While not approving such behavior, I just want to note that we don't pay our top leaders (politicians, civil servants and flag officers) anywhere near enough. The Congress has just yet again (like each and every year since 2009) stopped automatic cost of living adjustment to their salaries. Had they not being doing so, their salaries would have been about 40% higher now. That's huge difference. The Congress becomes more and more preserve of the rich. If Pelosi did not have a rich husband, how on Earth could she afford to represent San Francisco in Washington and live in both places just on $174K?! One the Chartists demands in 1848 was salary for MPs - to enable ordinary people to serve in Westminster. And those members of Congress who are not (yet) rich, either are ideologues with extremist agenda, or try to use their position to get a fat media contract or become a lobbyist, or just simply do not have good alternatives outside Congress because they are not smart/knowledgeable/skilled enough to do something else (e.g. even if I did not mind being a Congressman in principle, I simply could not afford to take the job). So we basically get the government that we pay for. Many Congressmen sleep on couches in their offices. Is that the government we really want?
U.K. is the same. I was paid more in a middle management role in banking than Matt Hancock as a health secretary. It’s not normal.
Singapore pays their politicians high salaries in a hope they won’t get corrupted. Predominantly it works but they recently had their first corruption scandal by one of the ministers so not as sustainable
I remember a guided tour of Parliament in August 2003. I was 36 and just an inexperienced scientist, and I think I snickered (the guide gave me a dirty look) when I heard that MPs were paid less than I was - while working entirely from home on my own schedule (BTW it looks like my then manager's house burned down hours ago in Pacific Palisades, judging from latest maps - I stayed with him for a couple days when I drove across the US and back on my 2022 vacation, which was the first time I ever met him in person, as he hired me over the phone). And back then the pound was $1.60, not $1.25 like now. I really hate when populists mention how much higher the legislators' salaries are than average wages. Maybe it's just me, but I don't want to be governed by average people. Yes, even someone as outstanding as Jake Sullivan can screw up, but I shudder to think what someone of average intelligence who can't find either Ukraine or Gaza on the map would have done in his place.
"What Trump is doing is taking the already existing unseemly trends in the American system and magnifying them, making them more naked and much more lucrative. His changes are ones of a massive inflation of an existing system, he is not creating a completely new one out of thin air."
This fact is the secret sauce of MAGA. The right are fairly reveling in the "everyone does it" spirit. Cynicism plays into the hands of authoritarians.
I don't think we can even conceive of the level of corruption that tariffs may usher in. I always wondered what it must have been like to live in Brazil or Venezuala when Bolsonaro/Chavez rose to power. Trump has nearly tamed the judiciary via Supreme Court. I fear Trump & fellow billionaires are sitting on a bonanza that will dwarf Putin's money grab.
Thanks Richard--your second paragraph is key (and I will talk about that in the second part of this series). The chances for corruption across the board will be epic in the next 4 years.
But then the MAGA hypocrisy in all the Biden investigations must be taken into account. As someone commented earlier, the law for thee, but not for me.
But has MAGA/Trump become the first presidential movement to take money/ contributions in advance of being sworn into office in return for a multitude of favours to a multitude of countries and Multi-billionaires
Trump is also using the Putin oligarch model. We watch in horror while the Trump oligarchs line up, bow, and throw money at him. They bought the Golden Calf enthusiastically. Sadly, Moses has left the building and it’s a dark evening in America.
It is not just politicians, Phillips. Regulators leave their posts and go to work for the industries they once regulated cashing in. Or even better yet, in many states, it is a revolving door from staff, to industry, to Commissioner positions, back to industry. What you have rightly pointed to during the “Gilded Age” has truly never left the US political culture. It has often been hidden. Working in the power industry, do you even ask the question why it is regulated? Because the industry asked to be regulated! They did not like competition and franchise monopolies were bigger money makers. It is the “capture theory” of regulation…and who appoints regulators? Politicians who take the bigger cut. Trump is all of this on steroids and he has been enabled because others are also taking a cut.
Cant disagree Paul--and that is the truth upon which all this sordidness is built. Presidents were some of the last to nakedly cash in--but once they started doing it--we were probably heading down this road inevitably.
All too true. The fact is that after Taft, no president had the opportunity as Wilson (health) Harding (died), Coolidge and Hoover (Depression) FDR (died) never had the opportunity. Truman and Ike were of a different time. LBJ was different as well. Only with Reagan was their not just motive, but also opportunity. Then the floodgates opened.
FDR changed the tax laws to make the corruption *unprofitable*. There was simply no point in collecting obscene sums of wealth under the FDR/Truman/Eisenhower tax laws -- you'd get it taxed away from you.
