Trump’s Second Term Is Already A Major Crime Scene— We’re Watching The Presidency Rot In Real Time
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
Corruption Is the Point
For whatever reason, Trump doesn’t want to be impeached again— so he and his team are putting a lot of time, energy and money into preventing a 2026 blue wave. Yesterday, Alex Isenstadt reported that “Trump allies believe— with good reason— that a Democrat-controlled House would launch investigations of the president and move to impeach him.”
But the one thing Trump isn’t doing to avoid another impeachment is cutting back on the over-the-top corruption. That’s in full swing— and we’re seeing it literally every single day. It’s almost like he’s addicted! On Monday, for example, he pardoned Scott Jenkins, a former Culpepper County,Virginia sheriff convicted of bribery and fraud. He blamed Biden:
Sabrina Malhi reported that Jenkins was convicted of “accepting more than $75,000 in bribes in exchange for appointing wealthy businessmen as unpaid auxiliary deputies. Prosecutors said the men paid for badges so that they could avoid traffic tickets and carry concealed firearms without a permit.” Right up Trump’s alley and yesterday Kenneth Vogel reported that Trump himself took a bribe to pardon another wealthy criminal, Paul Walczak, like Trump, a notorious tax cheat.
“Walczak, a former nursing home executive who had pleaded guilty to tax crimes days after the 2024 election,” wrote Vogel, “submitted a pardon application to Trump around Inauguration Day. The application focused not solely on Walczak’s offenses but also on the political activity of his mother, Elizabeth Fago. Fago had raised millions of dollars for Trump’s campaigns and those of other Republicans, the application said. It also highlighted her connections to an effort to sabotage Biden 2020 campaign by publicizing the addiction diary of his daughter Ashley Biden— an episode that drew law enforcement scrutiny.”
Fago was invited (see actual invitation below) to a $1-million-per-person fund-raising dinner last month that promised face-to-face access to Trump at Mar-a-Lago. “Less than three weeks after she attended the dinner, Trump signed a full and unconditional pardon. It came just in the nick of time for Walczak, sparing him from having to pay nearly $4.4 million in restitution and from reporting to prison for an 18-month sentence that had been handed down just 12 days earlier. A judge had justified the incarceration by declaring that there ‘is not a get-out-of-jail-free card’ for the rich. The pardon, however, indicated otherwise. The case of Fago and Walczak is the latest example of the president’s willingness to use his clemency powers to reward allies who advance his political causes and punish his enemies.”
Walczak, 55, joined his mother’s nursing home business after dropping out of college, eventually becoming chief executive. After she sold the company in 2007, they invested $18 million in a new nursing home venture based in South Florida, where they lived a luxurious lifestyle.
By 2011, prosecutors said, Walczak had stopped paying employment taxes.
Between 2016 and 2019, they said, he withheld more than $10 million from the paychecks of the nurses, doctors and others who worked at his facilities under the pretext of using it for their Social Security, Medicare and federal income taxes. Instead, he used some of the money to buy a $2 million yacht and to pay for travel and purchases at high-end retailers, including Bergdorf Goodman and Cartier, prosecutors said.
He was charged in February 2023 with 13 counts of tax crimes.
By the time he pleaded guilty to two of the counts and agreed to pay the restitution on Nov. 15, 2024, Trump had been elected for a second term in the White House.
The family had reason to believe the incoming president might look fondly on a pardon application.
Fago, 74, had helped host at least three fund-raisers for Trump’s campaigns. She and her son Joey Fago (Walczak’s half brother) and his wife attended V.I.P. events at Trump’s 2017 and 2025 inaugurations.
… A pardon application was submitted on Walczak’s behalf. It suggested that Donald Trump Jr., as well as [Kimberly] Guilfoyle and other Trump allies, supported his clemency.
They all agreed, according to the application, that the only reason Walczak was prosecuted criminally was that he was the son of a prominent Trump supporter.
… As Fago and Walczak awaited word on the pardon, she was invited to the Mar-a-Lago fund-raiser with Trump.
A invitation billed it as an intimate “candlelight dinner” with “very limited” space available to people who paid $1 million each. It was sponsored by MAGA Inc., a political action committee that can accept unlimited donations to support candidates and causes backed by Trump.
