subpoenaed Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross for information regarding Trump's efforts to add a citizenship question to the U.S. census. Both defied the subpoenas.

In June, the committee voted to hold both in contempt:
usnews.com/news/politics/…

The Justice Dept.--run by Barr--promptly announced it wouldn't be pursuing any charges against Barr or Ross. Shocking, right? DOJ took the position that it didn't constitute a crime to defy a subpoena in the face of an executive privilege assertion.
cnbc.com/2019/07/25/doj…

In June, the Office of Special Counsel recommended that White House counselor Kellyanne Conway be removed for multiple violations of the Hatch Act, which bars federal employees from using their office to engage in political activities.

Conway had violated the Hatch Act over a dozen times--more than anyone in decades:
newsweek.com/kellyanne-conw…

Looking into this, the House Oversight committee subpoenaed Conway. She refused to appear, arguing that White House officials were "absolutely immune" from being required to testify.
reuters.com/article/us-usa…

Both the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees have subpoenaed from the Justice Department the unredacted Mueller report and its underlying grand jury evidence; Justice has refused to comply.
huffpost.com/entry/donald-t…

In June, the White House instructed former aides Hope Hicks and Annie Donaldson to--well, you get the picture--defy subpoenas issued by the House Judiciary Committee.
apnews.com/18c3b51e9ebc4a…

Hicks did appear before the committee but "wouldn’t answer questions as basic as where her desk was located in the White House," while White house lawyers constantly interrupted with their absurd "absolute immunity" claims.
politico.com/story/2019/06/…

Though Trump is rather doggedly leaving congress with no option but impeachment, Nancy Pelosi has, throughout her latest tenure as House Speaker, consistently resisted calls for that sort of inquiry, protecting Trump on the grounds that it was politically safer to do so.

That changed yesterday, when news that Trump may have tried to get the government of the Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden's son--a felony--and may have withheld aid to ensure this happened proved to be the straw that finally broke Paygo Pelosi's back.

Whether any of this goes anywhere remains to be seen. The result, whatever it is, won't be Trump's removal from office; one can say with great confidence that even if Trump was caught on tape molesting a child, every Republican in the Senate would vote against his removal.

Whatever the outcome, it has to be done. Trump has made corruption the norm; if that isn't repudiated, root and branch, one has just kissed American liberal democracy goodbye. That wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing but one doesn't want to replace it with something worse.

I'm going to stop there. I could have made this many times longer--the Trump regime is that bad--but it's already so long few will probably read it! Maybe it will be a useful resource to someone. Thanks to @RantsByDesign for suggesting it. Comments, additions, cursing are welcome