Sorry losers and haters, but my IQ is one of the highest—and you all know it! Please don’t feel so stupid or insecure. It’s not your fault.
—DONALD TRUMP
ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL DONALD TRUMP WOULD BELlow, “Lock her up,” which would arouse his base of Hillary Clinton haters. His other signature call was “Build the wall,” meant to signal to racists and nativists that he wasn’t going to put up with hordes of “dangerous criminals” crossing into the United States, even though most people seeking asylum are frightened parents and children.
The third plank of Trump’s platform to “Make America Great Again” was his promise to “drain the swamp” of lobbyists and career government employees whom he associated with President Obama and the Clintons. His “promise to stop the gravy train for government consultants and to keep Wall Street insiders from getting away with murder” was music to the ears of his supporters, many of whom were suffering financially and felt alienated from DC politics.
Draining the swamp turned out to be just another blatant lie. In fact, he did the opposite. He has brought as many lobbyists into his government as any other administration, and probably more. Meanwhile, the part of the “swamp” that Trump really hates is the least corrupt part of our government, the career civil servants with invaluable expertise. These civil servants serve from administration to administration, protected by civil service laws dating back to the era of Teddy Roosevelt. Trump, however, is determined to get rid of them, shifting power in agencies as much as possible to his political appointees at the top. He has gutted the State Department, as dozens of longtime civil servants have resigned or been pushed out. Intelligence agencies have lost some of their most talented career officers. For cabinet and sub-cabinet appointments he chose men and women more apt to destroy departments than run them. Many of the best career civil servants in this environment don’t need to be fired. They simply quit.
Moreover, whatever Trump did to “drain the swamp” of lobbyists and corruption (next to nothing, unless the “corrupt” government officials were Democrats) was overwhelmed by the massive “swamp backfill” that he imported into Washington from New York City, New Jersey, or wherever else he could find it. The fact that almost none of Trump’s political appointees remotely resembled the economic profile of Trump’s many lower-middle-class supporters was irrelevant.
Rather than rid his campaign of lobbyists and insiders, Trump filled his transition team with hundreds of them. He hired men and women who had formerly worked for defense contractors, oil and gas companies, General Electric, Choice Hotels, Dow Chemical, T-Mobile, the American Beverage Association, and the National Asphalt Pavement Association.
As president, Trump hired people like Timothy Clark as White House liaison at the Department of Health and Human Services. Clark was formerly president of Clark Strategy Group, a firm that represented Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.
Another example is Jeffrey Gerrish, whom Trump hired as deputy US trade representative to Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and industrial competitiveness. He had been a lobbyist for US Steel.
A report, prepared by the offices of senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), listed 160 identified lobbyists working for the transition team and in the White House.
Making things cozier for the lobbyists was Executive Order 13770, which weakened ethics rules put in place by President Obama. Under Obama, former lobbyists couldn’t work at agencies they had contacted as lobbyists. Under the new rule, at least twenty-five lobbyists did just that. For example, Taylor Hansen, a lobbyist for for-profit colleges, was hired by the Department of Education as the special assistant to the secretary of the Department of Education. Tara Bradshaw, a lobbyist for the New York Life Insurance Company, who had lobbied the Treasury Department, was hired by the Treasury Department as secretary Steven Mnuchin’s nominations advisor.
When Trump commissioned a Drug Pricing and Innovation Working Group, he chose Joe Grogan, a lobbyist for Gilead Sciences, to lead the group. Gilead’s hepatitis C drug had recently risen to $1,000 a pill. Grogan was hired as the associate director of health programs for the Office of Management and Budget.
Meanwhile, Trump administration proposals give the pharmaceutical industry everything it asks for, including strengthening monopoly rights for pharmaceutical companies overseas and curbing discounts that pharmaceutical companies are required to give to hospitals and clinics that serve the poor.
