A Simple Standard
Most of us learned a basic rule early in life: when
someone puts their trust in you, you don’t betray
that trust to enrich yourself and your friends.
Besides friends and family, this rule applies to
police officers, to judges, to teachers — to anyone
who holds a position of authority, especially to the
highest offices in the land. What would you think
about a judge who rules in favor of someone who
just hired her spouse? A public official who steers a
government contract to his own family’s company?
We recognize these things as corruption. The
power of office comes from the people it serves, to
be used on their behalf. Not to enrich the person
who holds it.
The Founders wrote the Constitution to make sure
that no President could abuse that public trust to
benefit themselves, their family, or their friends.
Are those protections holding? I want to walk
through four situations with sourced facts you can
check for yourself. As we review them, ask
yourself, does this look right?
One: Pardons in Exchange for Donations
The president has the power to pardon people
convicted of federal crimes. That power is real and
legal.
Trevor Milton founded Nikola, an electric vehicle
company. A federal jury convicted him of lying to
investors. The court was moving toward ordering
him to repay roughly $680 million to the people he
defrauded. But Milton and his wife had donated at
least $3 million to Trump’s 2024 campaign —
documented in Federal Election Commission filings. Before the court could act, Trump pardoned
him.
Congressional investigators consider this a serious
issue. A bipartisan group has sent letters to 17
pardon recipients, asking about their financial
connections to the president.
The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, described the pattern as reflecting “an increasingly casual perspective on public corruption.”
The question isn’t whether he had the power to
pardon. He did. The question is what this tells us
about whose interests are being served.
Two: The Crypto Coin
Three days before his inauguration, Trump launched his own cryptocurrency, $TRUMP. He personally profits from it by collecting a fee on every trade.
In April 2025, he announced that the top 220 investors in the coin by May 12 would be invited to
dinner with the president. The top 25 would receive
a private reception and White House tour. The
price jumped more than 50 percent. Some buyers
said outright they purchased it hoping for political
favors in return.
A Bloomberg analysis found that 19 of the top 25
coin holders were likely foreign nationals. Charles
Dent, a Republican and former chair of the House
Ethics Committee, said the arrangement was
“completely out of bounds” for ethical, legal, and
constitutional reasons.
Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis found that
the Trump family and partners earned more than
$320 million in trading fees — acquired in mere
months from a coin he created while occupying the
Oval Office.
Three: The Trump Sons and a Father’s Influence
Four separate business deals share one recurring
sequence: Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump invest
in a company; their father’s administration shapes
that industry through executive orders, diplomatic
negotiations, or federal purchasing decisions; a
significant federal financial commitment follows;
and requests for congressional oversight go
unanswered.
(1) In August 2025, Trump Jr.’s venture firm took a
stake in Vulcan Elements, a rare earth magnet
startup. Three months later, at the personal
direction of White House adviser Peter Navarro —
a close personal friend of Trump Jr.’s — the
Pentagon issued the largest loan in its strategic
capital office’s history: $670 million, approved in
weeks rather than the months normally required,
without the independent technical review that a
Trump executive order had waived. Vulcan’s
valuation jumped tenfold.
(2) Beginning in late 2024, Don Jr. and Eric began
advising and acquiring shares in companies positioned to profit from government drone projects
— Don Jr. in Unusual Machines, and both brothers
through Dominari and American Ventures. In June
and December 2025, President Trump signed
orders prioritizing domestic drone production and
banning imports of foreign-made drones. In October 2025, Unusual Machines received U.S. Army orders for drone motors and components. Through subsequent mergers, the brothers’ investment gave them an interest in Powerus Corp, a military drone company. Unusual Machines also invested in Powerus and became a supplier of its parts. On April 30, 2026, the Air Force awarded Powerus a contract — value undisclosed —through a limited procurement order rather than competitive bids.
(3) In August 2025, the brothers invested in Skyline
Builders, which through mergers became Kaz
Resources. In September 2025, President Trump
personally joined a call with Kazakhstan’s
president and helped secure for that group the
rights to the world’s largest undeveloped tungsten
deposit. The U.S. government committed up to
$1.6 billion to back the project.
(4) The Trump administration has also proposed —
not yet finalized — significant rollbacks on gun sale
regulations, including allowing licensed dealers to
ship firearms directly to buyers without in-person
background checks. Donald Trump Jr. has sat on
the board of GrabAGun, an online firearms retailer,
since December 2024, and holds a 1.1 percent
stake. GrabAGun’s CEO said the proposed
changes could be “the most significant change to
firearms retail distribution in decades,” and that the
company is “uniquely positioned for this
opportunity.”
Kathleen Clark, Professor of Law at Washington
University and a government ethics expert,
described what she sees across all of these
situations:
“It’s bribery. It’s graft. It’s exploitation of
public power for private financial gain.”
Four investments. Taxpayer and consumer dollars
steered toward sectors where the president’s
family held private stakes. Congressional subpoenas blocked. No competitive bidding. No disclosure. No accountability. A clear pattern emerges. Does this look right?
Four: The DOJ Agreement
On January 29, 2026, Trump filed a $10 billion
lawsuit against his own government — the IRS and
Treasury Department — over a contractor’s leak of
his tax returns. He withdrew the lawsuit on May 18.
That same day, Acting Attorney General Todd
Blanche — Trump’s former personal criminal
defense lawyer — announced an agreement in
Trump’s favor.
So, first Donald Trump personally sued the
government he controls. Then he dropped the case
before any judge could look closely. And
immediately afterward, his own appointee signed
an agreement in his favor. It was called a
“settlement.”
Andrew Weissmann, a lead prosecutor on the
Mueller investigation, described it on NPR: “It was
entirely collusive. This is just one party making an
agreement with the same party.” In plain terms:
Trump dictating terms on both sides — escaping
tax investigations, and creating a fund to reward
those whose loyalty he depends on.
The agreement did two things. First, it created a
$1.776 billion fund, drawn from the U.S. Treasury
— your tax dollars — to pay people who believe
they were targeted by the government. The
President appoints, and can remove, five people to
manage the fund. Weissmann noted that Blanche
would not rule out January 6th defendants —
convicted of attacking the Capitol, then pardoned
by Trump — applying for payments from that fund.
Second — and this stopped legal experts cold —
the IRS was permanently barred from conducting
any future tax examinations of Trump, his family,
and the Trump Organization.
Thirty-five former federal judges asked the court to
reopen the case. In response, U.S. District Judge
Kathleen Williams asked Trump’s legal team: was
this ever a real lawsuit at all, or was it filed just to
make a backroom agreement look like something a
court had blessed? Were the court and the public,
in the judges’ own words, “the victim of a fraud”?
A second federal judge, Leonie Brinkema of the
Eastern District of Virginia, has ruled the fund
unconstitutional — finding it bypassed Congress’s
authority over public spending — and blocked it by
court order.
What’s to Be Done?
The answer can be seen in every House and
Senate seat on the ballot this November. The
people who can tighten the laws and penalties for
graft, monitor and enforce ethics rules, assure
ethical appointments to federal offices, and curb
unchecked presidential power — they sit in
Congress. They write the laws. They hold the
hearings. They control the purse.
You hire them. You can fire them — with your vote, your voice, and your presence at the polls.
Make sure you and everyone you know is
registered and ready to vote by checking at
vote.org.
In November, vote as if it’s the most important vote
you’ll ever cast. Because for the safety and stability
of this country, it may be.
Thank you.
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