Tag Archives: Donald Trump

Stopping Presidential Family Members Use of the Presidency for Private Gain: Important First Step

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Reports Donald Trump Jr. is personally profiting from his connection to his father prompted U.S. Senator John Curtis to ask the Senate Judiciary Committee to develop reforms necessary to curb such conduct (here).

GAB has queried readers for ideas to help the Committee, and an alert GABer flagged a provision in legislation the House Financial Services Committee approved in April (here) modernizing the Defense Production Act.

Current law gives presidents wide-ranging powers to provide financial help to companies critical for national defense. The provision in the reform bill curbs those powers. It would bar any company not only in which the president, vice-president, or a senior defense official has “a significant interest” from receiving assistance but also any company in which a family member has “a significant interest” from receiving assistance as well. Not a complete solution but a first, and important, step. A sign at least some in Congress are willing to act

The Defense Production Act reform bill awaits a vote of the full House. Good chance for House members to go on record on what they think about family members trading on their relatives’ name.

Text of the section follows.

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Republican Senator Seeks Investigation into Whether Donald Trump Jr. is Profiting Off Ties to His Father

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Senator John Curtis, a Republican from Utah, wrote the Senate Judiciary Committee September 21 asking it to investigate whether Donald Trump Jr., eldest child of President Donald Trump, has used his relationship with his father “for private financial benefit.”

In the letter (here), he writes that

For years, serious questions have been raised about members of presidential families using their names and proximity to the President to advance private business interests.

In a nod to fairness and bipartisanship, he asks the Committee to investigate Hunter Biden as well, but the bulk of his letter recounts the ways Don Jr. has used the family name to enrich himself. From the payment of a lavish wedding afterparty by a Russian oligarch, to his promotion of family-backed cryptocurrency ventures, the pursuit of international real estate deals, several reported investments in defense contracting.

“These reports raise legitimate questions about foreign access to members of a sitting president’s family and whether such relationships can create actual or perceived expectations of favorable treatment,” he writes. He then asks the Committee to “establish the facts, determine whether existing ethics, disclosure, or anti-corruption laws apply, and identify reforms necessary to prevent the presidency from becoming a vehicle for private enrichment by those closest to it.”

The letter is remarkable for two reasons. It puts the question of Presidential relatives trading on their link to the single most powerful individual in the modern world on the agenda at a time when it is likely to engage the public (and hence lawmakers), and it was written by a Republican. It’s unlikely the Committee will act before November, but, particularly if the Republicans suffer a major defeat in November, an investigation will surely be at the top of agenda in 2027.

Review of Robert Barrington’s Corrupted Kingdom

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Corruption now threatens one of the oldest and most established democratic nations. In a 2024 poll, two-thirds of Britons said politics is becoming more corrupt (here), and in 2025 nearly 9 in 10 expressed concerns about potential corruption among politicians (here). Over the past year 16% reported being asked for a bribe, and 11% were asked to facilitate money laundering (here).

U.K. anticorruption fighters are taking heed. None more than Robert Barrington. In Corrupted Kingdom, out July 16 (preorder here), the former Transparency International U.K. head and Chair of T.I. International’s Council chronicles the ways corruption has begun to infect venerable U.K. institutions: from the Monarchy, where the now deflowered Prince Andrew’s flacked for a Kazakh oligarch in return for £ 3 million to Parliament, where MPs are secretly paid to question Ministers and seats in the House of Lords are on offer for hefty campaign contributions, to Scotland Yard, local governments, and businesses small and large.

It is even seeping into the academy. Currently Professor of Anti-Corruption Practice at Sussex University’s Centre for the Study of Corruption, Barrington argues that the growing willingness of universities to accept dark money compromises their independence and their integrity.

British and non-British readers will both find much to recommend in the pages of Corrupted Kingdom.