Trump hired Geoffrey Burr, a former lobbyist for Associated Builders and Contractors, to the Labor Department transition team. Burr lobbied for years against the OSHA rules and regulations. One of his goals was to allow beryllium and silica back into construction, even though they have been proven to cause various lung diseases. The building industry wins. Workers affected by the dangerous materials might lose their lives.
The list goes on. Byron Anderson, the former lobbyist for Transamerica, served as special advisor to the Department of Labor, which had a rule requiring retirement plan advisors to act in the best interests of their clients when providing investment advice. Trump’s Department of Labor delayed implementation of the rule, putting the interests of financial advisors such as Transamerica over the interests of retirees.
Trump hired lobbyists for the energy industry to infiltrate the EPA. Gas and oil companies have been given a green light to build pipelines and to drill on public lands including lands that used to be national parkland. Andrew Wheeler, confirmed by the Senate in February 2019 as the head of the EPA, lobbied for coal companies. As EPA head, he makes the rules that regulate coal companies. His predecessor, Trump’s first EPA administrator Scott Pruitt, had used his earlier position as Oklahoma attorney general to advance the agenda of various Koch brothers’ energy interests and worked closely with the Koch-led American Legislative Exchange Council.
Andrónico Luksic, a billionaire from Chile, has wanted to open an environmentally dangerous copper and nickel mine in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters for decades, and he leases the proposed mine site from the federal government. The Obama administration refused to renew the lease in 2016, saying that a sulfide mine in that location would destroy one of the most pristine waterways in the country. As soon as Trump won the election, Luksic bought a $10 million mansion in Washington, DC, where Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump wanted to live while working in the White House. Luksic now leases the house to them. The Trump administration meanwhile reversed the Obama administration’s decision and approved Luksic’s lease of the federal land in Minnesota, and he is going forward with his plans to seek regulatory approval for the sulfide mine.
In appointing Steve Mnuchin as secretary of the treasury, Trump found someone who not only had expertise in mortgage-backed securities and hedge-fund management, but who had made enormous amounts of money trading in those securities after the 2008 financial collapse. In addition to safeguarding Trump’s tax returns, Mnuchin’s job at Treasury apparently includes rolling back as much as possible of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act regulations. The 2008 financial collapse worked out well for Mnuchin (and anyone else who knew when to buy and when to sell), so he may not appreciate the danger of doing it all over again. Most Americans presumably beg to differ.
But what’s most remarkable, what marks the Trump administration as one of the worst in American history when it comes to the rule of law, is the number of Trump team members who ended up indicted and convicted of serious crimes. Not since Watergate have we seen so many close associates of a president headed off for prison.
The list of indicted and convicted Trump associates began with General Michael Flynn, who was suspected of making secret contacts with the Russians when he was national security advisor. Others include Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort; deputy campaign manager Rick Gates; former personal lawyer Michael Cohen; and even the campaign “coffee boy” George Papadopoulos, who regularly met with a Russian handler called “the professor.”
Indicted—and convicted of seven counts of lying to Congress—is the infamous Roger Stone, of the 2000 Brooks Brothers riot during the Florida Bush-Gore recount. Stone is not only a close Trump associate but was a loyal supporter of Richard Nixon. Stone has a tattoo of Nixon etched on his back that he should perhaps remove if he joins the other Trump associates in prison.
Moving along, we meet the lesser sinners in this new Hades that is Trump’s Washington. These are the men and women whose ethics violations are plentiful and disgraceful, but who have not—yet—been charged with criminal offenses.
The list is long.
1. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price resigned after just eight months on the job after spending as much as $400,000 on private jets to conduct government business. Before joining the Trump administration, Price had been buying and selling (mostly buying) healthcare company stocks while working on healthcare legislation in the House of Representatives (most of it designed to water down Obamacare and enrich healthcare companies).
2. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke came under at least fifteen investigations, including inquiries into his connection to a real estate deal involving a company that Interior regulates, a $412,000 trip to deliver a speech celebrating a new NHL team in Las Vegas, whether he bent government rules to allow his wife to ride in government vehicles, and whether he allowed a security detail to travel with him on a vacation to Turkey at considerable cost. After the accusations became public, Zinke was forced to resign.
3. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, the former Wall Street mogul, came under scrutiny for using a $25,000-an-hour military plane for his European honeymoon and later using a government jet to fly to Fort Knox to view a solar eclipse, all at taxpayer expense. The House Intelligence Committee, moreover, is looking into a deal Mnuchin struck with US billionaire Leonard Blavatnik, an associate of Oleg Deripaska, who has strong ties to Vladimir Putin. According to the committee, Mnuchin sold his shares in RatPacDune Entertainment to Blavatnik for around $25 million. When the US lifted sanctions against Deripaska in February 2019, members of Congress noted that Mnuchin had been involved in the move and wondered whether there was a quid pro quo. At best, it appeared to be a flagrant conflict of interest.
4. Scott Pruitt, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, had been the attorney general of Oklahoma who filed lawsuit after lawsuit opposing the EPA and its environmental policies. Pruitt, a climate-change denier, urged Trump to pull out of the 2015 Paris climate agreement. Before he resigned, Pruitt was the subject of at least thirteen federal investigations. Pruitt allegedly paid $43,000 for a soundproof telephone booth at the EPA (perhaps for private phone calls with polluters), made lavish expenditures for foreign travel, and went on a trip to Morocco arranged by a lobbyist even though the EPA had no connection to Morocco. Pruitt rented his living quarters in Washington, DC, for fifty dollars a night from a “friend” who was an energy lobbyist. Pruitt also had a fondness for vanity clothing including $3,000 “tactical pants” purchased with taxpayer dollars. His unethical behavior became so pronounced that even Laura Ingraham, the ultra-conservative talk show host on Fox, tweeted, “Pruitt is the swamp. Drain it.”
5. Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary, has often been accused of conflict of interest violations. Among the stock he held was that of Navigator Holdings, which has a partnership with a Russian energy company owned by oligarchs with close ties to Vladimir Putin. Ross sold some stock worth more than $10 million after the Office of Government Ethics alleged that he had not divested himself of the stock in a timely manner. It is not clear what conflicts he continues to have.
6. Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway used an official interview with Fox News to advertise Ivanka Trump’s clothing brands. When the Office of Government Ethics wrote the White House a letter explaining that this violated ethics rules about misuse of official position, the White House “ethics lawyer” responded that the OGE ethics rules did not apply to the White House staff (the exact opposite of what one of your authors told Bush White House staffers in 2005–07). Later, Kellyanne Conway twice violated the Hatch Act by using her official position—in television interviews on the White House lawn—to attack Doug Jones, the Democratic candidate for US Senate in Alabama. Jones nonetheless won because the GOP—at Steve Bannon’s urging—had nominated a former state supreme court justice who had twice been suspended from the bench and later was accused of soliciting girls for sex. The Office of Special Counsel (OSC) wrote the White House that Conway’s actions clearly violated the Hatch Act, but the letter was ignored. In June 2019, after Conway yet again violated the Hatch Act, this time attacking presidential candidate Joe Biden on the White House lawn, the OSC wrote another letter stating that Conway should be fired. This letter also was ignored.
