NEW: Trump spent four years demolishing America's historic legacy of anti-corruption leadership.
Here's what the Biden administration can, and should, do to restore America's anti-kleptocracy bona fides: newrepublic.com/article/160461…
It's tough to try to keep track of all the ways Trump decimated U.S. anti-corruption leadership.
But it's clear he'll have the most corrupt presidential legacy since Warren Harding and Teapot Dome, and leaves behind an Augean stables–size mess for the rest of us to clean up.
Want inspiration for how successfully the U.S. can recover its anti-corruption leadership under Biden?
Look at what happened after Nixon and Watergate, with the passage of the FCPA, which effectively shifted the global tide when it came to criminalizing foreign bribery.
The passage of the FCPA sparked a decades-long effort from the U.S. to carve a position as the global leader in the anti-corruption fight—thanks Nixon!—and a range of successful programs to clean up graft and money laundering:
After Trump, Biden's administration has a massive anti-corruption clean-up ahead of it.
Thankfully, there's wind at the new administration's sails—and plenty of anti-corruption/anti-kleptocracy bills to lend its weight to.
Biden's administration should build out an entirely new anti-kleptocracy paradigm in the U.S.—by ending anonymity wherever it can.
End it in real estate. End it in hedge funds. End it in private equity. End it in trusts. End it in art and auction markets. End as much as it can.
Anonymity remains the kleptocrat’s asymmetric advantage. Which means that transparency is the best weapon in the American arsenal.
And if these reforms aren't implemented in the here and now under Biden, we might not get another chance.
Want to also flag some other great write-ups on what the incoming administration can/should do on the anti-corruption and anti-kleptocracy front—wide spaces to begin rebuilding:
NEW: The surge in secessionist chatter from the Trumpian right in recent weeks points directly to the strategy to come: obstruction, nullification, and a grinding war of attrition in Washington. politico.com/news/magazine/…
No states are seceding (right now), not least because the Red State/Blue State model is completely outdated. Instead, the surge in secessionist rhetoric points directly to the obstructionism to come.
It's less the Confederacy circa 1861, and more the Tea Party circa 2009.
The thing is: threats of secession, masking obstruction and nullification, work.
They worked in the 1830s, under Jackson. And the Trumpian right is hoping they'll work again.
Really is tough to overstate how massive this passing will be.
Banning anonymous shell companies in the U.S. would be the biggest anti-money laundering move the country has taken in nearly 20 years—and potentially ever.
There hasn’t been a single piece of anti-money laundering legislation of this magnitude since the Patriot Act, which took massive strides toward cleaning up the US banking sector from dirty money.
But even the Patriot Act’s full AML weight was gutted by “temporary” exemptions.
The fact that Trump might be the president to sign into law legislation banning anonymous shell companies is a *huge* testament to the civil society voices who built bipartisan support for it.
Some of the civilian carnage Napoleon and his troops wrought in northern Italy: “Napoleon stormed the city, and every armed man was immediately killed... He turned the city over for a 24-hour spree of rape, looting and murder.”
Some of the civilian carnage Napoleon and his troops wrought in the Middle East: “Jaffa was sacked, in midst of a pitiless massacre that Napoleon never explained with anything other than weasel words about his inability to cope with a mass surrender.”
It's been a long, strange four years. It's also been one of an (unfortunately) historic nature, which is easy to overlook amidst the daily news cycles. Here are ten historic firsts the U.S. has seen under Trump—none of the which we'd seen in the 240 years prior:
1. Trump is the first American president to be impeached on national security grounds.
2. Trump is the first American president to threaten not to recognize the election results, and to refuse to pledge to a peaceful transition of power.
3. Trump is the first American president to try to postpone the election.
4. Trump is the first American president to try to jail his predecessor.
NEW: We compiled a new database of donations from post-Soviet oligarchs tied to election interference operations.
Our findings: They donated between $372 million to $435 million to more than 200 of the most prestigious U.S. non-profit institutions. foreignpolicy.com/2020/10/30/ame…
These findings came with the work of the great @dszakonyi and @acdatacollectiv (both of which I’d recommend following).
The donations from these post-Soviet oligarchs run the gamut, from American think tanks to American universities to American museums to American concert halls, and plenty more: foreignpolicy.com/2020/10/30/ame…
There is a fascinating story of the successful public pressure campaign over the last two weeks to get American lobbying/PR firms to drop Turkey and Azerbaijan as clients. Just remarkable.