Corruption Calendar Weeks 55-57: Internal Revenue Service, Wire Me $10 billion, Pronto.

Welcome back to Revolving Door Project’s Corruption Calendar, where we provide in-depth explanations of the material consequences—real and potential—of the Trump administration’s corrupt policymaking, with an emphasis on tangible harms to working people. Read our first 42 issues here, and follow us on Bluesky, Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for more updates on our work.

A lot has happened since the calendar’s last appearance in your inboxes. That includes the Trump administration’s repeal of the endangerment finding consecrating the science that greenhouse gas emissions are a public health risk, which my colleague KJ Boyle adeptly unpacked this past Wednesday. It’s the paradigmatic example of corporate interests dictating federal policy, capping Lee Zeldin’s effective shuttering of the Environmental Protection Agency. At least, until the Supreme Court has its say.

Elsewhere, the progressive movement, the United States, and the world suffered the tremendous blow of losing Rev. Jesse Jackson. Jackson embodied the type of people-powered politics that progressives are still hard at work building, one where diverse groups are able to advance progress in service of the common good, unbeholden to capture by elite interests. He represented the type of leadership that stands in stark contrast to our current regime: governed by principle, compassion, and a dedication to bridging divides. Jesse Jackson represented the type of leadership that is possible, even in times like these where it doesn’t feel like it.

The leadership that actually runs our country couldn’t be more of a foil to Jackson’s legacy with its unending venal corruption, rank pettiness, and hatred. And the contorting of the administrative state into the mafia state, hollowed out and warped to serve a ruling caste of oligarchs, disinterested in actually facilitating the basic functions of governance for the public.

Tax season is now upon us, so millions of people across the country will be receiving refunds from the Internal Revenue Service. Navigating this period while underfunded and understaffed will be a particularly difficult exercise for the IRS. That seems to be of little concern to the first president to refuse to disclose their tax returns since the 1970s. Mr. Trump is demanding a $10 billion payout from the IRS in a recently filed lawsuit concerning the unauthorized release of his tax records in 2019. Yes, you’re reading that right. The president is shaking down an agency that he controls. It’s our current state of affairs, but it needn’t be. As my colleague Jeff Hauser notes, Democrats must grind the gears of the federal government to a halt once they get the slightest whiff of Trump receiving a financially lucrative settlement.

Ensuring Trump’s personal enrichment, however, has become the primary way of advancing policy in Washington nowadays. Indeed, as I’ll get into shortly, various stories over the past few weeks reveal how multiple entities have adopted that approach in the naked pursuit of their goals.

Backscratching All The Way Down

To usher in the new month, Wall Street Journal reporters broke news of yet another story that fits in the “this is an impeachable offense” bucket. (No doubt the bucket is already overflowing from the deluge of graft we’ve been highlighting this past year.) As the reporters note, the United Arab Emirates government apparently greased the palms of the Trump and Witkoff families to facilitate access to “tightly guarded artificial intelligence chips” to support plans to build one of “world’s biggest AI data center clusters.”

It’s best to read the reporting in full, but here’s the gist: To alleviate national security concerns over granting the Emirati government access to those chips, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al Nahyan secured an ownership stake in Trump crypto company World Liberty Financial. Tahnoon, who leads the country’s wealth fund, also reports to his brother, UAE’s president, in his capacity as national security adviser. As a private individual—notwithstanding the blurriest lines between his personal wealth and state funds—Tahnoon backs AI firm G42 and investment vehicles Aryam and MGX. That’s the same MGX that used World Liberty Financial’s USD1 stablecoin to invest $2 billion in Binance last year.

Aryam representatives Martin Edelman and Peng Xiao agreed to the $500 million deal to purchase a 49 percent stake in World Liberty Financial, even before the Trump-backed company released any products. To state it plainly, on January 16, 2025, just a few days before Trump’s inauguration, an Emirati government official took a major ownership stake in one of his companies. Aryam paid the first installment upfront, which according to the Journal amounted to respective $187 million and $31 million paydays for the Trump and Witkoff family entities. In the months following the deal, Edelman and Xiao went on to “play key roles in the U.A.E.’s chip lobbying efforts with the Trump administration.”

