This past Wednesday, the American Economic Liberties Project and Groundwork Collaborative released a 10-page report, “The Price of Corruption: How Trump’s Pay-to-Play Administration is Driving Up Costs for Working Families” (pdf), that outlines nine policy areas "that have been warped by Trump's corruption." It's main purpose is to pinpoint areas for further investigation by Democrats when the new Congress forms in 2027.
The policy areas covered are Health Care, Tariffs, Gas Prices, Energy, Air Travel, Tax Filing, Corporate Misbehavior, Credit Bureaus and Loan Rates, and Digital Assets and Prediction Markets. For a flavor of the contents, here's an excerpt for the last area, Digital Assets and Prediction Markets:
... The Trump family has personally netted at least $1.4 billion from crypto schemes, as this administration pulls away from oversight and enforcement of crypto fraud and prediction market regulations.
● Trump has installed people with crypto conflicts of interest throughout his administration, including by nominating more than 200 appointees who owned crypto assets worth up to $340 million.
● Simultaneously, the Department of Justice shut down investigations into crypto companies. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, while serving as deputy and holding at least $485,000 in crypto assets, eliminated the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team.
● Additionally, the administration has accelerated the adoption of crypto into critical federal agencies, including when Trumpʼs Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte urged mortgage giant Fannie Mae to accept crypto-backed mortgages for the first time ever.
● Trumpʼs crypto company World Liberty Financial (WLF) relies on Binance, a crypto exchange that admitted to anti-money laundering failures, Iran sanctions violations, and failing to report suspicious transactions linked to terrorist groups like Hamas. Binance has reportedly donated software to help launch WLF, and its founder, Changpeng Zhao, who had been convicted for failure to maintain an effective anti-laundering program, was later pardoned by Trump.
● Over the past year, Donald Trump Jr. has served as a strategic advisor to Kalshi and a large investor in Polymarket, while the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) – the agency overseeing these firms – has acted as their ally, rather than their watchdog. Both firms had actively lobbied Trumpʼs CFTC to block states from regulating prediction markets in the same way they regulate gambling companies...
As noted, it's a short, outline-format report, so please give it a read.
The media can't or won't focus on this firehose of corruption, but a Democratic Congress can and must. The American public -- especially working families -- needs to have it made clear which party is fighting for their interests and which Epstein class party is feeding at the public trough.
BONUS: Similar takes here.
(Image: Khoa Tran, Vanity Fair/ Getty Images)
No comments:
Post a Comment