By the way, if I did such a thing in my “lowly positions” I would have been fired outright. One hand to reach a certain level to enjoy the fruits of “payola”
Funny you should mention Ulysses Grant. I am a descendant of his disgraced VP, Schuyler Colfax, who took the dirty railroad money and got busted.
Corruption is as old as the day is long. This is why punishing this stuff is so critical (yet not occurring.) Kushner’s corruption is egregious. Why isn’t he facing any justice or at least Congressional investigations? Thats how they got Schuyler…
Everyone here on the left seemed to clap when Biden pardoned his son. Yet I’m livid his justice department sat on its hands for 4 years in the face of sedition and bald corruption of the previous admin. Did Biden tell Trump “I won’t go after you and yours if you don’t me and mine”? If he didn’t he might as well have given the results.
How interesting. I havent heard the name Schuyler Colfax in a while. I agree about Biden--and then I do believe he compounded things at the end with the pardon of his own son.
The Justice Department was actually quite active from the very beginning, building the case from the bottom up. The main reason Trump isn't facing justice is the Supreme Court, which pretended that the 14th Amendment was written--and that a majority of the Senate had agreed that Trump engaged in insurrection-- and then delayed his trial for many months on the pretense that presidential immunity for insurrection might be a thing.
The second main reason Trump did not face justice is because the media protected him in an unprecedented fashion. The normal function of media would be to channel outrage over the attack on government into a pressure campaign on the courts and the Congress to lock him up. Instead the media allowed Trump to flood the zone with bulls--t.
And finally, Trump, like any mob boss had loyal soldiers Tony Ornato and Wal Nauta (and Bill Barr) to lie and protect him. Plus of course, lawyers who would argue *anything*, no matter how absurd, to get a day's delay.
The AG might sound like a powerful position, but if the courts, the crooks, and the media are against you, it's not all that big a swagger.
On corruption: We all know the king of corruption is bribe-taker Clarence Thomas, followed by bribe-taker Samuel Alito, followed by bribe-taker Kavanaugh, bribe-taker Roberts, bribe-taker Barrett, and bribe-taker Gorsuch.
The Constitution is pretty clear: they aren't judges, because judges "shall hold their offices during good behaviour". But the members of Congress seem unwilling to enforce the Constitution, perhaps because they're also corrupt. It doesn't require impeachment (corrupt judges can be removed through any regulatory system created by Congress) but it DOES require Congressional action, and Congress has refused to act for a very long time.
When fake judges who take bribes are squatting on the bench of the so-called "supreme court", you have a system where the judicial branch has zero legitimacy, or even negative legitimacy. Historically, *this does not work out so well* -- when federal judges are considered corrupt agents of a political party (because they are), nobody has any reason to treat federal court rulings as anything other than naked power grabs (because they are). They may still have some effect if the government is powerful in other ways (as in Russia). But it means when the government loses its raw force, its ability to abuse people with thuggish cops, it loses all authority.
In Russia the courts are considered agents of Putin, and in the US the federal (but not state) courts are correctly considered agents of Trump and the Republican Party. Not real judges. They both go down with their dictatorial leaders.
I can’t disagree on several of the scotus justices being nakedly corrupt. But one thing that Biden’s admin did competently was to seat a ton of federal judges over his term. There are most certainly some ringers for Trump in there too tho
So, the lower federal courts are not totally broken.
But taking a step back, this is why Democrats lost. No one even presented a plan to fix scotus. It was just “save Democracy” by displacing Trump without any stated plan to actually uncorrupt broken institutions and government processes, like scotus and the nomination process. No bold plans to fix things, just timid plans to keep things bumping along, still broken.
Bingo. I've been telling members of Congress that they need to establish a Court of Judicial Qualifications to try cases where judges are accused of bad behaviour. I've been telling them this for YEARS. They just don't listen (exactly one listened).
I mostly agree Neroden. On one point: it's very difficult to remove judges because the only constitutionally prescribed procedure to decide who is not on "good behavior" is impeachment.
It's also true that there could be procedures to alter the composition of the Court through administrative procedures. I would like to impose sabbaticals on the Justices, so they could spend some time in real courtrooms and I think that could be done. But one has to be careful that neither party could use these procedures to politically shape the Court.
The real problem is that one party's appointees have controlled the court for over 50 years. They've lived in the Washington bubble, where lobbyists can focus on them and the real-life consequences of their actions are very remote. All of our senior leadership--from presidents to Justices to Senators to long-serving members of Congress need to be reminded that they are, after all, only citizens.