I don’t have a picture of an invitation to show you but Natalie Allison reported that JD Vance is also headlining a $1 million per attendee event to raise money for MAGA, Inc, this one in Vegas the night before Vance is scheduled to speak at the Bitcoin 2025 Conference. No doubt the Trumpists are expecting lots of million dollar bribes from the crypto-cartel criminals. Perhaos for future get-out-of-jail-free cards
Jessica Anderson is running for the Virginia House of Delegates in one of that state’s closest contests this year. She’s been watching the Scott Jenkins saga and last night told us that “While so many are focused on the corruption within the Trump administration and the enabling Congress, we have to acknowledge that it is also seeping into Republican-led states. Here in Virginia the unlawful and unconstitutional actions of the president have recently resulted in $700k of federal funds being withheld from major infrastructure projects. Last week Southwest and Southside Virginia were denied $400k to improve internet access, via the Digital Equity Act. Then days ago another $300K was halted, that was to address rising sea levels that threaten the integrity of historic Jamestown island and the archaeological sites. While every state has been negatively impacted by Trump's decisions, Republican-run states have decided to bend the knee, instead of fighting back in court. For example, in Virginia, Governor Youngkin is too busy stroking Trump's ego as he decimates our workforce to publicly condemn any of his corrupt acts. Then you have our Attorney General, Jason Miayres, who thinks writing letters to Costco, calling them too “woke,” is more important than filing suits to rightfully restore our congressionally approved grants. I guess they both forget that Virginia didn't vote for Trump in 2024 and we will remind them of that fact when we elect a Democratic trifecta in November 2025! We have the opportunity to flip all 3 statewide seats; Governor, Attorney General and Lt Governor, and expand our majority in the House of Delegates. We MUST ensure Virginia is protected by people who will stand up for the Constitution instead of those standing by a single man and his billionaire buddies. Corruption may be trickling from the top down, but we have the chance to fight back by electing good candidates from the bottom up.”
Trump’s corruption goes beyond the real of ethics and right into governance itself. When a president treats the government like a personal ATM or a tool for punishing enemies, it does more than just line his pockets; it breaks down the basic functioning of democratic institutions. We’ve been seeing regulatory decisions getting made based on bribes and personal loyalty, rather than public interest. Federal agencies have been weaponized against critics while Trump cronies get sweetheart deals. And the rule of law eitrhger vanishes altogether or becomes something selectively applied: harsh for Trump’s perceived enemies, nonexistent for his allies.
This culture of corruption trickles outward and downward. governors, judges, Members of Congress are all taking their cues from the top. If Trump can do it and get away with it, why shouldn’t they? It normalizes a political environment where grifting isn’t the exception but the rule, where power isn’t held in trust but exploited for profit. And that rots democracy from the inside out.
“This,” Alan Grayson told us yesterday, “is why Trump ‘unindicted’ Eric Adams, and why he just pardoned an elected official who was guilty of bribery. It’s because Trump is desperate to make his own pervasive grifting and bribery seem like it’s business-as-usual. In four months, the United States already has become a kleptocracy, where the only real law is: ‘I’ve got mine— now you go and steal yours.’ We’re heading for the Roman system of ‘tax farming,’ where we are the sheep who get fleeced.”
Grayson is running for the state legislature in Orlando. Nick Uniejewski is running for the state legislature in Chicago. “Illinois has long suffered under a cloud of political corruption and backroom deals,” he told us. “When Trump flaunts the law and escapes accountability, it sends a message that corruption is acceptable— even expected. That cynicism poisons our democracy. We have to break that cycle by reforming the structures of government that enable it. That means getting corporate money out of politics, establishing public financing of campaigns, and electing Democrats who aren’t just warming seats— but real public servants who are rooted in their communities and committed to putting people over profit. We can’t just resist Trumpism— we have to build something better in its place.”
Recently back from speaking to the U.K. and Belgian parliaments about international working class solidarity, Vermont state Senator Tanya Vyhovsky just told us that “We are seeing this corruption in Vermont with a ‘nice guy’ Republican Governor who has ignored the advice and consent of the Senate on his appointees, issued illegal executive orders, and has himself been sued for a conflict of interests giving state contracts to developers he stood to profit from. This is in Bernie Sanders’ Vermont we have a Republican Governor who has been emboldened to act in this Trumpian way. With the message coming from the White House that lawlessness and corruption is the new law of the land we are all in danger, global democracy is in peril and we simply must fight back.”
If you’d like to help Grayson, Uniejewski, Vyhovsky and Anderson win their races, please consider contributing to their campaigns here. Grayson’s special election is NOW— early voting has already begun. And the Virginia elections are this year as well.
So… let’s be real: people in Florida, Virginia, Illinois, Vermont… are the ones who pay the price. American citizens are the ones who get gouged by pharmaceutical companies and oil giants while Trump’s friends celebrate deregulation over champagne. We’re the ones who suffer when FEMA fails, when public health collapses, when the IRS and the CFPB are gutted and billionaires skate free. Trump’s corruption isn’t victimless; it’s paid for with our tax dollars, our security and our future.