Corruption. It is the word of the moment for the Trump administration. Politicians say it, and the press repeats it as if it were a fact.
I have started pressing people who assert it. Give me an example. They get angry. They say it’s there. They can’t give me a single one. They are sure it will be found.
I’m not defending Trump. I find his behavior difficult to stomach at times. But I don’t see where the evidence is that there is some massive corruption with Trump and his family.
I have not heard one Democrat or reporter name a crime that they believe was committed, other than someone made a lot of money.
My standard is not high. It has two parts.
Name the crime. Tell me how you know.
Maybe just clever
The optics are simple. Someone has made a lot of money, and he’s in public office, so he must be corrupt.
Making a lot of money does not mean you are corrupt. Maybe just clever.
Not being a selfless Boy Scout isn’t corruption either. Few people are.
The money is enormous. The crime is missing.
Congressmen take large campaign contributions all the time from people and businesses and then push for their agenda. Not corruption?
The Supreme Court says no. Under McCormick, a contribution becomes bribery only with an explicit promise of an official act. In Citizens United, and again in McCutcheon, the Court said ingratiation and access are not corruption.
Unless you can show the deal, it’s another day at the office in Washington.
By the critics’ logic, the fact that credit card rates are as high as 30% shows that more than half of Congress is being bribed by the banks, or they would have fixed that problem 50 years ago.
For most of our history, the states had usury laws, often capping interest at 6–10%, and the banks had no trouble making money and giving credit. Then in 1978 the Supreme Court let a national bank charge customers anywhere whatever its home state allowed. The banks moved their card operations to South Dakota and Delaware, which dropped their rate caps, and every other state’s usury law became meaningless. Congress could easily have fixed that by making the general state caps federal caps. Coincidentally, Delaware’s senator for 36 years was Joe Biden.
I wrote about how we got here in “How We Got 20% Credit Card Rates and Why You Should Care”, and about why neither party has lifted a finger to fix it in “If Democrats Cared About Affordability, They Would Be Pushing for 10% Credit Card Caps.”
Bernie Sanders tried once. In May 2009, with Democrats running the Senate, he offered a 15% cap. It failed 33 to 60, with 22 Democrats voting against it.
The new General Washington
This past Sunday, Jonathan Karl, host of ABC’s This Week, asked Hakeem Jeffries, the incoming Speaker of the House, about exactly that. Trump asked for a 10% cap back in January. Would Democrats pass it and dare him to sign it? Jeffries said they “certainly need to provide credit card relief,” and moved on. He never said 10%. He never said yes. He never mentioned a bill. Somehow the man who can’t stop saying “crooks” and “corruption” couldn’t find a word for the banks.
It reminded me of the Saturday Night Live sketch “Washington’s Dream.” General Washington is rallying his troops on the Delaware, describing the glorious new country and the new measures that symbolize freedom: inches, feet, yards and miles. (A historical inaccuracy, since England used the same units in 1776, but most people think of England and Europe as metric.) Kenan Thompson, the Black actor playing the only Black soldier, keeps asking what the plans are for men of color such as him, and what of the slaves. Every time, Washington pats him on the back, looks away, and goes right back to the measurements. “You asked about the temperature.”
In the sequel, Thompson asks whether the slaves will be freed after “this” war. Washington: After “a” war.
Ask the next Speaker about a 10% cap, and you get credit card relief.
Watch the SNL sketches, then watch the Jonathan Karl interview. When Karl asks about the 10% cap, Hakeem Jeffries has the same expression Nate Bargatze’s Washington wears when Kenan Thompson’s soldier asks about the slaves and he changes the subject.
Come to think of it, both sketches sound a lot like the Democrats’ plans for their new mandate. Hakeem Jeffries is General Washington. A grand dream of an affordable America. Ask how, and you get the temperature. I explained his vision in “Count the Promises They Can Deliver.” Five promises, one deliverable, and that one comes with an asterisk.
What real corruption looks like
We know what real corruption looks like when someone can show it. And we got a real example from a senator of the Democratic Party.
Bob Menendez, Democratic senator from New Jersey, chaired the Foreign Relations Committee. Investigators found gold bars, a Mercedes convertible and cash stuffed in clothing bearing his name. The serial numbers on the gold traced back to the men paying him. A fingerprint tied one of them to the cash envelopes.
A jury convicted him on 16 counts. He got 11 years. His wife got four and a half.
That is the crime. That is how they know.
Without providing evidence
When Trump claims something, the press fact-checks it and says so. Last weekend ABC reported that he was claiming Democrats had sent threatening letters, “without providing evidence.”
The biggest one Trump always claims is election fraud. Every story says the claim is false or comes without evidence.
Fair enough.
They never say that about the corruption.
Bernie Sanders can rail on a news round table about the Trump corruption. The reporters don’t ask him how he knows that. If Trump was talking about election fraud, the reporter would immediately chime in with there is no evidence of that.
Trump doesn’t get to say fraud without naming the fraud and telling us how he knows. Neither do they.
On election night Robert Garcia of the House Oversight Committee said he had vowed to take on the “Trump Crime Family.” Which crime? The Times, in its big post-election analysis, quoted Daniel M. Price, a former economic adviser to George W. Bush, saying those who paid tribute “whether for ballrooms or meme coins” may well be called to account. For what? Nobody asks.
Then there’s the man about to become Speaker of the House.
Go back to that Sunday interview with Jonathan Karl on ABC’s This Week. His own office posted the transcript. Read it.
In his very first answer, before Karl had asked him a single thing about it, Jeffries promised to hold accountable “those who have visited unprecedented corruption on the American people.”
A few minutes later: “we’ve seen unprecedented corruption that has been visited upon the American people. And we are committed to holding the crooks accountable.”
Then the administration became “the Trump Cartel.”
Unprecedented corruption, three times. Crooks. A cartel. All in one interview, from the next Speaker of the House, on national television.
Not once did he name a crime. Not once did he say how he knows.
Not once did the reporter ask how he knows this is a cartel of crooks, and what crimes, precisely.
It goes further. Democratic leaders keep tying the corruption to your grocery bill. Senator Richard Blumenthal told the AP the “tentacles of corruption” have “added costs to everyday Americans.” Chuck Schumer says no American should make tradeoffs at the supermarket while Trump makes inside trades on the stock market.
Nobody asks what crime. Nobody asks how they know. And more important, nobody asks where the evidence is that any of this has anything to do with affordability. Which price went up because of which crime? Gas went up because of a war. Name the meme coin that raised the price of eggs.
Show me
The point is not that no corruption is in Washington. There is. But nothing that matches the level of rhetoric. So far the New Jersey Democrat takes the cake.
It’s okay to investigate. That is what the subpoenas are for, and Democrats get theirs in January.
But investigators don’t usually flood the public with foregone conclusions before they have enough to even present to a grand jury.
The people who want to go along with the corruption claims will keep going along. Nothing I write will change that. They “just know” there’s massive corruption.
For everyone else, the standard hasn’t moved.
Name the crime. Tell me how you know.
Show me.
Update, Nov. 10: An earlier version included a section on what the AP Voter Poll showed about corruption. I removed it because the poll data did not adequately support the point, and this piece is about the people making the accusation, not public opinion.