I don’t agree. It would have been extraordinary easy and appropriate for a special counsel to pursue a case against Trump nearly immediately following the incident. Yet, Jack Smith was not appointed until 22 months into Biden’s term, squandering nearly half of it. Could they not anticipate Trump would use legal tactics to run out the clock like he has done countless times in previous litigation? I certainly anticipated it.
It appeared to me that Biden’s DOJ had delayed Trump’s prosecution such that it would interfere with 2024 campaigning. That was the only explanation for the delay that made any sense to me at all.
After securing seditious conspiracy convictions from the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys Leadership, why did the DOJ not pursue a case against Trump directly on the heels of those? On both of those cases, the defendants argued that they were following the then-Presidents orders to disrupt the transfer of power. This was their main defense. Both sets were convicted. It should have been extraordinarily easy to pursue a limited case against Trump regarding sedition immediately. They didn’t. Now they let the whole thing go. It reeks. I’m not sure if incompetence or corruption but they did not get the job done and the whole world will suffer for it.
Your belief that the time was squandered is based on a mistaken understanding of the Special Counsel. Special Counsels do not have extraordinary powers. They are appointed to avoid a conflict of interest. No conflict of interest existed before Trump declared as a candidate.
But the investigation of Trump began even before Merrick Garland became Attorney General. The first investigative act was done by Lisa Monaco on the day she was appointed Deputy: she ordered the seizure of Rudy Giuliani's phones.
At the lower level, convictions are relatively easy to obtain. A guy punches a cop, the deed is on film--that's pretty easy. But convicting someone for a fiery speech? That's much more difficult.
Or what if the evidence is on a password-protected phone with an encrypted messaging app? It can take the FBI a year or more to break that encryption. And this is without considering that privilege claims can be raised.
There's plenty of legitimate reasons to criticize the DoJ's actions. For example:
1) they were slow to accept help from the Sedition Hunters (https://seditionhunters.org/), who were far more effective at exploiting digital media than the FBI
2) they could have (IMO) better leveraged state prosecutorial resources to crack the fake electors plot
3) they could have persuaded Fani Willis to not use what is not a well-tested legal strategy (state RICO) for what could have been an easy conviction
4) it's possible--I don't know--that NSA resources could have been brought to bear on the phone-cracking issues. But that might have required congressional action or, at the least, Executive action
Trump remained an opposition leader so it seems obvious there would be a conflict of interest prosecuting him. He was Biden’s electoral opponent in 2020. There should have been a special counsel appointed on the first day of Biden presidency on this and several other legal episodes, like Kushner’s naked corruption or the events surrounding the impeachment and menacing of an American ambassador. Or the obstruction of justice from the Mueller investigation. Or Manaforts espionage surrounding the 2016 elections.
There was an enormous amount of crime they were duty-bound to prosecute.
But they sat on their hands.
They were able to prosecute cases against hundreds of rioters tho. Just not the political leadership.
I often think of Harold Wilson (who I remember well - I am very old) and his retirement to a little house on the Scilly Isles and compare that with Blair. But the UK is not a plutocracy like the US is (yet).
Yes. Britainistan is not a plutocracy. It’s a caliphate run by a criminal conspiracy of Muslim extremists enabled by suicidally empathetic government officials who are happily leading a once great nation into sharia lawlessness. Get a grip. Set the sails on the Victory and patrol the High Seas. Protect your nation and our heritage.
Well, there is a small little Mosque here in Eastbourne, politely attended on Fridays by our small little Muslim community. If thats a Caliphate then the UK can happily absorb it. And btw, the Victory is dry docked in Porstmouth and setting out on the High Seas’ is probs best not attempted now. Nelson and Trafalgar was 220 years ago.
Maybe the greater shame is that we have no clue how to respond to the practices. I wonder if it is an issue, especially among politicians, where no one can cast the first stone. What comes to mind are some of the "investments" made in recent years, purportedly not subject to insider information but still wildly profitable.
The normalization of fraud in everyday American life is indeed one of the saddest consequences of all this. I was once shocked to hear people I know justify their petty conniving by saying “Trump does it” or “CEOs do it”--the latter especially after the 2009 financial crisis and its bailouts without consequences. Now I find it depressingly routine. Like Orwell’s donkey.
I actually think it's the normalization of *judges* taking bribes which is the most telling. (Hello, Mister Clarence Thomas. Constitution says he isn't a judge but for some reason he hasn't been arrested and thrown in prison like he's supposed to be)
It will be interesting to see how much Trump spends for his inauguration compared to the amounts he is "suggesting" big companies cough up for him. He sees it as his money.