Combine this with the long list of resignations and firings, and it’s not hard to see that the Trump administration has been the most chaotic in American history. In no particular order, there were the resignations of the top national security advisor Michael Flynn; press secretaries Sean Spicer and Sarah Sanders; communications directors Mike Dubke, Hope Hicks, and Anthony Scaramucci (who has turned against the president and now urges his removal from office); chief strategist Steve Bannon; Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin; Secretary of Defense James Mattis; Reince Priebus, the first chief of staff; John Kelly, the second chief of staff; Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN; Don McGahn, the first White House counsel; Tom Bossert, the first homeland security advisor; H. R. McMaster, the second national security advisor; John Dowd, Trump’s first lead lawyer; Gary Cohn, the first director of the National Economics Council; and Rob Porter, the first White House staff secretary, accused of sexual assault. There were also the firings of FBI Director James Comey; David Shulkin, the first secretary of veteran’s affairs; Andrew McCabe, the first deputy director of the FBI; Rex Tillerson, the first secretary of state (for among other things referring to Trump as a “moron”); Steve Goldstein, the first undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and affairs; Attorney General Jeff Sessions (for refusing to stop the Mueller investigation); and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen (for refusing to order DHS employees to engage in illegal conduct at the southern border). And then there was the mysterious departure of Keith Schiller, Trump’s longtime bodyguard who was appointed the first director of Oval Office operations; and the unpleasant departure of White House senior aides Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka, in the wake of the racial unrest in Charlottesville, Virginia, presumably because of their extreme right-wing views (the White House was also embarrassed by the World War II–era medals from a Hungarian Nazi sympathizer organization that Gorka had worn to the inaugural ball). Bannon’s and Gorka’s close ideological ally—extreme xenophobe Stephen Miller—remained at the White House to coordinate Trump’s immigration policy.
What is remarkable is not only the extent of corruption but the complete lack of congressional oversight before January 2019 when the Democrats took control of the House of Representatives, and since then the continued resistance to oversight by Trump’s allies in the House and the Republican-controlled Senate.
Just one example is the congressional response to shocking testimony by Michael Cohen, who for ten years was Donald Trump’s lawyer and “fixer.” On February 27, 2019, Cohen appeared before the House Intelligence Committee. Sentenced to three years in prison for lying to the committee, he came this time to make amends.
During seven hours of testimony, Cohen told Congress that Trump knew in advance about the WikiLeaks dump of Hillary Clinton’s emails, that Cohen had arranged payments of hush money to hide Trump’s affairs, that Trump was involved in a Moscow real estate project even while running for president and Cohen was told to lie about it. He told Congress that Trump had him threaten schools the future president had attended, to keep Trump’s grades from being released; and that Trump once confided in Cohen about getting a medical deferment to avoid serving in Vietnam even though Trump’s doctor hadn’t examined him.
“I am ashamed that I chose to take part in concealing Mr. Trump’s illicit acts rather than listening to my own conscience,” said Cohen.
When a string of Republican congressmen, led by minority leader Jim Jordan and Congressman Mark Meadows, repeatedly called Cohen a liar and sought to undermine Cohen’s credibility, Cohen finally snapped, “I did the same thing that you’re doing now. For ten years—I protected Mr. Trump for ten years … The more people that follow Mr. Trump—as I did blindly—are going to suffer the same consequences that I’m suffering.”
Commented New York Times op-ed columnist Timothy Egan, “The creepy criminal world that surrounds Trump is not off-putting to many Republicans … They are headed for a reckoning. In years to come as Representative Elijah Cummings, the committee chairman, put it, people will ask, ‘What did we do to make sure our democracy is intact?’ For Trump’s new fixers, Cohen gave them an answer: ‘I did the same thing you’re doing now.’”
The day before Cohen was scheduled to testify, Matt Gaetz, a Republican representative from Florida, tweeted, “Hey @MichaelCohen212—Do your wife & father-in-law know about your girlfriends? Maybe tonight would be a good time for that chat. I wonder if she’ll remain faithful when you’re in prison. She’s about to learn a lot.”
Gaetz had been one of Trump’s most ardent supporters, but for most of the country he had gone too far. His tweet appeared to be an attempt to cow Cohen into not testifying. It seemed like a move out of The Godfather.
Walter Shaub, the former director of the Office of Government Ethics, replied to Gaetz’s tweet with the federal statute about tampering with a witness. Gaetz apologized.
When Trump was campaigning, he pledged to drain the swamp. Instead his administration has been a deep cesspool of corruption and incompetence. Congress not only tolerates it (including the Republicans who now control the Senate, if they do not convict him), but some members of Congress even go as far as Representative Gaetz did to threaten witnesses who appear before their own committees.
The checks and balances that the founders believed would constrain corruption and abuse of power by the executive branch are ineffective because Congress simply won’t do its job.