British readers are likely to be most interested in the reforms Barrington advances, from beefing up “dull sounding” but important accountability institutions such as the Auditor General for Wales and the Northern Ireland Audit Office to teasing out whether the U.K. should create a formal, institutional structure, even an independent anticorruption agency, to replace the current arrangement, a patronage position in the PM’s office whose occupant has no official status and whose advice is easily, and often, ignored.

Citizens of other liberal democracies will find (reassuringly or depressingly) that theirs is not the only country where abuses stemming from large donations to political parties orchestrated by lobbyists is a front-page problem. Americans may take some solace from learning that Boris Johnson’s short-lived reign as PM approached Trumpian-levels of corruption.

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Legislation to Stop President, VP from Abusing Power to Steal Taxpayer Funds

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On April 15 House and Senate Democrats introduced a bill entitled Ban Presidential Plunder of Taxpayer Funds Act. Key provisions include:

  • Ban the sitting President/VP from collecting settlement payments from the United States by prohibiting the President, Vice President (VP), their spouses/children, a trust that exists for their benefit, or an entity they own or control, from collecting damages payments from the United States through a settlement or similar agreement with the government the President/VP leads.
  • Pause the filing and processing of a sitting President or VP’s administrative claims by prohibiting federal agencies from processing or fulfilling damages claims brought by the President/VP. Also, prohibit the President/VP from filing administrative claims for damages while in office.
  • Impose guardrails on the President/VP’s federal lawsuits seeking damages by only allowing the President/VP to collect compensatory damages awarded by a federal court if the court appoints an independent counsel to represent the agency and makes all proceedings public.
  • Cooling-off period during a former VP’s term as President, meaning if a former President’s VP is elected President, impose the same restrictions on the former President while the former VP is still in the White House.
  • Impose guardrails on claims by former presidents/VPs by allowing former presidents/VPs to collect damages from the U.S. government, but only if:

Link to more detailed explanation and copy of the bill here.

Trump Blares Profits, Eliciting Barely a Peep

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That was the headline on the lead story in the May 26 New York Times.

The author, the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times and one of Washington’s most respected journalists, reports the growing view that the Trump Administration’s corruption represents “the most brazen use of government office in American history.” In support he cites anticorruption guru and GAB favorite Michael Johnston who told him–

I’ve been watching and writing about corruption for 50 years, and my head is still spinning

To quote a guru on another subject (revolution — V. Lenin), the question is now: What is to Done?

Belgian and Uzbek Governments Profit from Termination of DoJ’s Kleptocracy Unit

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Central Asia Due Diligence and the Uzbek Forum for Human Rights have identified the latest fallout from the Trump Administration’s destruction of American institutions devoted to fighting global corruption. The governments of Belgium and Uzbekistan have each pocketed $108 million in stolen assets that should have gone to the people of Uzbekistan.

In this just released paper, the two human rights NGOs explain how the demise of the Department of Justice’s Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative allowed the two governments to ignore provisions in the UN Convention Against Corruption and the principles of the Global Forum on Asset Recovery that together bar assets stolen by a corrupt official from being kept by the government of the country where the official stashed them or returned to the official’s corrupt cronies.

Lawyers for the Initiative had designed a sophisticated process (details here) to see the $216 million in bribes to former Uzbek first daughter Gulnara Karimova found in Belgian banks DoJ would go to the UN trust fund overseeing development programs in Uzbekistan. With the Initiative’s demise, the Belgian and Uzbek governments apparently saw no reason they should not divvy up the money between them.

So thanks to the Trump Administration, Belgium, one of the world’s wealthiest countries, is now $108 million wealthier, and Uzbek’s leaders, several Gulnara’s accomplices, now have $108 million to spend keeping themselves in power. Meanwhile, the citizens of Uzbekistan, GDP per capita $3,500, scrape by.

