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It's Consider this where every day we go deep on one big news story today, warning flags about the Trump administration and alleged corruption, like the disclosure of thousands of stock trades being granted immunity from IRS audits and the administration's new $1.8 billion anti weaponization fund. Some lawmakers say it's bad policy. Here's Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina speaking to Spectrum News on Capitol Hill Thursday about the fund. I'm not going to be an attorney and judge it's legality, but I think it's stupid on stilts. Others, like Democratic Senator Alyssa Slotkin of Michigan, had this to say. The president has managed to take this sort of what I call high level corruption to a new level, high level corruption to a new level. Consider this. President Trump's recent moves are prompting questions, including from some within his own party, about whether the president is bending American democracy to empower himself and his family. Where and how to draw the line? From npr, I'm Mary Louise Kelly.
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It's Consider this from npr. In recent days, the news has been filled with some eyebrow raising choices by the Trump administration. President Trump is defending a new, nearly $1.8 billion fund designed to help people he says were unfairly targeted by the justice system. New financial disclosure form. President Trump made thousands of stock trades
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during the first few months of the
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year, including companies affected by his policies.
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The US Is forever barred and precluded from examining or prosecuting Trump, his sons, and the Trump Organization's current tax issues.
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All right, so a sampling of a few of the matters making headlines. The leader of one prominent nonpartisan think tank says these moves amount to epic corruption in plain sight. Michael Waldman is president and CEO of the Brennan center for Justice.
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Michael Waldman, Welco, great to be with you.
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So you have written a piece with that headline, epic Corruption in plain sight. I want to start with the development just of the last week or so that what the Trump administration is calling an anti weaponization fund, what critics of this plan are calling a slush fund. But this is the nearly $1.8 billion that will go to Trump allies, go to people who believe they were victims of former President Biden's Justice Department. First, just make the case. Why is this epic corruption in plain sight, as it appears to be a
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really extraordinary manipulation of the system, both for his own legal and financial benefit. But to create a slush fund, as it has been called for his allies, President Trump sued the federal government. He then had his own Justice Department settle the suit. And this fund is part of the settlement. And it therefore bypasses Congress and all the other ways in which money is supposed to be decided. It's supposedly going to be administered by a committee, and it's supposedly going to people who've been, quote, victims of weaponization, meaning people who, for one reason or another, broke the law and got prosecuted. And everybody assumes, of course, that the January 6th insurrectionists, many of whom went to jail, would be among the people who would be applying. They certainly have said so. A lot of them have talked with great relish about the money they were going to get and others as well. It's rather unprecedented in its scope, and it has led to a tremendous reaction, including from members of the president's own party.
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Okay, so let me lay out a few of the people raising objections to this and just get your sense of whether this is the system working and putting a check on this. First of all, Congress lawmakers are criticizing the fund, including members of President Trump's party. They have just delayed a vote on ICE funding, also for the President's Ballroom project. But this is expressing their frustration. So we are seeing Republican lawmakers rebelling against the president over this. Is that an adequate check?
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Well, it's noteworthy because there's been so little pushback on so much. And Congress under the Constitution is given the power and the duty to set spending decisions. And so one of the things that's really fishy about this is it evades that by relying on an already existing ability to pay people in the course of litigation without Congress having to vote on every individual thing, Congress should speak out, should vote on it. And this is seemingly for a number of political figures of the president's own party, for whatever reason, this seems to be one line too far. The straw that broke the camel's back. But that's only part of it.
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Speaking of litigation, we know that two police officers who were at the Capitol during the January 6th insurrection have filed a lawsuit challenging this fund. What do you say to folks who say, hey, that's a check. Let the courts decide?
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Well, it is definitely the case that if these funds go to the January 6th insurrectionists, rioters, these were people who assaulted police who broke into the Capitol. And you can understand why the people who were on the receiving end of that would be pretty upset. It's unclear whether the courts will hear that case and allow it to go forward. The question always with this kind of thing is, do the police officers have standing? Will they be able to bring the case in a way that a court will hear it? They certainly have moral. I hope they have legal standing, but we'll have to see whether a court rules that way.
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What about ordinary Americans who are voters and also, notably in this case, taxpayers. You write that perhaps the sturdiest protection against corruption in this case would be fierce anger from fleeced taxpayers. Your words.
