Welcome to week seventeen of the Revolving Door Project’s Corruption Calendar, where we highlight examples of corporate corruption shaping the Trump administration’s agenda and their material impact on everyday people. Read our first sixteen issues here and follow us on Bluesky and X for updates.
This week’s edition covers Trump’s latest grand gesture of corruption—gleeful acceptance of a $400 million gift from the Qatari royal family, Donald Jr.’s moves to cash in on his father’s office, various deregulatory actions across the executive branch, and Musk & company’s numerous conflicts of interest.
A PALACE IN THE SKY FOR OUR ASPIRING EMPEROR
Taking The American Public For A Ride. Reports broke this past weekend of the president’s plan to accept a $400 million jumbo jet from the Qatari royal family, a clear violation of foreign emoluments clause. Explaining his acceptance of the largest gift in the nation’s history, Trump posted,
“So the fact that the Defense Department is getting a GIFT, FREE OF CHARGE, of a 747 aircraft to replace the 40 year old Air Force One, temporarily, in a very public and transparent transaction, so bothers the Crooked Democrats that they insist we pay, TOP DOLLAR, for the plane. Anybody can do that! The Dems are World Class Losers!!! MAGA.”
There are definitely losers in this scenario, and it’s not the so-called “Crooked Democrats.” It’s the American public, who would be financially on the hook for retrofitting the plane to meet the necessary standards. It’s all of us, who are forced to contend with a foreign policy dictated by the president’s evident corrupt compulsions. It’s critical to continuously shout this from the rooftops as Trump follows his sons’ recent crisscrossing of the Middle East, promoting the family’s financial interests.
Sir, What’s In Your Luggage? Dozens Of CEOs. The Trump family is not the only major beneficiary of his recent tour of the Middle East. The president brought more than 30 CEOs to his lunch in Saudi Arabia, including Tesla’s Elon Musk, Blackrock’s Larry Fink, Open AI’s Sam Altman, and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang. Huang will definitely be returning stateside with a big smile on his face following the administration’s brokering of multiple deals on Nvidia’s behalf. These include an agreement to deliver hundreds of thousands of chips to the United Arab Emirates to build a large data center, as well as multibillion dollar deals to sell Nvidia’s advanced chips to Saudi Arabia. Per the Times, the deals were negotiated by David Sacks, Trump’s AI czar, and Sriram Krishnan, a senior policy advisor for AI. Both are longtime Silicon Valley figures.
Struggling Chinese Firm Coughs Up $300 Million For $Trumpcoin. Yet another Trump family crypto scoop from David Yaffe-Bellany and Eric Lipton: This Tuesday, the pair documented Chinese technology company GD Culture Group’s planned purchase of up to $300 million worth of the $TRUMP memecoin. The mysterious firm produces content for TikTok, whose sale the Trump administration is currently managing. Notably, the company’s TikTok content generated zero revenue last year. Now, how would a zero revenue company pony up $300 million to invest in the presidential sale of access? A stock sale to an anonymous entity in the British Virgin Islands, that’s how. It’s truly absurd to watch Congress debate crypto legislation while Trump continues to exploit crypto’s murky protocols for personal gain.
See more: Are Some Dems About to Cave to Crypto? It Wouldn’t Be the First Time
Cashing In On Daddy’s Office. Earlier this week, Business Insider’s Bethany McLean charted the rise of 1789 Capital, first son Don Jr.’s venture capital firm. McLean’s piece explains how the fledgling firm’s investment portfolio has blossomed since the president’s son joined shortly after the election. Since Don Jr. came on board, the company has invested significantly in Musk’s Space X and xAI, “as well as a handful of startups that have received or are vying for contracts from the Defense Department.” In just four months, Don Jr. and his partner Omeed Malik have quickly become beneficiaries of the federal bureaucracy led by his father, positioning themselves to earn up to hundreds of millions of dollars. Malik has further leveraged his ties to the family, securing a position on Fannie Mae’s board of directors, with the help of Trump’s Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte.
On top of this, Don Jr. recently took his bitcoin mining company America Bitcoin public, merging with publicly traded Gryphon Digital Mining. NYT’s DealBook spells out the implications:
“A publicly traded American Bitcoin provides a way for people to invest in a Trump family business — potentially attractive for those seeking favor from the president. Consider that shares in Gryphon soared yesterday on the news, giving it a market value of $98.5 million, with more than 259 million shares trading hands. (The average trading volume for Gryphon is far, far lower than that, and just last week it was trading well under a buck.)”
GOVERNMENT FOR THE CORPORATIONS
Unfair Use. Unfair Firings. As is now the norm in Washington, the Trump administration overstepped legal boundaries this past weekend, firing longtime Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden and Director of the Copyright Office Shira Perlmutter. Hayden has since been replaced by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who previously served as Trump’s criminal defense attorney. Hayden’s firing is especially bizarre since she was technically a legislative branch employee.
As reported in the Associated Press,
“The implications of Trump’s installing a close ally as librarian of Congress could be far-reaching. For instance, the librarian could see requests made by lawmakers to the Congressional Research Service, which are usually seen only by the requesting office and the CRS itself, according to a congressional aide who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.”
