249) Day 17 -- Reason #17 to revolt against Predatory Capitalism: Political corruption, Part 1
“A man is known by the company he keeps.” — Aesop
Everybody knows this. While there are exceptions (Jesus comes to mind), of people who hang out with society’s cast-offs out of love and compassion and as an expression of social inclusion, as a general rule, knowing a person by their friends is…a pretty good rule.
ESPECIALLY when it comes to politics. You need to know who a person’s allies are, in order to gauge what that person is likely to do with the power their position gives them, power to go to war or work for peace, power to pollute the environment or clean it up, power to expand corruption into something horrifying, or power to reign corruption in and promote the public’s safety and well-being, power to help people’s lives, or ruin them.
This is about as Common Sense as anything gets. In light of this, who are Trump’s friends? Who does he “hang out” with?
From his first Presidency, we had some telling clues.
First, a whole lot of his closest allies went to jail:
Steve Bannon – former investment banker and political strategist; Trump’s Chief Strategist for 7 months
Former chair of Breitbart News, one of the most extreme-right-wing “news” outlets in the US, often called “the platform for the alt-right”.
Also on the board of Cambridge Analytica, which was proven to interfere with British and American political elections, at least, by manipulating public opinion.
He then tried to create “The Movement”, an organization to unite the extreme-right parties throughout Europe, which ultimately failed because, ironically, too many of the fascists and wannabe dictators basically didn’t trust his American-led ambitions.
Charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud and money laundering at the Federal level, and then similar charges in New York at the state level.
He was then indicted for contempt of Congress, concerning the Jan 6th US Capitol attack.
He remains central to the MAGA movement.
***Trump pardoned him.
Peter Navarro – Trump’s Deputy Assistant and Director of White House National Trade Council
He lied to the public on many occasions with regards to COVID, advocated hydroxychloroquine as a treatment of COVID and spread conspiracy theories.
He also spread conspiracy theories about election fraud for the 2020 election. And was convicted of contempt of Congress.
He then contributed to Project 2025, and Trump picked him to become his Senior Counselor for trade and manufacturing for Presidency2.0.
Michael Cohen – Trump’s personal legal counsel, and VP of the Trump Organization —
He pleaded guilty to 8 counts of campaign-finance violations, tax fraud, and bank fraud. He testified that the campaign-finance violations were explicitly in the service of “influencing” the 2016 election for President.
He also pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about conflicts of interest between Trump’s businesses and Russia.
***Trump didn’t pardon him!! Because he had turned on Trump and cooperated with investigators. Go figure, the guy who decides to fess up and be honest, serves his time.
Paul Manafort – former Chair of Trump’s presidential campaign (2016)
charges ranged from Russian collusion to witness tampering to conspiracy to defraud the United States to bank fraud to tax fraud.
As a political lobbyist, he worked for many people, including the infamous dictators Ferdinand Marcos (Philippines) and Sese Seko (Zaire).
Notably, he has been influencing the Republican Party for a very long time, an adviser to the campaigns of Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bob Dole.
After violating a plea deal by lying to investigators, Manafort was sentenced to 47 extra months in prison, and would have been charged with 16 state felonies in New York but the charges were dismissed because of “double jeopardy”
***Trump pardoned him.
George Papadopoulos
Part of the Foreign Policy Advisor panel to Trump’s campaign in 2016
Pleaded guilty to charges of lying to the FBI concerning collusion with Russia.
***Trump pardoned him.
Roger Stone
A major Republican lobbyist since the 1970s, working on the campaigns of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Jack Kemp, Bob Dole, George W. Bush, and Trump
He operated a network of fake social media accounts to manipulate public opinion.
Convicted of witness tampering, obstructing official proceedings, and 5 counts of lying to the courts/investigators
***Trump pardoned him
Rick Gates
Former political consultant and lobbyist. Paul Manafort’s buddy and Deputy.
Pleaded guilty to conspiracy against the United States re: Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Other charges, 32 of them in fact, including bank fraud conspiracy, bank fraud, false income tax returns, etc., were withdrawn in a plea bargain.
Along with Manafort, poor Rick Gates wasn’t pardoned, because he cooperated with the investigations….
