Corruption Watch: The Gilded Swamp, Fossil Fuel Billionaires, Aggressive Federal Agents, and Finding the Courage to Resist

This is not draining the swamp.

“This isn’t the swamp being drained. It’s the swamp being gilded,” writes Tiffany Muller, president of End Citizens United, in a new op-ed in Courier. The op-ed lays out in unsparing terms how President Trump accepting donations from ultra-wealthy individuals and major corporations like Altria and Lockheed Martin to fulfill his vision for his White House ballroom reveals “a presidency for sale.” As Muller writes, this is a familiar form of corruption, but also a new development: “The method is simple: skip the lobbyists. If you want a contract, a regulation rolled back, or an investigation to vanish, just shower Trump with praise, gifts, or cash. It’s a playbook foreign leaders learned years ago.” Read the whole op-ed here.

Republican Representative Young Kim (CA-40) accepted private funding to travel around the country and world and then didn’t properly disclose that funding, says a complaint ECU just sent to the Office of Congressional Conduct. NOTUS reports that according to the complaint, Rep. Kim failed to disclose nearly $50,000 of privately sponsored travel to places including Israel, South Korea, San Antonio, Texas, and Williamsburg, Virginia in 2022, 2023, and 2024. The combined costs of the trips to Israel and Korea totaled roughly $44,000, Rep. Kim brought her husband, and they stayed at five-star hotels. But Rep. Kim did not report that funding on her required disclosure forms. The ECU complaint summarizes, “Without this information, the public is shielded from knowing whether Rep. Kim may have certain conflicts of interest.” Since the report came out, Rep. Kim has scrambled to file disclosure forms.

The Pentagon just awarded a $620 million contract to Vulcan Elements, a startup funded by a venture fund backed by Donald Trump Jr., reports The Financial Times. This is not the first time the federal government has hooked up Trump Jr., even putting aside his crypto dealings. The Pentagon also reportedly awarded a contract to a drone company where Trump Jr. is an adviser and investor. So, there’s another way our tax dollars are going to enrich the Trumps and their friends.

Fossil fuel billionaires who visited with Trump at the White House are accused of insider trading, to the surprise of no one. The Guardian reports that its investigation of the co-chairs of the gas company Venture Global, Robert Pender and Michael Sabel, turned up that they’d each bought more than a million shares worth of stock worth more than $12 million just days after meeting with President Trump and Energy Secretary Chris Wright in the White House. Senator Jeff Markey is calling for a government investigation of whether they engaged in insider trading. Markey told The Guardian, “Dirty oil and gas bucks are fueling the Trump administration, which should outrage all of us. This latest reporting portrays a pattern of pay-to-play donations and favorable actions by the administration.” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said, “The president has never engaged, and will never engage, in conflicts of interest.”

Jared Kushner stands to profit from a possible Paramount deal. Affinity Partners, Kushner’s private equity firm, along with the Saudi and Qatari sovereign wealth funds, are part of Paramount’s bid for a hostile takeover of Warner Bros Discovery, reports Reuters. Remember, Paramount is run by David Ellison, whose father Larry is one of the billionaires who has spent enormous sums supporting Trump, and Warner Bros owns multiple media subsidiaries, including CNN. Netflix had been trying to buy Warner Bros when Paramount launched its takeover attempt, and Trump said this week that he would be involved in any possible deal. If either sale proceeds, federal regulators will look into possible antitrust violations before approving it. “If you were teaching a class at business school on conflicts of interest, this would be Exhibit A,” Nell Minow, chair of Portland, Maine-based ValueEdge Advisors, told Reuters, in regards to the Trump family’s immediate connections to these businesses that should, hypothetically, face federal scrutiny. But that has not slowed them down so far.

Americans’ household debt reaches a record high, ABC News reports. According to data that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York released this week, Americans’ household debt levels reached $18.9 trillion from July through September of this year, up by $197 billion from the previous quarter. In the face of all this unprecedented debt, Chase Bank’s CEO Jaime Dimon said on Fox News, “In the short run, it looks like the American consumer is doing fine, is chugging along, companies are making profits, the stock markets are high–that could easily continue.” So, we have record levels of consumer debt, and, according to the CEO of a major bank that spends millions on federal lobbying each year, we’re doing just fine.

Former U.S. Justice Department staff criticize the destruction of the Civil Rights Division, reports Reuters. In an open letter, more than 200 former DOJ employees alleged that Attorney General Pam Bondi and Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon have ended cases that would have protected people from sexual harassment and assault, police brutality and voting inequities. Regan Rush, who previously led the Civil Rights Division that investigated police abuse complaints, told Reuters, “The new priorities of the division are really rooted in partisan politics, and not protecting the rights of all.”

Senator John Hickenlooper and End Citizens United President Tiffany Muller sat down to discuss how he’s working to fight corruption in Washington. You can watch the whole conversation here.

Federal agents reportedly pepper-sprayed Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva during a protest against immigration raids in West Tucson, Arizona. Several federal agents in tactical gear showed up to a local taco restaurant to detain people, reports The Arizona Mirror. Protestors showed up. Rep. Grijalva arrived. The federal agents began tear-gassing and pepper-spraying people. Rep. Grijalva says she introduced herself and asked the federal agents to calm down at which time federal agents pepper-sprayed her, members of the press, and her staff. You can hear the Congresswoman describe the experience on Democracy Now.

Why are some people brave? It’s a question I’ve been asking myself a lot this year. In a moving conversation, M. Gessen and Michelle Goldberg of The New York Times discuss how some people find the courage to resist.