Tag Archives: Donald Trump

It’s Election Day in the United States. Please Vote (if you can).

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Today voters in the United States will go to the polls to elect the next President of the United States, as well as representatives in the legislature and other offices. For that reason, there doesn’t seem to be much point in publishing an ordinary post today.

This election is so obviously important–not just for the United States but for the whole world–that it might seem a bit forced to try to put an “anticorruption spin” on it. It’s nonetheless worth keeping in mind that, for all the U.S. government’s faults and mistakes–of which there are many–American leadership on anticorruption, both domestically and abroad, is vitally important. After we know the results of the election, I may try to write something up speculating about how those results might affect global anticorruption efforts. For now, I’ll just remind readers (who probably don’t need any such reminder) that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have starkly different histories and views regarding these issues (see here, here, here, here, here, and here). If you are a registered voter in the United States and have not already voted, please do so as soon as possible! If not, please cross your fingers, knock on wood, and pray.

U.S. Voters Says that Corruption Is a Major Issue. Why Are Politicians Silent on It?

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If public opinion polls are any guide, corruption is one of the most important issues to U.S. voters. A 2012 Gallup survey by Gallup found that a full 87% of Americans deemed reducing corruption as either extremely important or very important—placing this issue second only to the economy/job creation, and ahead of the budget deficit, terrorism, and Social Security. More recent polls buttress these findings: A 2015 survey found that 58% of respondents were afraid or very afraid of corruption by government officials, the highest of any fear surveyed. This meant that corruption was a greater fear than large-scale disasters like terrorist attacks or economic collapse, as well personal events like identity theft, running out of money, or credit card fraud. Three-quarters of those surveyed in 2015 also believed that corruption was widespread in the government, a marked increase from 2007. And a 2016 survey found that 16% ranked corruption the single most important issue, which might sound low, but was the third highest issue in the polls.

Yet despite these poll numbers, U.S. politicians and parties do not seem to have made anticorruption a major policy priority; certainly this issue gets far less attention than terrorism and the budget deficit. True, U.S. politicians will sometimes attack their rivals as “corrupt,” a rhetorical tactic we have seen in the current election (see here and here). But although politicians use the term “corrupt” to malign their opponents, they do not seem to treat corruption as a genuine issue in need of fixing, and do not put forward an anticorruption policy agenda. Hillary Clinton has an extensive list of policy proposals on her campaign website, yet corruption and anticorruption are not mentioned. Although her website goes in depth about money in politics, it stops short of using the term “corruption” to describe this problem. Donald Trump did recently release a five-point ethics plan that used the term “corruption” once, but it is incredibly vague and appears to have been made out of desperation in the closing days of the campaign. In any event, his “Issues” page still does not mention corruption, nor do those of third-party candidates Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, or Evan McMullen.

What explains this disconnect? Huge numbers of Americans tell opinion pollsters that they believe that the government is corrupt and that this is one of the biggest problems facing the country. Yet political parties and politicians barely discuss “corruption” (except as invective) or lay out plans for solving it. This is a puzzle. Politicians, after all, have strong incentives to talk about the issues that voters care most about. Even if we doubt how seriously we should take politicians’ platforms and campaign rhetoric, one would think that it would make sense for politicians at least to pay lip service to the idea of fighting public corruption, if voters care so much about it. So why do we not see more focus on corruption and anticorruption in the platforms of U.S. presidential candidates?

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The Walmart FCPA Investigation Revisited (Again): Some Musings and Speculations on the Most Recent Reports

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Earlier this month, there was yet another intriguing story about new developments in the US government’s investigation into possible Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) violations by the Walmart’s foreign operations. The Walmart case is probably the most high-profile (and controversial) FCPA case of the last decade, and the reports suggest that it may finally be lurching toward a conclusion, though the recent story raises as many questions than it answers.