This first issue makes me wonder if is better we find out than we don't know. It's scary to think that this is just the surface of the issue.
Thanks for this eye-opening piece. As you mention some European politicians, Gerhard Schröder has been largely discredited in Germany and the rest of Europe for taking Putin’s money after leaving office. Idem François Fillon, former French PM who, in addition, was convicted by a French court of putting his wife on a public payroll for totally spurious reasons. As for Blair or Johnson,
neither have been suspected of doing anything wrong but their scooping up of huge fees for speaking engagements after leaving office is looked down on by public opinion in the UK far more than similar conduct by Clinton or Bush is in the US.
But the most interesting and significant case to date is that of former French President Sarkozy who has just gone on trial accused of taking, some say €50 million, from the Libyan dictator Khadafi to finance his 2007 presidential campaign in return for diplomatic and other favours.
Corruption in politics and/or gaining massive financial advantage from a political career or connections is as old as the hills, as you point out, but my feeling is that Europeans in general have steadily become more inclined to adopt what have long been identified as Scandinavian standards in public life, call out profiteering for what it is and, where wrongdoing is suspected, to put it on trial. Marine Le Pen for instance is likely to be convicted later this year for misappropriating millions of € from the European Parliament and may well be disqualified from standing in the 2027 presidential election. As for Sarkozy, if he is convicted in the current court case, his political career will end under a cloud of disgrace and opprobrium.
Such cases would never have come to such prominence fifty years ago. There were rumours of various kinds around Presidents Mitterand and Chirac but both escaped close scrutiny by the media and the courts (in Chirac’s case, narrowly !) and left the political scene with their reputations largely intact.
Yes, but that is just one of the reasons he will not step down before 2027. However, even if Marine le Pen is disqualified from standing in the next presidential election, another leading member of her party will, perhaps the young Bardella. Unfortunately for France, with or without Marine, the RN will be a force to be reckoned with in the years to come.
I have some suggestions to make--will be at the end of the next piece. With presidents involves a higher salary, a great pension, but very limited outside earnings after leaving office...
All of which makes Jimmy Carter even more exceptional.
Agree entirely. And Harry Truman and Calvin Coolidge too, I believe.
While not approving such behavior, I just want to note that we don't pay our top leaders (politicians, civil servants and flag officers) anywhere near enough. The Congress has just yet again (like each and every year since 2009) stopped automatic cost of living adjustment to their salaries. Had they not being doing so, their salaries would have been about 40% higher now. That's huge difference. The Congress becomes more and more preserve of the rich. If Pelosi did not have a rich husband, how on Earth could she afford to represent San Francisco in Washington and live in both places just on $174K?! One the Chartists demands in 1848 was salary for MPs - to enable ordinary people to serve in Westminster. And those members of Congress who are not (yet) rich, either are ideologues with extremist agenda, or try to use their position to get a fat media contract or become a lobbyist, or just simply do not have good alternatives outside Congress because they are not smart/knowledgeable/skilled enough to do something else (e.g. even if I did not mind being a Congressman in principle, I simply could not afford to take the job). So we basically get the government that we pay for. Many Congressmen sleep on couches in their offices. Is that the government we really want?
Entirely agree--more on this later
U.K. is the same. I was paid more in a middle management role in banking than Matt Hancock as a health secretary. It’s not normal.
Singapore pays their politicians high salaries in a hope they won’t get corrupted. Predominantly it works but they recently had their first corruption scandal by one of the ministers so not as sustainable
I remember a guided tour of Parliament in August 2003. I was 36 and just an inexperienced scientist, and I think I snickered (the guide gave me a dirty look) when I heard that MPs were paid less than I was - while working entirely from home on my own schedule (BTW it looks like my then manager's house burned down hours ago in Pacific Palisades, judging from latest maps - I stayed with him for a couple days when I drove across the US and back on my 2022 vacation, which was the first time I ever met him in person, as he hired me over the phone). And back then the pound was $1.60, not $1.25 like now. I really hate when populists mention how much higher the legislators' salaries are than average wages. Maybe it's just me, but I don't want to be governed by average people. Yes, even someone as outstanding as Jake Sullivan can screw up, but I shudder to think what someone of average intelligence who can't find either Ukraine or Gaza on the map would have done in his place.
Excellent piece.
"What Trump is doing is taking the already existing unseemly trends in the American system and magnifying them, making them more naked and much more lucrative. His changes are ones of a massive inflation of an existing system, he is not creating a completely new one out of thin air."