On the other hand, the decision to dismiss Perlmutter likely reflects the influence Musk and crypto czar David Sacks have over personnel decisions. The dismissal was announced shortly after the Copyright Office’s release of a “highly anticipated report that questioned the legality of the tech industry’s use of copyrighted works to ‘train’ their artificial intelligence systems and compete with the human-made works they were trained on.” Perlmutter’s report contended with tech companies’ claims that AI training practices are protected by the fair use doctrine, arguing that “making commercial use of vast troves of copyrighted works to produce expressive content that competes with them in existing markets, especially where this is accomplished through illegal access, goes beyond established fair use boundaries.”
Ignorance—The New Corporate Defense Strategy. The Trump administration released a new edict last Friday aiming to curtail the executive branch’s criminal enforcement of regulatory offenses, “in a bid to combat the overcriminalization of federal regulations.” The order states that “criminal enforcement of regulatory offenses is disfavored,” and “prosecutions of criminal regulatory offenses should focus on matters where a putative defendant is alleged to have known his conduct was unlawful.” In simple terms, lawbreakers can now claim they had no idea of the regulations on the books to avoid criminal prosecution. As Bill Marler notes in Food Safety News, this means that companies such as Blue Bell and Chipotle who’ve been sanctioned for endangering people all over the country would never have been prosecuted. Indeed, the Trump administration is now freeing businesses to make products that could kill us.
Wall Street Takes The Oversight Reins At The Federal Reserve. Michelle Bowman, Trump’s chosen Wall Street overseer at the Fed, just tapped a trio of top banking industry officials to join the central bank. Her team now includes Francisco Covas of the Bank Policy Institute, Aleksandra Wells of Goldman Sachs and Randall Guynn of Davis Polk & Wardwell. Taken together with regulators’ plans to relax capital rules for big banks, it’s clear that Wall Street will be calling the shots for the foreseeable future.
Your Personal Information Belongs To The Highest Bidder. Two weeks ago, my colleague Fatou Ndiaye asked “Whose Data? Yours? Experian’s? TransUnion’s?” in reference to the credit monitoring companies’ efforts to remove consumer privacy protections. This past Wednesday, Russell Vought answered, killing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rule designed to protect consumer information in the data broker market and from unauthorized disclosure by consumer reporting agencies. Vought’s move will undoubtedly put many Americans at risk, per Wired’s reporting that data brokers regularly collect and sell individuals’ detailed personal information without their knowledge or consent.
THE LATEST IN MUSK’S GOVERNMENT TAKEOVER
Conflicts Of Interest. It’s A DOGE Thing. A new report from Public Citizen found that Elon Musk has had a conflict of interest at more than 70 percent of the government agencies targeted by the DOGE wrecking crew. The report determines a conflict by checking whether one or more of Musk’s companies has received contracts or grants from the agency; has an interest in its proprietary data; is subject to the agency’s regulations; or has been subjected to enforcement action by that agency. Particularly noteworthy are the moves to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and weaken the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, key regulators of Musk’s X and Tesla.
Don’t Get Bored Of Musk’s Schemes! The Federal Railroad Administration is currently consulting with Musk’s Boring Company on a multibillion-dollar Amtrak project. According to the New York Times, Boring Company employees met with FRA officials to discuss the Frederick Douglas Tunnel, which would connect Baltimore to Washington and Virginia, claiming they could execute the project for less than the estimated $8.5 billion cost. Boring Company, which is led by DOGE affiliate Steve Davis, is notorious for promising and failing to deliver on ambitious projects, including a 35-mile underground loop for cars between Baltimore and Washington.
Double-Krausing Everyday People. Tom Krause, DOGE’s lead Treasury official, recently reported owning hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stock in financial institutions the department oversees. Krause’s portfolio includes investments in JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, PNC, U.S. Bank, Wells Fargo, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley and Santander. Each of these firms interfaces closely with the Bureau of Fiscal Service, which Krause has led since January.
Krause also holds shares in Intuit, a staunch opponent of the Internal Revenue Service’s Direct File program that has been targeted by Musk and DOGE. The conflicts further extend to his efforts to modernize Treasury’s IT systems as he also owns shares in major government contractors including Accenture, Oracle, Google, and Amazon.
Chris Young’s Dual Role: Serving Musk; Penalizing The Public. ProPublica broke that DOGE employee Christopher Young is simultaneously working as Musk’s personal political adviser, earning between $100,001 and $1 million annually. The dual setup likely violates federal conflict-of-interest regulations. While working for DOGE, Young was involved in the efforts to unwind the CFPB in February. Musk has repeatedly called for the consumer protection agency to be eliminated.
This official White House photo is in the public domain.
Major resource updates this week include:
Chaos Atop the FAA and at Newark International
Musk’s DOGE Cuts to AmeriCorps Have Triggered a Nationwide Public Service Collapse
Trump Appointees Are Hijacking the Patent System
Are Some Dems About to Cave to Crypto? It Wouldn’t Be the First Time
For more on our work tracking the Trump-Musk administration, visit DogeWatch.
And if you’ve got any tips on DOGE personnel or updates to any of our DogeWatch trackers, reach out to us at [email protected].