Before proceeding to the most recent developments, here’s a quick, and admittedly oversimplified, recap: In 2005, Walmart received a report from a disgruntled former employee that its Mexican subsidiary had engaged in an extensive bribery scheme to pay off government officials to speed the opening of new stores. After internal investigation, however, Walmart’s executives decided in 2006 not to take meaningful action or disclose the apparent FCPA violations to the US government. In 2011, Walmart’s new general counsel initiated a review of Walmart’s anticorruption compliance worldwide; this audit revealed evidence of significant problems in several countries, including Mexico, China, Brazil, and India. Around the same time, Walmart learned that reporters from the New York Times were conducting an extensive investigation into bribery allegations involving Walmart’s Mexico operations. In attempt to get out in front of the story, in December 2011 Walmart disclosed to the DOJ and SEC potential FCPA problems in its Mexican subsidiary, but indicated that the problems were limited to a handful of discrete cases. In April and December 2012, the New York Times published two lengthy articles (here and here) detailing extensive bribery by Walmart’s Mexican subsidiary, orchestrated by the subsidiary’s CEO and general counsel—allegations that went far beyond the isolated incidents Walmart had disclosed the previous year. Since then, the DOJ and SEC investigation into Walmart’s alleged FCPA violations—not only in Mexico, but in other foreign subsidiaries as well—has been ongoing.

There have been quite a few twists and turns in the story. Perhaps the most dramatic was the Wall Street Journal’s surprising report, from almost exactly one year ago. The highlights from that report included the claims (from “people familiar with the probe”) that (1)the investigation was nearly complete (and, by implication, the case would be resolved soon); (2) the US government’s investigation had found “few signs of major misconduct in Mexico”; and (3) although the investigation had uncovered evidence of “widespread but relatively small payments” in India, the Walmart case turned out to be “a much smaller case than investigators first expected” that “wouldn’t be likely to result in any sizeable penalty.”

The first of those three claims has been refuted by the passage of time—it’s more than a year after the WSJ story, and the case has still not been resolved. The latter two claims are flatly contradicted by the more recent report published by Bloomberg (also based on anonymous “people familiar with the matter”). According to the Bloomberg report: Continue reading →

Is it Legal in the U.S. To Buy Delegate Votes at Party Nominating Conventions?

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As bizarre as the U.S. presidential campaign has been so far, it may get even more so this summer. There is a chance (although maybe not a probability) that the Republican Party will have its first contested convention since 1976. If no candidate has a majority of delegates on the first ballot, then many “bound delegates” can switch their vote to any candidate for the nomination (here is a brief primer on how a contested convention might work). If that happens, might some candidates (or, more likely, their surrogates) actually try to buy delegates’ votes—offering them cash or other crude material inducements in exchange for support? Donald Trump recently told a friend—apparently (and hopefully) in jest—he would “buy the delegates” if he did not obtain a majority in the primaries.

Such conduct would certainly be corrupt in the traditional sense. Believe it or not, however, such vote buying might not be against the law. Buying votes in a federal election is certainly illegal. But, as a recent Bloomberg article explained, “There is nothing in the [Republican National Committee]’s rules that prohibits delegates from cutting a deal for their votes, and lawyers say it is unlikely that federal anti-corruption laws would apply to convention horse-trading. (It is not clear that even explicitly selling one’s vote for cash would be illegal.)” Similarly, when respected former Republican National Committee counsel Ben Ginsberg was recently asked whether an unbound delegate to the convention could legally accept a suitcase full of cash in exchange for a vote for a candidate for the nomination, Ginsberg replied, “That is a great legal question that I’m not sure there’s an answer [to]. It’s not official [] action.” (Ginsberg did, however, emphasize that most lawyers “would not want to be defending somebody who just took a suitcase of cash for a vote at a convention.”)

So while outright vote buying at a contested convention is not exactly likely, it’s a serious enough concern to make it worthwhile to assess the risks, the current law that might apply, and the steps that Congress and the political parties can take to do something about this concern. Continue reading →