This fact is the secret sauce of MAGA. The right are fairly reveling in the "everyone does it" spirit. Cynicism plays into the hands of authoritarians.
I don't think we can even conceive of the level of corruption that tariffs may usher in. I always wondered what it must have been like to live in Brazil or Venezuala when Bolsonaro/Chavez rose to power. Trump has nearly tamed the judiciary via Supreme Court. I fear Trump & fellow billionaires are sitting on a bonanza that will dwarf Putin's money grab.
Thanks Richard--your second paragraph is key (and I will talk about that in the second part of this series). The chances for corruption across the board will be epic in the next 4 years.
But then the MAGA hypocrisy in all the Biden investigations must be taken into account. As someone commented earlier, the law for thee, but not for me.
But has MAGA/Trump become the first presidential movement to take money/ contributions in advance of being sworn into office in return for a multitude of favours to a multitude of countries and Multi-billionaires
Absolutely-its making the present system far worse and more corrupt--but its not starting a new reality of presidents cashing in.
Trump is also using the Putin oligarch model. We watch in horror while the Trump oligarchs line up, bow, and throw money at him. They bought the Golden Calf enthusiastically. Sadly, Moses has left the building and it’s a dark evening in America.
The way Zuckerberg, Bezos et al have pivoted certainly is "impressive"
😂. You must not have heard of George Soros and Mark Cuban.
So you are saying Trump is just as bad---right?
Please proceed, governor.
It is not just politicians, Phillips. Regulators leave their posts and go to work for the industries they once regulated cashing in. Or even better yet, in many states, it is a revolving door from staff, to industry, to Commissioner positions, back to industry. What you have rightly pointed to during the “Gilded Age” has truly never left the US political culture. It has often been hidden. Working in the power industry, do you even ask the question why it is regulated? Because the industry asked to be regulated! They did not like competition and franchise monopolies were bigger money makers. It is the “capture theory” of regulation…and who appoints regulators? Politicians who take the bigger cut. Trump is all of this on steroids and he has been enabled because others are also taking a cut.
Cant disagree Paul--and that is the truth upon which all this sordidness is built. Presidents were some of the last to nakedly cash in--but once they started doing it--we were probably heading down this road inevitably.
All too true. The fact is that after Taft, no president had the opportunity as Wilson (health) Harding (died), Coolidge and Hoover (Depression) FDR (died) never had the opportunity. Truman and Ike were of a different time. LBJ was different as well. Only with Reagan was their not just motive, but also opportunity. Then the floodgates opened.
FDR changed the tax laws to make the corruption *unprofitable*. There was simply no point in collecting obscene sums of wealth under the FDR/Truman/Eisenhower tax laws -- you'd get it taxed away from you.
That is, of course, the long-term solution.
By the way, if I did such a thing in my “lowly positions” I would have been fired outright. One hand to reach a certain level to enjoy the fruits of “payola”
Yep--its easier to stomp on those in the middle than the political masters.
Law and ethics for thee, not for me! That is the mantra. This is how democracy dies in a flood off money, corruption, and Oligarchy.
Ugh
One of the chief benefits of democracy is that it prevents the rich from destroying the system from which they gained their wealth.
Funny you should mention Ulysses Grant. I am a descendant of his disgraced VP, Schuyler Colfax, who took the dirty railroad money and got busted.
Corruption is as old as the day is long. This is why punishing this stuff is so critical (yet not occurring.) Kushner’s corruption is egregious. Why isn’t he facing any justice or at least Congressional investigations? Thats how they got Schuyler…
Everyone here on the left seemed to clap when Biden pardoned his son. Yet I’m livid his justice department sat on its hands for 4 years in the face of sedition and bald corruption of the previous admin. Did Biden tell Trump “I won’t go after you and yours if you don’t me and mine”? If he didn’t he might as well have given the results.
How interesting. I havent heard the name Schuyler Colfax in a while. I agree about Biden--and then I do believe he compounded things at the end with the pardon of his own son.
The Justice Department was actually quite active from the very beginning, building the case from the bottom up. The main reason Trump isn't facing justice is the Supreme Court, which pretended that the 14th Amendment was written--and that a majority of the Senate had agreed that Trump engaged in insurrection-- and then delayed his trial for many months on the pretense that presidential immunity for insurrection might be a thing.
The second main reason Trump did not face justice is because the media protected him in an unprecedented fashion. The normal function of media would be to channel outrage over the attack on government into a pressure campaign on the courts and the Congress to lock him up. Instead the media allowed Trump to flood the zone with bulls--t.
