Absolute Corruption by Geoff Carter « The Pen in Hand Blog

Illustration by Michael DiMilo

By Geoff Carter

The great English historian Lord Acton once said, “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely” and speculative novelist Robert Shea once declared, “Anyone who seeks power wants absolute power.” Current events seem to be bearing out these predictions. Of course, what’s transpiring in Washington, D.C. today is hardly anything new.

The annals of western history are full of tin gods and petty tyrants, those who would rule the world. Alexander the Great, Napolean Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Idi Amin, Augusto Pinochet, Sadam Hussein, and countless others have sought to attain and wield ultimate power. Their legacies of pain, suffering, death, and terror should serve as cautionary tales to humanity everywhere, yet these tyrants continue to rise, to rule, and to thrive.

Vladimir Putin, Victor Orban, and Kim Jong Un are the most notable tyrants on today’s world stage—alongside our own dictator-in-waiting Donald Trump who is living proof of Lord Acton and Mr. Shea’s assertions about the corrupting influences of power. A comprehensive laundry list of Donald Trump and his extended family’s almost spectacular acts of corruption would not do justice to the scope of their crimes. Although they play at being sophisticated and rich urbanites—the epitome of nouveau riche royals, this particular extended family is nothing but a low set of common thieves—with very common ambitions.

The U.S. House of Representatives Oversight Committee has provided a list of one hundred instances of conflict of interest committed by the Trump Administration. Readers should be advised this list was compiled over a year ago, only one hundred days after the president had begun his second term. Comprehensive as it is, this list only touches on the epic levels of corruption evinced by this administration.

The second Trump administration has been characterized by nepotism, cronyism, transactional policies, unlawful takeovers and closures of federal bureaus like the Department of Education, and USAID. Bolstered by the far-right ideologies espoused by The Heritage Foundation and transcribed into Project 2025, Donald Trump has set about dismantling our democracy with the aim of replacing it with a government of one—himself, the king, the fuehrer, Big Brother—take your pick. And, like a vulture picking over the bones of a corpse, Trump is using this opportunity to enrich himself.

Unlike some authoritarians who professed a vision for the people or their countries—perverted as they usually were—Donald Trump seems to have only one driving ambition, one goal: unrestricted acquisition of obscene personal wealth. While following the directives of Project 2025 to dismantle our federal government, dissolving the Department of Education, letting DOGE loose in the Social Security Administration, laying off thousands of VA workers and other government officials, he has taken every opportunity to enrich himself and his family, and this administration has not hesitated to break, bend, or abuse the law.

His takeover of the Department of Justice has not only insulated himself and his cronies from lawful prosecution, it has enabled the DOJ to wage campaigns of vengeance against his political enemies. The DOJ has also settled lawsuits filed by Trump and members of his administration, in effect paying millions, in some cases hundreds of millions of dollars, to the likes of Michael Flynn. To Trump, the DOJ is not only his personal law firm, it is another source of income.

While this corruption is so endemic and widespread domestically, it pales compared to the graft happening overseas. Our president has compromised American international interests by pursuing business interests in the UAE, Saudia Arabia, and other Middle Eastern countries. His son-in-law Jared Kushner has solicited two billion dollars in investments from Saudia Arabia. The Qatari royal family gifted Trump a Boeing 747-8 jetliner, a flying palace, worth $400 million dollars, for him to use as his own Air Force One. According to The Guardian, senior Democrats in the Senate called out the gift as a blatant conflict of interest and illegal: that elected officials, including the president, were not allowed to accept large gifts from foreign governments unless authorized to do so by Congress, stating “that elected officials, including the president, were not allowed to accept large gifts from foreign governments unless authorized to do so by Congress.” Trump, undaunted, accept the gift.

These business and financial entanglements in the Middle East may have been an overriding factor in Trump’s recent ill-advised decision to attack Iran. According to The Washington Post, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, MBS, made a series of phone calls to the White House advocating U.S military intervention in the month prior to the attack. Coupled with long-standing intense rivalry between the two regimes, MBS averred that Iran was becoming too powerful and strong force in the region.

Trump was also nudged into action by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose own barbaric attacks on Gaza and Lebanon demonstrate his own brand of authoritarian militarism. Trump has more than once hinted about putting luxury resort hotels on the shore of Gaza—but like nearly everything that comes out of Trump’s mouth, it’s difficult to tell intention from fantasy from smokescreens.

Trump had previously used the military to invade Venezuela and kidnap President Maduro. Probably encouraged by the fact that it was a clean and quick military operation with minimal damage to U.S. forces, he decided to venture into Iran, perhaps with an ulterior motive of acquiring that country’s oil. After removing Maduro, Trump has established stable relations with Vice-President Delcy Rodriguez and stated that Venezuela will be “turning over” 50 million barrels of oil to the U.S. According to a report from The BBC, Trump said “he would control the money raised and use it to benefit the people of Venezuela and the US.” Right.

Another instance of executive corruption is the suspicious upswing in buying and selling of stocks before White House announcements concerning the status of the Strait of Hormuz. According to Reuters, “The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission is examining a series ‌of trades in oil futures placed shortly before major shifts in President Donald Trump’s Iran war policy, a person familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.”

And so it goes on and on and on. Although Trump is already a billionaire, he cannot stop greedily grabbing at every piece of silver he sees. And the most frustrating thing is that they are all getting away with it.

There is a separate set of rules for the rich. If a normal Joe is sued, he’ll probably have to scramble to pay legal fees. If litigation goes on long enough, it’ll drown him. The wealthy can pay their attorneys without flinching and outlast their opponents.

They can also hire the best lawyers.

They can—and do—lobby Congress to pass laws favoring their companies.

Their friends in government have guaranteed they’ll pay almost no taxes.

Many—not all—of their friends in government are as dirty as they are.

Trump was indicted on thirty-four counts of fraud and was never sentenced. He got away with that, he got away with absconding with classified documents, countless alleged accusations of sexual assault, alleged collusion with pedophile and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, and who knows how much more?

Trump and his wealthy friends are so confident they will never be brought to justice for their crimes, they don’t even bother hiding the corruption—what we might call Trumpian transparency. Jared Kushner has been appointed as one of the peace negotiators in Iran. Trump doesn’t seem to care that there is a straight line between Kushner’s financial interests and his power to broker a peace in the region, American interests be damned. His son-in-law is undoubtedly more concerned with protecting his investments than stopping the carnage.

I believe most Americans find this behavior disgusting and profoundly un-American. It smacks of royal privilege, Marie Antoinette, and all the excesses of unchecked avarice.

Every member of Trump’s administration and those in Congress who aided and abetted his crimes must be brought to justice, must reimburse the U.S. Treasury and the American people for the money they stole, and spend time in one of the immigration detention centers they are building.

Absolute Corruption

By Geoff Carter

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By Geoff Carter

Notes

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