Here’s what those efforts, in tandem with Tahnoon’s visits to Washington, have yielded: the sale of 35,000 advanced AI chips to the Tahnoon-backed G42, following negotiations which watered down the Trump administration’s initial commitment to grant the firm access to about 100,000 chips. Still, the financial relationship places the president squarely in the pocket of a foreign government, as law professor Kathleen Clark remarked.

That means the favor mill is likely to keep spinning. Indeed, it appears Tahnoon sought more than just access to chips. The Abu Dhabi royal family pushed for the pardon of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, in a bid to smoothen the embattled crypto exchange’s operations in the UAE and re-entry into the United States market. Zhao had pleaded guilty to violating anti money laundering rules in 2023, a charge that also led to a ban and $4 billion fine for Binance. Trump has since pardoned Zhao, though the ban on Binance operating in the US remains intact. That hasn’t stopped the crypto exchange from giving the Trump family a “leg up.”

According to the New York Times’ David Yaffe-Bellany, much of World Liberty Financial’s success is tied to its privileged relationship with Binance; 85 percent of the World Liberty’s premier product, the USD1 stablecoin, is held in accounts on Binance, which has also actively encouraged customers to purchase the Trump-linked token. What’s more, the Zhao-led exchange has paired its promotional campaigns with significant concessions, waiving lucrative trading fees on customers’ deals to convert other stablecoins to USD1. It’s sensible to infer that Binance is happy to eat these concessions in exchange for future access to the American market.

But lest we forget, Binance unabashedly broke US securities laws in its pursuit of profit and market share. In fact, its chief compliance officer noted in 2018 that they were “operating as a fking unlicensed securities exchange in the USA bro.” The exchange treated any compliance protocols as an obstacle to growth, welcoming all users, criminals included, on its platform. In turn, it became a safe haven for cyber criminals, child abusers, ransomware variants, and more. Worse, the penalties don’t even seem to have changed Binance’s behavior. The platform is still awash with dirty money; it’s what these crypto exchanges do best. Perhaps then, it’s no surprise that the exchange is now in bed with the Trump family.

The Power of a Gimmick

Trump’s capricious handling of trade talks has defined relationships with foreign governments all through his second term. While it’s not always immediately clear what’s driving the administration’s fickle demands, Trump’s recent threat to raise tariffs on South Korea had one likely source: Coupang—an e-commerce platform, widely referred to as the Amazon of South Korea. The two companies certainly share some similarities: they are the largest online retailers in their respective countries; both have strongly resisted unionization efforts; both regularly exploit and mistreat their workforces; and surprisingly, both are headquartered in Seattle.

It’s natural to find it curious that the United States’ trade policy toward South Korea is being influenced by the so-called Amazon of South Korea. Well, it’s because Coupang, which I would wager you’ve never heard of (although we’re not taking the Polymarket sponsorship offer, Substack), has refashioned itself as an American company ever since establishing a presence in Seattle in 2021. The online retailer has also matched that presence with significant lobbying muscle in the Washington located on America’s other coast. And just like other big tech firms donning the stars and stripes, Coupang views foreign governments’ regulatory scrutiny as a targeted attack. With that in mind, President Trump’s threats fit within the familiar pattern of doing Big Tech’s bidding on the global stage.

In this particular case, Trump’s tariff threat is an obvious ploy to weaken Seoul’s resolve as it probes Coupang’s massive data breach, which the company disclosed last November. In Coupang’s telling, a former employee improperly accessed nearly 34 million customer accounts, retaining data from 3,000 of those accounts, before then deleting upon seeing news reports of the leak. These accounts included personal information such as customer names, email addresses, phone numbers, shipping addresses, and more. The Korean government has set up an intergovernmental task force to investigate the breach, and is looking to collect a record $770 million fine under the Personal Information Protection Act. If that becomes a pipe dream due to Trump’s interference, then we have yet another instance of this administration’s support of elite impunity at home and abroad.

