Politicians Almost Never Seek Meaningful Accountability When It Comes To Other Politicians

Those Who Work For The Trump Regime Should Face Real Justice

Lil Marco- Secretary of state, Administrator of USAID, Archivist for the National Archives and Records Administration, and national security adviser

If your motivation for supporting Democrats is accountability for what Trump and his enablers are doing to America, just let it go right now. They’re not going to do a thing. When they’re back in power, they’ll be doing as much to Trump 2.0 as Merrick Garland did to Trump 1.0— zip, nada, nilch. Who remembers Henry Kissinger?

Believe me— history has already written this script in blood and cowardice. When fascists seize power and face no consequences, they come back bolder, crueler, more efficient. Look at Germany in the 1920s and 30s— how the Weimar elites thought they could manage Hitler, contain him, make deals. Instead, they paved his road to the Reichstag fire and beyond. The Democrats had their moment— hell, they had dozens— but every time they chose “norms” over justice, bipartisanship over backbone. So don’t tell me they’ll save us from Trump 2.0. They’ll hold hearings while the remains of the Constitution smolders. Schumer will issue more of his sternly worded letters while the billionaires split their sides laughing. And history won’t care that they “meant well.” It will remember only that they let monsters rise— again.

Yesterday, NPR had an assistant secretary of Homeland Security of for an interview while I was driving— pure Nazi. I seethed that she and people like her who stock the Trump regime won’t ever face justice when this nightmare is over— not even the firing squad they deserve, just something. But never gonna happen, not from Democrats.

This week, Democrats are wailing and caterwauling about Trump’s crypto corruption again. Elizabeth Warren put it like this: “A shady fund backed by a foreign government just announced it will make a $2 billion deal using Donald Trump’s stablecoins. Meanwhile, the Senate is gearing up to pass the “GENIUS” Act— stablecoin legislation that will make it easier for the President and his family to line their own pockets. This is corruption and no senator should support it.” Bingo! What are they going to do about it?

Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, was even stronger on the same particular crime: “Never before in American history have foreign governments, as well as people and corporations under investigation, so overtly and directly funneled vast sums to the president of the United States and his family. This is far more than is captured by the term ‘conflict of interest.’ It is foreign policy for sale and justice for sale. And, as one of the executives in the deal said, ‘it is only the beginning.’ With a president who has no regard for the basic norms of propriety, ethics, the law or the U.S. Constitution, the question is: Will the U.S. Congress permit this mockery of the American people? Or will it insist on the most minimal baseline standards, so that foreign governments cannot send money directly to the president and his family?”

Don’t know what I’m going on about? Before someone explained to Trump how he and crypto were made for each other, his first on-the-record reaction to crypto was in 2019 when he stated on social media that he was “not a fan of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air,” citing their potential to facilitate unlawful behavior like drug trafficking. In a 2021 Fox Business interview, he called Bitcoin a “scam” and expressed concern that it competed with the U.S. dollar.

Joel Khalili had a good explanation for Wired readers yesterday: Trump’s Quest for Crypto Riches Is a Constitutional Scandal Waiting to Happen, that shows how by inviting the biggest $Trump buyers to an exclusive presidential dinner. He transformed an ethically questionable commercial venture into a criminal enterprise, a means of buying access to the sitting president which puts Trump at odds with clear constitutional prohibitions of bribery and corruption.

“Trump’s dinner announcement on April 23,” wrote Khalili, “instigated a trading frenzy that, on paper, added hundreds of millions of dollars to his net worth as the price of the coin” which shot up by almost 60 percent after the announcement. “However, the dinner maneuver may have political consequences for Trump. In creating the opportunity for anybody with sufficient wealth to purchase an audience, Trump risks falling foul of a part of the US Constitution— the emoluments clauses— that prohibit the president from accepting gifts or financial compensation from foreign and domestic state actors. In a worst-case scenario for the president, the potential for negative optics could add fuel to calls for his impeachment.”

“Trump has built an entire life prodding the border of what a powerful person can get away with,” claims Jeff Hauser, executive director at the Revolving Door Project, an organization that seeks to scrutinize the behavior of elected officials. “But at some point in time, he could push a little too far and it comes back on him. This [dinner] has the possibility of being that.”

…Today, access to the sitting US president carries a greater potential political currency than ever. “Trump is amalgamating even more power in the executive branch than anyone has before,” claims Hauser. “With ever greater power comes a larger warehouse of favors that can be sold.”

At present, the names of the $TRUMP holders set to win a place at the dinner are concealed behind pseudonyms and alphanumeric crypto wallet addresses. The White House did not respond when asked whether the attendee list will be made public.

Whether Trump would face any consequences for theoretically violating foreign emoluments laws depends on the strength of his grip on Congress, the political class tasked with upholding the Constitution, including through impeachment.

In the halls of Congress, calls for Trump’s impeachment are already growing. “He is granting audiences to people who buy the memecoin that directly enriches him,” said Democrat senator Jon Ossoff in a town hall meeting on April 25. “There is no doubt that this president’s conduct has already exceeded any prior standard for impeachment.”

…“The violation of the Constitution should be a big deal, but how to make it consequential is challenging,” says Hauser. “Right now, Trump rules the Republican party with such an iron hand that the notion of a successful impeachment leading to a guilty verdict is just somewhat fanciful.”

However, in its potential to paint Trump in an unflattering ligh— as a president who puts his own financial interests over those of the nation— the $TRUMP coin dinner could contribute to shifting the dial. With the midterm elections only a year away and the Republican House majority only slim, public perception matters.

“The opportunity for corruption is not meaningfully changed by the dinner. But the optics are potentially much worse for Trump,” says Hauser. “The unseemliness changes the odds of there being any ramifications to Trump violating the emoluments clause. It creates more vulnerability.”