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Yes. These are our funds. These are our funds being used by a political figure to dole out to allies. We all pay taxes, and we. We don't have an exemption from an IRS audit, from a Justice Department that we control the way this president does. The issue of corruption is a major issue in American politics and will be more so going forward. The role of big money, the taking of government power for personal gain and private profit, which we're seeing in a very big way right now, is a really big issue. What we see with the executive branch, what we see out of the White House, issues like stock trading by members of Congress, people from both parties are really angry about it. And I think with the midterm elections coming up, one of the things we're seeing is members of Congress who are running for reelection not wanting to have to defend this in either party. And so we saw in the elections recently in Hungary that the issue of corruption there was actually the driving issue that led to a big change in Hungary. The new president of Hungary said that we cannot be, he said, a country without consequences. I think that idea that there need to be consequences that people really care about. Corruption is going to be an even bigger issue in American politics going forward than it has been now. It's the sleeper issue, I think, at this moment.
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You mentioned stock trades and specifically President Trump's recent disclosures detailing his stock trades. What did we learn?
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Well, presidents generally either divest themselves of their stocks, make sure they don't have them, or put them in a blind trust where they don't know what's being done. What we've learned is that this president had many, many trades, and these were in companies that were about to benefit from actions that had not yet been announced by the federal government.
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What's an example?
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Well, in the period where there was a big fight over whether Netflix or Paramount, the president's allies, would take over Warner Brothers, the president bought stock in all three companies. And the president did not put his assets in a blind trust. He gave them to his kids. Eric Trump, among others, went with him to China with people from companies that benefited from the China US Negotiations. And the Trump family says, well, we didn't make these trades. These were done by third party financial advisors. But we actually have no idea. And there's no reason necessarily to trust that. Is this illegal? Part of the problem is that the laws actually are very loose when it comes to a president. There are all kinds of laws that apply to other members of the government, all kinds of laws that apply to members of Congress, but that do not apply to the president. And that's one of the things that needs to be fixed.
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Okay? So questions about what is legal and what is not, questions about whether President Trump, as he says and his family has maintained, is not involved in these stock decisions. But to those who might be listening and saying, hey, this is just, this is a smart business decision, and this is President Trump and his family advantaging loopholes. It's the system that's the problem, not President Trump.
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It's both in the sense that the system needs to be strengthened. There need to be laws passed and rules changed to strengthen these protections. We've been saying for years that the ethics rules should apply to the president and should apply to Supreme Court justices and others who right now don't have those kind of mandatory rules that, that apply to everybody else in senior government positions. But it's not only a matter of the law. Other presidents had the understanding that a conflict of interest or even the appearance of a conflict of interest could gravely undermine public trust in government. We as taxpayers need to know that decisions are being made because the person making the decisions thinks they're the right thing to do, not because they think it's going to increase their net worth a little bit, and maybe no one will notice. That is just gravely corrosive of trust in presidents, in this president and in government generally. Other presidents faced similar circumstances and acted differently. We should expect that from the people with the most power in the country.
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Let's stay on solutions, whether it's for this administration, whatever, presidents, maybe, maybe to come down the road. The Brennan center put out a report, I believe, earlier this year that points to nine solutions for political corruption. Are there one or two in particular you would point us to, that feel practical at this moment to address the concerns you're laying out?
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There really needs to be a moment of reform and reconstruction after the wreckage of the current moment. It's after scandal and after abuse in our country's history that you get reform. Not always, but that's when it happens. We need to address after President Nixon,
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for example, there were major reforms pushed
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through by Congress, quite a few reforms in the 1970s, and it's happened in other times. So we need to address the huge new role for big money in American politics with legislation to end dark money, with, I would say, a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, which is the Supreme Court decision that really ushered in so much of the big money in politics. There are things that need to be done to address what we're seeing now, which is kind of an old school corruption of people in power taking advantage for their own benefit. What used to be called in the Tammany hall era, a century ago it was called honest graft. So there ought to be a new ethics agency. There ought to be the extension of strong ethics laws to apply to the present. And I would say there ought to be a constitutional amendment to take away from presidents the unilateral power to issue pardons that are corrupt. This is something that's in the Constitution, but now it has become an engine of abuse.
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Do you see political will in Congress to do any of what you have just laid out?
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I think if voters care enough, if the public calls for it loudly enough, you can be surprised by what can happen. We're seeing it even in recent days. Sometimes things just go too far. And the issue of corruption has been bling in our country. People don't necessarily think one party is better than the other. They think that everybody in some way or another is involved. And so we need those in public office and people running for office to not just give speeches, not just issue tweets, but actually put forward solutions and really act quickly when they have the chance.
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Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan center, that is a nonpartisan legal think tank, thank you very much.
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Thank you.
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We reached out to the White House for comment on Waldman's remarks that President Trump's actions amount to corruption. In plain sight, spokesperson Anna Kelly wrote in part, president Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public, which is why they overwhelmingly reelected him to this office. There are no conflicts of interest. This episode was produced by Tyler Bartlam and Karen Zamora, audio engineering by Ted Mebane and Peter Elena. It was edited by 10 beat airmuse. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun. Foreign. It's Consider this from npr. I'm Mary Louise Kelly.
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