No characteristic or attitude has defined Trump Administration 2.0 more broadly or blatantly than the money grab, a pattern established well before Inauguration Day. There was the $TRUMP meme coin pump and dump, and then through airplanes and Saudi projects, continuing right through today with Republicans now concerned that President Donald Trump plans to simply keep his $400M in PAC money for his own mostly private projects.
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There is no news to be had in revealing that there appear to be no limits.
But things change. And those midterms loom with the possibility that Democrats in Congress will obtain the subpoena power and autopsy the death of the law, above and beyond that which we already see in front of our not-shocked faces.
Great. That’s what they’re there for, should it come to pass, over and above all the electoral obstacles Trump puts in the way. But let’s assume Trump fails and that Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) gavels a Democratic majority Oversight Committee in January. And then assume a problem.
Well, many problems, but start with the first problem.
Priorities. Where to even begin? After all, since January 20th, 2025, it appears Trump’s entire raison d’etre has been to strip this nation bare and sell it for scrap. How does one investigate that with the biggest impact, given SCOTUS’s ruling essentially giving any president free rein to run a mobbed-up White House, dependent solely upon one tangential link to a presidential duty?
Some thoughts occur.
Namely, don’t start with that president, nor any presidential duty; work the middlemen, make them squirm; you never know what they’ll say when they face … dunno, that’s the problem and the point. They only know they’re not the real root of the problem, but they are holding the problem by the roots. And that’s when things might get interesting.
Let’s get to the single most “non-presidential” and yet “Oh, my God! They actually just did that in the open?” action, one most certainly not touching any presidential duty. How was it that then Deputy A.G. Todd Blanche, Trump’s own former attorney, got assigned a prosecutor’s duty to interview Ghislaine Maxwell, ignored all obvious follow-up questions, allowed her to entirely clear Trump in the world’s most notorious child-sex trafficking case, and only weeks later, she appears at Club Fed? (Oh, and not even a pardon has been ruled out?)
No explanation. No shame.
Trump says he has nothing to do with either interviewing Maxwell or prisoner exchanges. Well, sure. Normally. But normally, child sex-traffickers don’t go to Club Fed-style puppy prison. And yet someone sure did approve and initiate that move. Subpoena that guy and ask him everything.
See how this works? Trump’s top people are going to ignore Congressional subpoenas looking into corruption, and there is precedent for that, claiming executive privilege; even Eric Holder once told a Republican Congress to get bent over a particularly weird subpoena. Since the very top dogs will likely largely ignore Congress, ignore them. Start a level below, and outside the government.
Don’t judge just yet.
Trump made $2.2B in his first 18 months or so as president, or roughly 5,500 times a presidential salary, much of it from crypto. Now, Trump himself doesn’t know crypto from calypso, but someone does, and that someone had to put together a $Trump meme coin, and it had to involve the Trump family, who owned it and then sold it. Fast.
Money is not made that cleanly without some sort of plan. Subpoena those people whose wallets made the most money, people who sold very, very high, and get all up in their faces about how they knew precisely when the gig was up. That person might have been on a phone call Congress wants to know all about.
It is tempting to pick out some billionaire bros and put them in the hot seat. Ultimately, though, they’d just chill. Bezos bankrolled one of the world’s worst movies ever made in Melania? That sure looks like corruption. Oh, hell — of course it’s corruption. The problem is, deals like that, the billionaire favors, never need to come with a firm plan, only a familiar connection, and we’re right back around to presidential duties, and possibly deregulating whatever Bezos buys these days.
Stay away.
In keeping with the billionaire rule, ignore Elon Musk, but do not ignore DOGE. Musk wasn’t making those cuts himself, evaluating millions here or there. And many cuts came about at the right place and time for a private sector conglomerate to pick up what had been a public government service, now a for-profit savior.
For example, look into who ordered the Office of Personnel Management, which ran an entirely functional HR department that, through a series of no-bid moves through “Workday” (a private company,) eventually found a home as a private endeavor doing the same job in the lap of… Oracle.
Really rich and powerful guys like Trump and Musk don’t make moves to simply make others really rich and powerful. There is always a backend: start in the middle, find the backend. It had to be planned.
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And since Congress really does need to figure out what the buck(s) is going into and out of this ballroom, trace back how it was that Trump first said he’d build it, then said friends might contribute to fund it, then asked Congress for a big big pile of cash to build it, and doing so while having the East Wing demolished all but overnight, almost as if to ensure someone was building something on that side of the White House.
Rep. Garcia? Please subpoena some of those somebodies tearing down and building things on the White House grounds and, you know, review the accounting. Look for “consultants” and “advisors” receiving massive sums. Subpoena them. How were they worked into this work?
The pattern is set, and it should be done this way (in fact, some Dems are already leaning this way and doing so for a reason).
First, neither Trump nor his top privateers — not family, friends, or high-ranking coworkers — will allow a “Democrat Congress” to inconvenience them. And, “tbh,” they may have the muscle to get away with it. Tough to tell. What is easy to tell is that one might not need said profiteer if Oversight has the middleman under him (they’re all men) spilling all he can — behind closed doors for his protection — about all he “understood” to go on above.
Moreover, these types of things — a Bureau of Prisons coordinator, a 26-year-old DOGE staffer who tosses OPM’s departments, and contractors for the ballroom — none of them really touch on a presidential duty. No, they’re literally in the “middle” of the corruption. All one needs is to tie them to someone truly linked to Trump, and then you are in business.
Because the presidency isn’t about business, or it’s not supposed to be, and yet the more evidence one gains on establishing just how much of this administration’s focus has been on dumping government cash upon private companies, the more the noose tightens. Enough is happening in front of our faces that even the MAGAs will likely admit, “Yeah, he’s definitely getting rich off being the greatest president ever.”
But there are fewer and fewer true MAGAs left, and those that are continue to peel away because seeing a president make millions while your disposable income goes into the gas tank and grocery store gets gross.
To the extent this administration has a focus, it’s been centered on privatizing profits while letting the public suck up losses. They have acted as though there are no limits from the beginning because there are — almost literally — no limits, so long as one fully supports Trump. As things stand, not a single corrupt actor needs to fear anything — well, anything beyond insufficiently supporting Trump. Until then, they’re safe.
But things change.
No matter how committed Trump might be to ignoring every single norm, every law as written, every manifestly insane instance of self-dealing, committed to the point he’ll even hide in a well-appointed ballroom basement before coming out to face just desserts he doesn’t believe will ever come, things change.
He has always gotten away with it before. He and those around him might get away with most of it now. But to the extent Democrats commit to cleaning up the corruption, or at least combing it, do it in the most productive way.
Ignore the top. Don’t start at the bottom (As Merrick Garland did). Start two steps below the gilded gaggle, right in the middle, the ones who had to do the actual money-moving. Give those people immunity, and only then challenge those at the top; establish a record and see how far a future administration of either party will go to ignore stripping the country bare, making it rain.
Make middlemen great again. Great witnesses.
Jason Miciak is a Raw Story columnist, author, political consultant, attorney, and single parent girldad. Please follow on Bluesky, and he can be reached at [email protected].
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