On our own shores, Big Tech’s influence, especially as it relates to artificial intelligence policy, remains as strong as ever. There’s also a similar dynamic to the Coupang example at play—domestically, the White House has moved to “thwart state governments’ efforts to regulate AI.” As Bloomberg’s Emily Birnbaum and Oma Seddiq report, venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz is the “hidden hand steering artificial intelligence policy in Washington.” Apparently, the VC firm, which holds “veto power over any AI-related proposals,” is the go-to source for White House officials and Republican congressional aides contemplating policies that could potentially affect tech companies’ AI plans.

A failed December push to tack on a provision blocking state AI safety laws to the must pass National Defense Authorization Act encapsulates the firm’s sway. Having received a call from a Republican aide weighing the maneuver, a16z lobbyist Colin McCune coordinated the Trump administration’s approach alongside AI czar David Sacks and AI boosters Rep. Steve Scalise and Sen. Ted Cruz. Undeterred by their failure to convince Congress, a16z and the White House joined forces again, as the firm guided the development of Trump’s executive order calling for a “minimally burdensome national standard” that “forbids” any conflicting state laws. Additionally, as my colleague Henry Burke explained in Rolling Stone last December, a16z is likely to treat this initial failure as a minor blip in their hundred million dollar quest to capture Congress, a la the cryptocurrency industry. If they’re successful, the combination of a pliant Congress and supportive White House would likely prove disastrous to families, communities, workers, and the environment.

Read more from us: Democrats Must Oppose the AI Industry; Reclaiming an Abundant and Democratic Future in the Age of AI; AI Is Making Your Life More Expensive; Mapping Andreessen Horowitz’s Controversial Cryptocurrency Investments

Amazon Prime for Human Beings

In the inaugural edition of Corruption Calendar, we bemoaned the prospect of detention companies regaining access to billions in federal contracts, in support of the Trump administration’s mass deportation drive. To be sure, companies such as CoreCivic and GEO Group have had a banner year, at the expense of tens of thousands of people’s wellbeing. The companies, which have long subjected those under their care to disturbingly heinous conditions, have seen their facilities swell with the Trump administration almost doubling the number of people jailed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Individuals’ recounting of their experiences in these facilities are harrowing. Take a pair of CoreCivic facilities in Arizona and Texas, where cases of measles have been reported. At the facility in Texas, CoreCivic’s medical staff apparently refused to treat children who had taken ill with stomach ailments unless they had already vomited eight times. In the Arizona camp, a 32-year-old man died after being detained for three weeks, even though he was seriously ill with diabetes. The experience at GEO Group’s facilities, where people who protest conditions are placed in solitary confinement or suicide watch, is no better. Former detainees describe going a week or longer without showers, sleeping in overcrowded spaces with bare concrete floors, having to openly share one toilet with over 30 other men, among other inhumane conditions.

Really, these detention centers are concentration camps in all but official name. Yet, this is the system the Trump administration is looking to expand with its plans to convert 23 warehouses across the country to detention facilities to allow ICE to operate like “Amazon Prime for human beings,” as its acting director Todd Lyons declared last April. Lyons’ cavalier attitude clarifies The Lever’s recent reporting on the virtual elimination of the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. On one hand, ICE’s budget has quadrupled. On the other hand, this office, which is charged with monitoring detention facilities, has had its budget cut by more than 75 percent and its staff reduced to just 9 people. Pray tell, who is going to regularly inspect over 20 new warehouses? Remember that these are tall buildings that are clearly not designed for human habitation. Moreover, how will a nine-person workforce keep a watchful eye over ICE agents terrorizing communities across the country to fill up these warehouses?

The proposed expansion is an obvious recipe for disaster, but it’s another avenue for Trump-aligned people to be financially rewarded. Contractors will be responsible for turning these warehouses into jails. But before that’s concluded, real estate brokers who’ve engineered the deals between warehouse owners and ICE will collect a handsome payout. This includes real estate giants like Newmark Group, subsidiary of Cantor Fitzgerald, the Lutnick family firm. As Jeff Hauser noted to The Lever last week, “leverag[ing] political connections to become involved in the heavily political spaces of AI data centers and deportation infrastructure” is “just about the only way to make money” in our current economy.