And finally, Trump, like any mob boss had loyal soldiers Tony Ornato and Wal Nauta (and Bill Barr) to lie and protect him. Plus of course, lawyers who would argue *anything*, no matter how absurd, to get a day's delay.
The AG might sound like a powerful position, but if the courts, the crooks, and the media are against you, it's not all that big a swagger.
On corruption: We all know the king of corruption is bribe-taker Clarence Thomas, followed by bribe-taker Samuel Alito, followed by bribe-taker Kavanaugh, bribe-taker Roberts, bribe-taker Barrett, and bribe-taker Gorsuch.
The Constitution is pretty clear: they aren't judges, because judges "shall hold their offices during good behaviour". But the members of Congress seem unwilling to enforce the Constitution, perhaps because they're also corrupt. It doesn't require impeachment (corrupt judges can be removed through any regulatory system created by Congress) but it DOES require Congressional action, and Congress has refused to act for a very long time.
When fake judges who take bribes are squatting on the bench of the so-called "supreme court", you have a system where the judicial branch has zero legitimacy, or even negative legitimacy. Historically, *this does not work out so well* -- when federal judges are considered corrupt agents of a political party (because they are), nobody has any reason to treat federal court rulings as anything other than naked power grabs (because they are). They may still have some effect if the government is powerful in other ways (as in Russia). But it means when the government loses its raw force, its ability to abuse people with thuggish cops, it loses all authority.
In Russia the courts are considered agents of Putin, and in the US the federal (but not state) courts are correctly considered agents of Trump and the Republican Party. Not real judges. They both go down with their dictatorial leaders.
I can’t disagree on several of the scotus justices being nakedly corrupt. But one thing that Biden’s admin did competently was to seat a ton of federal judges over his term. There are most certainly some ringers for Trump in there too tho
So, the lower federal courts are not totally broken.
But taking a step back, this is why Democrats lost. No one even presented a plan to fix scotus. It was just “save Democracy” by displacing Trump without any stated plan to actually uncorrupt broken institutions and government processes, like scotus and the nomination process. No bold plans to fix things, just timid plans to keep things bumping along, still broken.
Bingo. I've been telling members of Congress that they need to establish a Court of Judicial Qualifications to try cases where judges are accused of bad behaviour. I've been telling them this for YEARS. They just don't listen (exactly one listened).
I mostly agree Neroden. On one point: it's very difficult to remove judges because the only constitutionally prescribed procedure to decide who is not on "good behavior" is impeachment.
I also wouldn't characterize Kavanaugh's greatest sin as bribe taking. It's lying under oath, which is also Clarence Thomas' greatest sin. As for the the sins of the rest, excepting Alito, beware. Sotomayor has been criticized for using staff to boost sales of her book (https://lawandcrime.com/live-trials/live-trials-current/supreme-court-live-trials-current/scotus-finally-releases-a-statement-on-ethics-but-not-about-the-justices-youre-thinking-about/) and Jackson failed to report some of her husband's income (https://www.yahoo.com/news/scotus-justices-clarence-thomas-ketanji-170121090.html). It's not like overstepping what strict ethics require is just a Republican thing.
It's also true that there could be procedures to alter the composition of the Court through administrative procedures. I would like to impose sabbaticals on the Justices, so they could spend some time in real courtrooms and I think that could be done. But one has to be careful that neither party could use these procedures to politically shape the Court.
The real problem is that one party's appointees have controlled the court for over 50 years. They've lived in the Washington bubble, where lobbyists can focus on them and the real-life consequences of their actions are very remote. All of our senior leadership--from presidents to Justices to Senators to long-serving members of Congress need to be reminded that they are, after all, only citizens.
I don’t agree. It would have been extraordinary easy and appropriate for a special counsel to pursue a case against Trump nearly immediately following the incident. Yet, Jack Smith was not appointed until 22 months into Biden’s term, squandering nearly half of it. Could they not anticipate Trump would use legal tactics to run out the clock like he has done countless times in previous litigation? I certainly anticipated it.
It appeared to me that Biden’s DOJ had delayed Trump’s prosecution such that it would interfere with 2024 campaigning. That was the only explanation for the delay that made any sense to me at all.
After securing seditious conspiracy convictions from the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys Leadership, why did the DOJ not pursue a case against Trump directly on the heels of those? On both of those cases, the defendants argued that they were following the then-Presidents orders to disrupt the transfer of power. This was their main defense. Both sets were convicted. It should have been extraordinarily easy to pursue a limited case against Trump regarding sedition immediately. They didn’t. Now they let the whole thing go. It reeks. I’m not sure if incompetence or corruption but they did not get the job done and the whole world will suffer for it.