Allen Weisselberg
former Chief Financial Officer of the Trump Organization
Convicted of tax evasion, grand larceny, criminal tax fraud, falsifying business records, and perjury
Second, a whole bunch of Trump’s other allies were charged with crimes and avoided jail because of plea bargains and such:
Sidney Powell – former Trump campaign lawyer
Kenneth Chesebro – former Trump campaign attorney
Scott Hall – implicated in the election-subversion (AKA “treason” case)
Elliott Broidy (colluding with China and Malaysia to influence the Trump Administration) — ***Trump pardoned him.
Michael Flynn (lying to the FBI re: Russian investigation) – ***Trump pardoned him.
Rudy Giuliani — key Trump adviser and lawyer. It’s a loooong story, but basically, he was implicated in TONS of charges concerning lying about the election, attempting to overturn the 2020 election, and being a co-conspirator in the Jan 6th Capitol attack. He was a key figure in spreading conspiracy theories to the public about voter fraud and polling place fraud in the 2020 election. He managed to wriggle out of his charges, but was convicted in a $148-million defamation lawsuit against two election workers in Georgia. (Which he tried, unsuccessfully to get out of by trying to claim bankruptcy, great guy that he is.)
That’s the short-list. Those are the people at the top of Trump’s shit-heap who had enough evidence against them to get in serious trouble with the law. Although most of them only served days or weeks of sentences before Trump pardoned them.
The long-list, if we were to look at Trump’s business dealings, countless lawsuits, canceled charities because of stealing from them, fraudulent university, etc.etc.etc., it would take literally years to unpack and an entire book to summarize.
And thirdly, there’s the batshit crazy nominations Trump made in Presidency1.0. A few highlights that are my personal favs:
Rex Tillerson; Secretary of State
Former General Manager, CEO, and other executive positions for Exxon and ExxonMobil, one of the world’s biggest oil companies, and the 6th largest company in the world (by revenue). Rex ensured that the United States’ interests would be, in effect, the interests of oil companies.
As Secretary of State, Tillerson saw US diplomats abandon in droves, with 4 of 6 career Ambassadors, and 14 of 33 career Ministers, quitting. To round it out, applications for the foreign service fell by 50%, people obviously not wanting to be associated with such a corporate-dominated foreign service.
Betsy Devos
from one of the richest families in the US, Betsy became Secretary of Education by the narrowest margin ever, a vote of 50-51. A long-time highly conservative Christian, you can bet she had ambitions for the education system…
her career beforehand had the auspicious success of lobbying to get Big Money INTO politics, arguing for many years that there should be NO LIMITS on political donations, even making the stunning admission, “My family is the largest single contributor of soft money to the national Republican Party. I have decided to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence. Now I simply concede the point. They are right.”
Her tenure is hard to summarize briefly. But noteworthy is her lifelong attempt to discredit, underfund and undermine the public school system, in favour of religious and private school, and this accelerated substantially from her position of power. She also reduced dramatically the investigation of abuse and sexual assaults within schools, other than to express concern for men who are accused of sexual assault. She also revoked dozens (72 to be precise) of the documents that comprised policies to protect the rights of disabled students, and attempted to cut federal funding for Special Olympics programs, while unconstitutionally trying to empower schools to report immigrant students to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE).
What a devout Christian she must be. I mean, screwing over disabled students and sexual assault victims, harming the poor by attacking public education, and such, not to mention violating TONS of ethics requirements for her job as was uncovered in investigations by the Office of Government Ethics, is surely “what Jesus would do.”
Unsurprisingly, most teachers’ unions and organizations actively hated her, and students in Black colleges demonstrated courageously against her, even while she was given an “honorary doctorate” by one formerly Black college.
– To her infinitesimal credit, even Betsy recognized that Trump was responsible for the Jan 6th insurrection and attacks, resigning her position as a presumed act of protest against Trump’s corruption. Way to go, Betsy. Although it hardly excuses the rest of your ultra-damaging career against the American people.
We could go on, for hundreds, or even thousands of pages of examples. But that’s enough for today.
This is “the company that Trump keeps”.
Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at Trump’s nominations for key executive positions. And the day after, we’ll turn to Canada, and look at Canada’s role in global right-wing authoritarianism and dictatorships.
And THIS, friends and dear readers, is a small window into how Predatory Capitalism operates, installing corruption at the very highest levels of government and ”public” institutions.