But to conclude on a hopeful note, these schemers may be out of luck if local communities get their way. The spirit that’s inspiring communities to beat back data centers is also driving pushback to these warehouse developments. No doubt it’s an uphill battle going up against the federal government, but it’s a privilege to see people try.

Read more: A Pilot Fired Over Kristi Noem’s Missing Blanket and the Constant Chaos Inside DHS

Quick Hits

What’s in a name?

It’s no secret that President Trump is totally obsessed with putting his name on whatever he can get his hands on. It’s one of the main ways he’s made money for the past half century or so. Worryingly, this compulsion to recast public services in his image is leading to deterioration of various shared spaces. The Kennedy Center is an obvious example. According to the New York Times, the Trump administration has been pressuring Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to rename both New York Penn Station and Washington Dulles International Airport after the president. In exchange, the administration has offered to unfreeze federal funding for a $16 billion underwater tunnel between New York City and New Jersey. Funding for the project has been paused since October, part of the administration’s punitive targeting of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Construction stopped on February 6th, leaving train travelers, who are currently funneled through 116-year old tunnels, in limbo till the President’s ego is sufficiently stroked.

Not in Trump’s Backyard

It’s not only commuters in the tristate area that Trump would like to inconvenience. On February 9th, he threatened to block the opening of the Gordie Howe Bridge, a development he once cheered. The new bridge would connect Detroit to Windsor, Ontario. Trump’s threat came hours after prominent donor Matthew Moroun met with U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick. Mr. Moroun’s family has collected toll revenue from the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor for decades, an income stream that would presumably drop following the opening of a new competing bridge, paid for and operated by Canada. Canada’s public alternative will likely boost international traffic and trade, but the ever aggrieved White House is eyeing this as a potential shakedown opportunity. The president has publicly mused about acquiring “at least one half” of the bridge to receive a cut of the tolls.

Jeff Bezos’ Gift to the Trump family

After paying Melania Trump’s production company $40 million for the rights to her documentary, Amazon Studios has spent $35 million promoting the film. In the view of one former Amazon film executive, this level of financial backing is quite simply a stratagem to get in the Trump family’s good graces. Speaking to the New York Times about the inflated costs of producing and promoting the bare-bones documentary, Ted Hope posed this question: “How can it not be equated with currying favor or an outright bribe?” Right on the money, Ted.

Freedom to Seek Presidential Favors

Trumpworld has come up with yet another opaque fundraising scheme. Freedom 250, an organization set up to sprinkle a “Trumpian flare” on the nation’s semiquincentennial celebration, is actively soliciting new donors to support its planned programs. Like the Ballroom project, crypto dinner, and other shenanigans over the past 13 months, the celebration is another opportunity for wealthy individuals to access the president. The initiative is offering donors who give up to $1 million a “private Freedom 250 thank you reception” hosted by the president. Those who clear the $2.5 million mark might even get a chance to speak at one of Freedom 250’s planned events. The pay to play scheme is just one half of the story. As my colleague Toni Aguilar Rosenthal observed in The Nation, the Freedom 250 events “promot[ing] the dogmatic worldview of Christian nationalism” are part of “a right-wing bid to whitewash the history of the country.”

Kelly Loeffler’s Suspiciously Timed Investment

Trump’s Administrator of the Small Business Administration, Kelly Loeffler, invested $3 million in a privately owned AI startup called Groq shortly before it reached a massive $20 billion deal with Nvidia. According to a financial disclosure obtained by NOTUS, Loeffler’s investment in Groq was finalized in October, just weeks before Groq inked a $20 billion cash licensing deal with Nvidia. A spokesperson for the SBA defended the transaction, stating that Loeffler’s portfolio is managed entirely independently by an LLC called Descante Capital, in compliance with Loeffler’s ethics agreement. Loeffler is no stranger to controversy. While in the Senate, she was investigated for insider trading by the Senate Ethics Committee and the Department of Justice. Neither investigation resulted in a formal charge, though it was a prominent issue in the campaign that saw Loeffler lose her seat to Democrat Raphael Warnock.