Your belief that the time was squandered is based on a mistaken understanding of the Special Counsel. Special Counsels do not have extraordinary powers. They are appointed to avoid a conflict of interest. No conflict of interest existed before Trump declared as a candidate.
But the investigation of Trump began even before Merrick Garland became Attorney General. The first investigative act was done by Lisa Monaco on the day she was appointed Deputy: she ordered the seizure of Rudy Giuliani's phones.
At the lower level, convictions are relatively easy to obtain. A guy punches a cop, the deed is on film--that's pretty easy. But convicting someone for a fiery speech? That's much more difficult.
Or what if the evidence is on a password-protected phone with an encrypted messaging app? It can take the FBI a year or more to break that encryption. And this is without considering that privilege claims can be raised.
There's plenty of legitimate reasons to criticize the DoJ's actions. For example:
1) they were slow to accept help from the Sedition Hunters (https://seditionhunters.org/), who were far more effective at exploiting digital media than the FBI
2) they could have (IMO) better leveraged state prosecutorial resources to crack the fake electors plot
3) they could have persuaded Fani Willis to not use what is not a well-tested legal strategy (state RICO) for what could have been an easy conviction
4) it's possible--I don't know--that NSA resources could have been brought to bear on the phone-cracking issues. But that might have required congressional action or, at the least, Executive action
5) DoJ was politicized by Trump. I commend this article by Joyce Vance, which touches on a few issues: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/06/16/merrick-garland-apple-schiff-justice/ Garland could have should have not appointed Robert Hur to the investigation of Biden's classified documents (https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/02/19/how-merrick-garland-mistook-a-trump-hitman-for-a-career-prosecutor/) Garland could have and should have shut down the Durham investigation after the resignation of Nora Dannehy, and he could have (not sure it would have helped) intervened in the Weiss investigation of Hunter Biden after Weiss reneged on the plea deal. The point is that parts of the DoJ were still working for Trump after he left office.
Most criticisms of DoJ are based on misconceptions about how the legal process works. If you read one article, I hope it will be this:
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/merrick-garland-isnt-blame-delays-trumps-election-interference-case-rcna141213
Trump remained an opposition leader so it seems obvious there would be a conflict of interest prosecuting him. He was Biden’s electoral opponent in 2020. There should have been a special counsel appointed on the first day of Biden presidency on this and several other legal episodes, like Kushner’s naked corruption or the events surrounding the impeachment and menacing of an American ambassador. Or the obstruction of justice from the Mueller investigation. Or Manaforts espionage surrounding the 2016 elections.
There was an enormous amount of crime they were duty-bound to prosecute.
But they sat on their hands.
They were able to prosecute cases against hundreds of rioters tho. Just not the political leadership.
It reeks.
Excellent point, but we need to include Obama among those cashing in:
"He didn’t earn more than $30k per year between 1991 and 2004
His Salary jumped to $157k when he was elected to the US Senate
Michelle was the breadwinner for a long time, earning $274k per year as a lawyer
The Obamas earned $1.65m in 2005 thanks largely to Barack's book royalties
In 2017 Barack and Michelle signed a $60m book deal for their autobiographies
Barack and Michelle earned $85m between 2000 and 2017
In June 2017 they paid $8m for a D.C. home
In August 2019 they reportedly paid $15m for a property on Martha's Vineyard"
https://www.finance-monthly.com/2024/12/barack-obamas-net-worth-a-look-at-his-70-million-fortune/
Although less swampy, the Obama's deal with Netflix has likely also proved lucrative, though I didn't easily find a source stating its value: https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/4722188-obamas-expand-netflix-partnership/ I guess this is why I couldn't find $$$ re deal: "Netflix did not disclose financial terms of the arrangement, yet similar deals between streaming platforms and high-profile celebrities have had a price tag in the tens of millions of dollars." https://www.investopedia.com/news/obamas-sign-multiyear-contract-netflix/
Yet another reason I've soured on the hope-and-change president ....
Agree entirely--just couldnt cover anyone. Obama has cashed in hugely.
I often think of Harold Wilson (who I remember well - I am very old) and his retirement to a little house on the Scilly Isles and compare that with Blair. But the UK is not a plutocracy like the US is (yet).
Im not so complacent on that--if you look at Blair and now Boris Johnson. They are coining it.
We lack the pluto!
Yes. Britainistan is not a plutocracy. It’s a caliphate run by a criminal conspiracy of Muslim extremists enabled by suicidally empathetic government officials who are happily leading a once great nation into sharia lawlessness. Get a grip. Set the sails on the Victory and patrol the High Seas. Protect your nation and our heritage.