The Anticorruption Legacy of American Civil Service Reform

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In the waning months of President Donald Trump’s first term, he issued an executive order that could have drastically reshaped the U.S. federal bureaucracy. The order created a new federal government job classification with far fewer civil service protections, called “Schedule F.” While most career civil servants in the U.S. federal government are protected from politically motivated firings and cannot be fired without cause, under Schedule F, employees “of a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character” could be fired without following standard civil service procedures. With Trump now set to reassume power, Schedule F is back on the table, threatening to take away employment protections from potentially hundreds of thousands of federal employees and making it easier to fire civil servants for purely political reasons.

Commentators have pointed out the potential negative effects of Schedule F on administrative capacity, government performance, and accountability. But another key reason to be skeptical of Schedule F is that it represents a step backwards in the history of American civil service reform, which has its roots in 19th century anticorruption movements. Civil service independence and merit-based hiring came about in response to endemic corruption in the federal bureaucracy. The anticorruption history of the American civil service holds important lessons for modern civil service reformers, both in the United States and elsewhere.

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Will America’s Anticorruption NGOs Hold Trump II to Account?

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If the trend Daniel Schuman identifies in “Open-Government Nonprofits Are Dying Off Just When They’re Needed Most,” the answer is a clear if frightening NO (here). Schuman, Executive Director of the American Governance Institute, ticks of a list of U.S. watchdogs closing their doors or drastically cutting staff thanks to multiple funding crises.

Those now on the block include: OpenSecrets, which for years has shown which politicians get money from what special interests; OMB Watch, a pioneer in unearthing hard-to-find data on government spending; and the Center for Public Integrity, the scourge of those officials who have never seen an ethical line they can’t cross.

Why, just when more eyes are needed on Trump and cronies, are those with 20-20 vision finding it so hard to raise money? Schulman puts it off to the polarization now infecting the American body politic. The foundations and high-net-worth individuals that have traditionally backed organizations dedicated to “public-informing, community-building work” have, he writes, become “auxiliaries for the parties in their trench warfare over political power.”

Bad enough the funding drought coincides with the return of an Administration likely to make Grant’s second term seem a model of probity. Many of those on the ropes have done much to advance the global war on corruption, from serving as models for citizens of other nations to providing critical technical assistance to anticorruption NGOs around the globe. The fight against corruption in the U.S. is entering a critical phase with the outcome likely to affect the fight in other nations. The stakes couldn’t be higher. Will donors please reconsider their decisions?

Thanks to TheBulwark, an indispensable source for what’s happening in the U.S., for publishing Schuman’s story.

Corruption as a National Security Priority: How Will it Shape U.S. Policy in Fragile States?

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Corruption has increasingly been framed as a national security priority in United States policy. This is perhaps most readily apparent in the National Security Council’s 2023 U.S. Strategy on Countering Corruption, but it is also manifest in several major pieces of legislation. One such legislative initiative is the 2019 Global Fragility Act (GFA), which tasked the State Department, Department of Defense (DoD), and US Agency for International Development (USAID) with developing a coordinated ten-year strategy for preventing conflict in fragile states. This past March, the State Department published its inaugural Strategy for Preventing Conflict in four pilot countries—Libya, Mozambique, Haiti, and Papua New Guinea—and one region, Coastal West Africa (encompassing Guinea, Cote D’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, and Benin). Each of these strategy documents center anticorruption reform as a means to improve state legitimacy and reduce the risk of conflict, but they take quite different approaches to addressing the problem of corruption within a national security framework. Continue reading →

Trump Indictment’s Lesson for Prosecutors Charging Senior Political Figures

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At long last federal prosecutors have filed charges against former President Donald Trump for crimes arising from his unlawful possession of classified documents. The charges are contained in what is called an indictment in the United States.

One aspect of the indictment merits the attention of prosecutors everywhere. Or at least for those considering charging senior government officials or ex-officials who, like Trump, can be expected to try to sway public or elite opinion by any means to escape convictions.

The Trump indictment is what American prosecutors call a “speaking indictment.”

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