Awful: Senate investigations into Trump's solicitation of $1 billion from Big Oil and Jared Kushner's financial dealings with Saudis will now hit a wall with GOP control, Dems tell me. We're headed for unchecked elite corruption under Trump.
For many reasons, conditions are ripe for right wing elites to loot the place from top to bottom. Remember when Trump vowed to give Big Oil execs what they want in exchange for $1 billion in campaign funds? Now we'll likely never get to the bottom of it.
“The next four years are going to be a smash and grab under Trump,” Sen Ron Wyden tells me, because “special interests who put Trump back in office expect a return on their investment."
His probe into Kushner's dealings will get much harder w/GOP control
Interesting suggestion from @NoahBookbinder: Trump's Truth Social gives wealthy investors a way of currying favor with him by buying stock, which would "quickly affect his net worth."
Needless to say, Trump won't divest, as he should.
Underappreciated point: Trump's plan to purge civil servants and replace them with MAGA loyalists will create new avenues for corruption. Special interests can hijack rulemaking more easily and career people will be in less of a position to blow whistle.
Trump is going to hoodwink pundits into writing that his presidency is "taking on the elite class," even as he sells off the government for parts to his right wing oligarchic elite cronies.
Stephen Miller is employing state terror in service of the open goal of shifting the ethnic mix of the country. In numerous ways he's doing this at the expense of public safety.
First, his grandmother has written an unpublished history of some of his ancestors' immigration to the US. We are publishing it online for the first time. They were attacked in terms similar to those he uses today.
Some news on Trump's doling out of most refugee slots to white South Africans: Two former State Department officials tell us basic protocols designed to determine whether this group actually merits protection have simply been scrapped. It's just whim.
Remarkable how brutal the ruling against Trump on Abrego Garcia truly is: It details malicious abuses of power all throughout. Trump and Stephen Miller were testing their ability to spread lawless state terror. But the court held the line. 1/
News --> The commander who oversaw Pete Hegseth's alleged killing of two boat bombing survivors is now likely to come in and face questions from House Armed Services Committee, ranking Dem Adam Smith tells me.
Pete Hegseth denies he gave the order to kill them all. But even some Republicans now appear to be demanding answers, so Frank Bradley, who oversaw bombings, is in talks with House Armed Services about coming in.
NEWS --> BBC confirms to me that they did edit a line out of historian @rcbregman's speech. It called Trump "the most openly corrupt president in US history."
BBC also confirms this was done on the advice of lawyers. So Trump's threats worked.
Today @rcbregman posted a transcript of his Reith Lecture showing that the version that BBC aired removed the line about Trump's world-historical corruption.
BBC emailed me: "we made the decision to remove one sentence from the lecture on legal advice.”
@rcbregman Trump is the most corrupt president in US history, and the openness of his corruption is an essential feature of it. It's extra bad that this comes as the Defense Department punishes Sen Mark Kelly for correctly warning against breaking illegal orders.
Remarkable: Rep Chrissy Houlahan, one of the Dems Trump called for executing, tells me her office literally filled out a Capitol Police threat report listing "the president" as the person making the threat.
One reason she and other Dems did the video about Trump's illegal orders is that they're hearing from inside the military and intel services of actual live fears that they're being given unlawful commands:
Trump's boat bombings in the Caribbean just got worse. An internal DOJ memo says the victims are waging war on the US, but per NYT, it extensively cites the WH's *own claims* to this effect as evidence!
The memo purportedly justifying these murders also contains a lengthy section that lays out arguments defending the actions of those carrying out the strikes. In short, it *preemptively* defends them from potential prosecution later.
Ever since the bombings began, a big Q has been: Do those carrying them out fear they're being given illegal orders? The official overseeing them recently resigned with no explanation, prompting Dems to ask if he'd concluded bombings are illegal. 3/