Note: these are some of the most significant documented allegations, investigations, and reporting as of July 2026 - several are disputed by the officials involved, and none listed here (except where noted) have resulted in a criminal conviction. Sources are linked throughout so you can dig in yourself.
We keep coming back to this excerpt from the OSS 1943 psychological profile of Adolf Hitler (more available here):
“His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.”
“Never allow the public to cool off” - that’s the mechanism at work here. The corruption stories come so fast and so often that we grow numb to them, and that numbness is exactly what lets “well, every president does this” pass for a rebuttal.
It is not a rebuttal. The list below isn’t a collection of random scandals - it’s a system designed to overwhelm.
We are focusing on the second Trump administration, but this didn’t start in 2025. If you want a reminder of 8 years ago, CREW - Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington - published a comprehensive report in January, 2021, available here.
But it all went into warp drive once we got to Trump 47…
Family Business & Self-Dealing
The $2 Billion Crypto Handshake: Weeks after Trump family venture World Liberty Financial struck a deal with Binance, its stablecoin received a $2 billion investment from an Abu Dhabi state fund, and Binance’s founder later received a presidential pardon. Source
Trump’s Billion-Dollar Crypto Year: Trump’s 2025 financial disclosure reported over $1 billion in income from crypto ventures, including $550 million from World Liberty Financial token sales, while his administration simultaneously loosened crypto regulation. Source
The Meme Coin Wealth Transfer: Trump personally made an estimated $636 million from his $TRUMP meme coin, while nearly a million retail investors - roughly two-thirds of everyone who bought it - collectively lost $3.8 billion. Source
Trump Media’s Trading Edge: Trump’s majority-owned Truth Social announced plans to sell Wall Street trading firms paid, millisecond-level early access to “market-moving” posts “from the highest-ranking Truth Social accounts” - Trump is the highest ranking - letting his company monetize his official communications. Source
Qatar’s $400 Million “Gift”: The Qatari royal family gave Trump a luxury Boeing 747 jumbo jet, one of the most expensive gifts ever given to a U.S. president, which he says will eventually go to his presidential library. Source
Kushner’s Middle East Money Machine: While serving as a White House envoy negotiating Middle East policy, Jared Kushner’s private equity firm Affinity Partners raised billions from Gulf governments, with nearly all of its funding reportedly coming from foreign sources. Source
Witkoff and Kushner’s Gulf Deal-Making: While brokering Middle East diplomacy on Trump’s behalf, both Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner continued doing billions of dollars in private business with the same Gulf governments they were negotiating with. Source
Trump Sons’ Defense Portfolio: Since Trump’s reelection, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have built financial stakes in more than a dozen defense-tech and critical-minerals companies that have collectively landed at least $3.2 billion in federal business. Source
Pay-to-Play & Pardons
The Pardon-Shopping Industry: Lobbyists reported roughly $5.2 million in fees from clients seeking Trump clemency in 2025 - about eight times the amount reported under Biden - with one report describing a going rate of “$1 million” per pardon. Source
Pardons for Donors: Trevor Milton was pardoned after donating nearly $2 million to Trump’s campaign, and tax-evader Paul Walczak was pardoned after his mother raised millions for MAGA candidates and paid $1 million to dine with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Source
Ballroom Donors, Billions in Contracts: More than half the corporate donors to Trump’s new White House ballroom - including Amazon, Palantir, and Lockheed Martin - have collectively received over $50 billion in new or increased federal contracts since donating. Source
165 Companies, Investigations Dropped: The administration paused or dropped enforcement actions against 165 corporations, including a third of pending investigations into tech companies that were major campaign donors. Source
Delaying a Bridge for a $1 Million Donor: As we reported in “Pay the Troll,” Trump threatened to keep the new, publicly built Gordie Howe International Bridge between Detroit and Windsor closed shortly after the Moroun family - owners of the competing, tolled Ambassador Bridge - donated $1 million to a pro-Trump super PAC. Source
Conflicts of Interest
Navarro’s Pentagon Loan to the Boss’s Son: Trade adviser Peter Navarro helped secure a $620 million Pentagon loan for a company months after Donald Trump Jr.’s venture capital firm had taken a stake in it. Source
Lutnick’s Son and the Tariff Trades: A trading firm run by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s son reportedly placed trades timed to court rulings on Trump’s tariffs, raising insider-information concerns. Source
Musk’s $38 Billion Conflict: While leading DOGE’s push to slash federal spending, Elon Musk’s companies held a combined $38 billion in federal contracts, loans, and subsidies while the administration paused or dropped more than 40 agency investigations into his businesses. Source
Hegseth’s Defense Policy Board: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stacked a new Pentagon advisory board with defense-industry insiders - including a registered lobbyist for Saudi Arabia - several of whom back startups like Anduril and Palantir that hold billions in Pentagon contracts. Source
The EPA’s Chemical-Lobbyist Revolving Door: The EPA installed former American Chemistry Council lobbyists into senior posts overseeing the same chemical industry they used to represent, and the agency then moved to stall bans on the carcinogen TCE and on asbestos. Source
Institutional Capture & Abuse of Power
The DOJ as a Revenge Machine: Trump’s DOJ has indicted or investigated a lengthening list of perceived enemies - including former FBI Director James Comey, special counsel Jack Smith, Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis, and New York Attorney General Letitia James - all of whom had previously investigated or prosecuted him. Source
Arranging Blanket Tax Immunity: Trump sued his own IRS for a privacy violation and the IRS and DOJ then settled, permanently barring the federal government from auditing or prosecuting Trump, his sons, the Trump Organization, and any “related or affiliated” companies for tax or financial wrongdoing predating May 2026. Source
The $1.776 Billion “Anti-Weaponization” Fund: In that same settlement, the government created a $1.776 billion fund to compensate Trump and political allies - a deal a federal judge found was “the product of collusion” between parties that were never actually adverse. Source
Blue States Need Not Apply: A DOE lawyer admitted in a court filing that the agency canceled 284 clean-energy research grants worth $7.5 billion for the sole reason that the recipients were located in Democratic-voting states. Source
Clearing the Way for Corruption
Corruption doesn’t just depend on opportunities—it also depends on weakening the people and institutions responsible for detecting and prosecuting it.
The Inspector General Purge: As we reported in “The DC Seventeen,” within days of taking office, Trump dismissed or removed numerous inspectors general - the independent watchdogs responsible for uncovering waste, fraud, and abuse across federal agencies, bypassing the usual congressional notification process and eliminating many of the officials charged with investigating executive branch misconduct. Source
The Corruption Cops, Defunded: DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, the unit that prosecutes corrupt officials, went from 36 full-time attorneys to just 2 after staff refused to drop the Eric Adams case. Source
No single entry proves a corrupt system. That's not the point. The point is the pattern: public office turned into private enrichment, donors buying access, oversight gutted, critics and watchdogs punished. These examples span different agencies, different industries, different years - and they all point the same way
Send this to the 'Lock her up' crowd. Send it to the 'Biden crime family' crowd. Send it to whoever still brings up Hunter's laptop.
Wow! The level of corruption is astounding! Thanks for delineating it.