This is racist garbage!
Well, there is a small little Mosque here in Eastbourne, politely attended on Fridays by our small little Muslim community. If thats a Caliphate then the UK can happily absorb it. And btw, the Victory is dry docked in Porstmouth and setting out on the High Seas’ is probs best not attempted now. Nelson and Trafalgar was 220 years ago.
This reads like AI gone wild.
The worst aspect is the shamelessness with no pretence of confining the more sordid details to the shadows. Politicians will politic I guess.
Yep--the lack of shame is remarkable
Maybe the greater shame is that we have no clue how to respond to the practices. I wonder if it is an issue, especially among politicians, where no one can cast the first stone. What comes to mind are some of the "investments" made in recent years, purportedly not subject to insider information but still wildly profitable.
The response needs to be a carrot/stick approach. Much greater pay but restrictions on outside income
The normalization of fraud in everyday American life is indeed one of the saddest consequences of all this. I was once shocked to hear people I know justify their petty conniving by saying “Trump does it” or “CEOs do it”--the latter especially after the 2009 financial crisis and its bailouts without consequences. Now I find it depressingly routine. Like Orwell’s donkey.
There has always been some fraud--its the normalization of presidential fraud that is most telling
I actually think it's the normalization of *judges* taking bribes which is the most telling. (Hello, Mister Clarence Thomas. Constitution says he isn't a judge but for some reason he hasn't been arrested and thrown in prison like he's supposed to be)
Um, George W. Bush is, by all accounts, still kicking; it was his father, George H.W. Bush, who died in 2018.
change made
It will be interesting to see how much Trump spends for his inauguration compared to the amounts he is "suggesting" big companies cough up for him. He sees it as his money.
This first issue makes me wonder if is better we find out than we don't know. It's scary to think that this is just the surface of the issue.
how depressing
Lest we forget, the Trump Inauguration funding was investigated. See e.g.,
https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/13/politics/trump-inauguration-spending-investigation/index.html
https://www.citizen.org/news/what-happened-to-the-surplus-funds-from-trumps-inauguration/
https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/03/politics/trump-organization-inauguration-funds/index.html
Thanks for this eye-opening piece. As you mention some European politicians, Gerhard Schröder has been largely discredited in Germany and the rest of Europe for taking Putin’s money after leaving office. Idem François Fillon, former French PM who, in addition, was convicted by a French court of putting his wife on a public payroll for totally spurious reasons. As for Blair or Johnson,
neither have been suspected of doing anything wrong but their scooping up of huge fees for speaking engagements after leaving office is looked down on by public opinion in the UK far more than similar conduct by Clinton or Bush is in the US.
But the most interesting and significant case to date is that of former French President Sarkozy who has just gone on trial accused of taking, some say €50 million, from the Libyan dictator Khadafi to finance his 2007 presidential campaign in return for diplomatic and other favours.
Corruption in politics and/or gaining massive financial advantage from a political career or connections is as old as the hills, as you point out, but my feeling is that Europeans in general have steadily become more inclined to adopt what have long been identified as Scandinavian standards in public life, call out profiteering for what it is and, where wrongdoing is suspected, to put it on trial. Marine Le Pen for instance is likely to be convicted later this year for misappropriating millions of € from the European Parliament and may well be disqualified from standing in the 2027 presidential election. As for Sarkozy, if he is convicted in the current court case, his political career will end under a cloud of disgrace and opprobrium.
Such cases would never have come to such prominence fifty years ago. There were rumours of various kinds around Presidents Mitterand and Chirac but both escaped close scrutiny by the media and the courts (in Chirac’s case, narrowly !) and left the political scene with their reputations largely intact.
And Macron will not step down prior to 2027, as Le Pen is angling for, precisely to ensure any conviction comes into play.
Yes, but that is just one of the reasons he will not step down before 2027. However, even if Marine le Pen is disqualified from standing in the next presidential election, another leading member of her party will, perhaps the young Bardella. Unfortunately for France, with or without Marine, the RN will be a force to be reckoned with in the years to come.
How about Mr Obama? Did he get rich too?
hugely!
I cataloged some of his cashing in in my comment. In sum, he came into office with a net worth of $1-2 million, but is now $70 million in the black.
Wow! I didn't know that.
Do you see any way around this Phillips? Or is this opportunity the only way to attract the "Best and Brightest" to higher office?
I have some suggestions to make--will be at the end of the next piece. With presidents involves a higher salary, a great pension, but very limited outside earnings after leaving office...