A group of former White House lawyers, hailing from administrations on both sides of the political spectrum, is sounding the alarm about President Donald Trump’s “unparalleled” financial corruption, writing for MS NOW that his grifting has reached “a new low.”
The piece, published Monday, hailed from Richard W. Painter, Norman Eisen and Virginia Canter. Painter served as the chief ethics lawyer for former President George W. Bush from 2005 to 2007. Eisen served as a special counsel for ethics and government reform under former President Barack Obama, while Canter served as an associate counsel for Obama and former President Bill Clinton.
The trio stressed that their duty in those roles was to uphold “a clear bipartisan norm: Presidents and senior officials must avoid even the appearance that their official power is entangled with personal gain.” Under Trump, they warned, this idea is being “shattered,” with the latest revelations about his finances revealing things to be more dire than once thought, as he is “financially capitalizing on the presidency in a way never before seen in American history.”
“His most recent financial disclosure reveals an extraordinary $2.2 billion in gains during his first year in office,” the group detailed. “The sheer scale of the sums — $1.4 billion in cryptocurrency alone — is unparalleled. The issue is not simply how much money Trump made or that he made it at all; it is that the money comes from industries his administration regulates, foreign relationships his administration oversees and markets that can rise or fall based on the policies, enforcement decisions, diplomatic relationships and public signals of the office he holds.”
They continued later: “The clearest example is cryptocurrency, where his personal financial interests overlap with his administration’s regulatory decisions, market signals and foreign relationships. Since returning to office, Trump’s administration has moved toward a more permissive approach to digital assets. Meanwhile, Trump and his family maintain significant financial interests in that industry. His administration has promoted the United States as a crypto hub, supported new stablecoin rules and moved away from aggressive enforcement against major crypto firms. Through regulation, enforcement decisions, stablecoin policy and public signals from the White House, the president can influence the rules and market confidence around assets from which he personally benefits.”
These crypto ventures are at the heart of some of Trump’s most shocking financial abuses of his office, including the United Arab Emirates-owned investment fund MGX using a coin backed by the Trump family to conduct a $2 billion transaction, something that appears to run directly against the Constitution’s “foreign emoluments” clause, which the founders included, the lawyers explained, to “prevent this type of corruption.”
“Congress has both the power and responsibility to act. It can pass legislation barring presidents, vice presidents, senior officials and members of Congress from trading individual stocks, holding cryptocurrency interests that overlap with official duties, or maintaining business arrangements that create conflicts while they serve,” the group added. “It can require meaningful divestiture, the creation of blind trusts and enforceable stricter disclosure rules.”
They also called on Congress to investigate “Trump’s existing financial arrangements,” including “crypto earnings, foreign-linked transactions, stock trades and other business interests to determine who paid, who benefited and whether official policy was affected.” They also stressed that these investigations must start now, and not when and if Democrats regain majorities in the midterms.