Comprehensive Impacts of Trump’s Second Year: Ethics
By: Dr. Amy Bacharach
Tags: Trump Administration, Politics, Government, Trump, Ethics

This publication is meant to be a comprehensive assessment of the impacts of the Trump administration. There are many things that happened during the campaign that are not included. For this series covering the second year, impacts from about January 20, 2018, to January 31, 2019, are included. An introduction to this year’s series is here.

You can read the complete series on the first year of the administration here.

There are sure to be things missing, but I have done my best to record these impacts. The impacts are compiled under 19 different categories, or articles:

1. Cabinet and Other Appointments;

2. Science & Environment;

3. Women & Families;

4. LBGT;

5. Judicial/Constitutional;

6. Ethics;

7. Targeting free press/free speech/Privacy;

8. Health & Safety;

9. Consumer Protections;

10. Education;

11. Transportation/Infrastructure/Housing;

12. Immigration;

13. Social Contract;

14. Business/Economy/Budget;

15. Military/Defense/Police;

16. World;

17. General Governance;

18. Character; and

19. Some good news. Because there is always some good news.

Since this series takes a long time to write, I will publish each section as I complete it. This article is on ethics in the Trump administration.

Photo by Jørgen Håland on Unsplash

Ethics

Unethical behavior started before Trump was even elected. Cambridge Analytica, the company found to have mined Facebook user data, were using stealth methods to try to get Trump elected. Once elected, Trump and his staffers continued disregarding basic ethics. By early 2018, a “blizzard of ethics complaints” came against the administration, including those about Trump violating his own executive orders. As reporter Jonathan Chait noted, “the entire Trump era has been a festering pit of barely disguised ongoing corruption,” resulting in a record number of White House affiliates going to prison. Some of that corruption was documented by Peter Wehner, who served in the last three Republican administrations and who noted that “everyone and everything [Trump] touches rots.” In his opinion piece, Wehner details how honor and integrity are now passé for Republicans:

Mr. Trump and the Republican Party are right now the chief emblem of corruption and cynicism in American political life, of an ethic of might makes right. Dehumanizing others is fashionable and truth is relative. (“Truth isn’t truth,” in the infamous words of Mr. Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani.) They are stripping politics of its high purpose and nobility.

A clear lack of ethics continued as Trump “drained the swamp” by surrounding himself with “people who saw his victory as an opportunity to enrich themselves by selling the promise of access or influence,” as reported by Conor Friedersdorf. One of those people was Trump’s longtime personal lobbyists, Brian Ballard, who used his relationship with Trump to create a “booming business helping clients get their way with the Trump administration,” according to reporter Theodoric Meyer. Ballard’s clients, including several foreign governments, seem to appreciate Ballard’s unique insight into how the Trump administration works. And even before the election Trump planned on giving a $50 million Trump Tower penthouse in Moscow to Putin as Trump’s company was negotiating a real estate development.

Here are some of the reasons why Americans rated Trump as worse on ethics than his predecessors, including Nixon.

Cartoon by Jeff Stahler at GoComics.com

· Even before the election Trump showed his lack of ethics. As just one example, the Trump campaign illegally coordinated with the NRA to create ad blitzes in certain areas.

· Trump then personally benefited from his own inauguration as the inaugural committee paid the Trump Organization for rooms, meals, and event space at the company’s Washington hotel, which was all negotiated by Ivanka Trump. The prices negotiated may have been above market rates. Because of this, “a top inaugural planner emailed Ivanka and others at the company to ‘express concern’ that the hotel was overcharging for its event spaces, worrying of what would happen ‘when this is audited.’” Another top inaugural planner asked some vendors to take payments directly from donors instead of from the inaugural committee, which vendors felt was unusual and concerning.

· Angry about leaks, Trump required White House staffers to sign nondisclosure agreements. Many complied after concluding that they would not likely be enforceable.

· After being denied top secret security clearance by career security specialists, Trump gave out those top security clearances to more than 30 White House staffers, including Jared Kushner. Chief of Staff John Kelly downgraded them.

· In the meantime, Kushner formed a relationship with the Saudi crown prince and divulged classified CIA intelligence to the crown prince, particularly about Saudi royals who oppose the crown prince. Kushner allegedly said, “here are your enemies.” The crown prince bragged that he had Kushner “in his pocket.” Shortly after that meeting, the crown prince initiated a “corruption crackdown” that led to people being tortured and killed.

· This isn’t surprising considering that a Saudi prince helped save Trump from bankruptcy twice in a 4-year period.

· As it turns out, Washington spending and lobbying by Saudi Arabia has tripled since Trump took office.

· That paid off for the crown prince when the Saudis murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Trump ignored all of his intelligence agency reports and, as reporter Mark Landler described, declared “his unswerving loyalty to Saudi Arabia, asserting that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s culpability for the killing of Jamal Khashoggi might never be known.”

· In violation of not only ethics but also federal law, the Trump administration privately discussed sharing census information with law enforcement after adding their citizenship question (which was later blocked by the Supreme Court).

· Trump waived fines and other punishment for five big banks found guilty of manipulating global interest rates and of one’s role in a Russian money laundering scheme. Trump happens to owe more than $100 million to one of the banks.

· In fact, when all banks refused to lend Trump money due to what they coined as “The Donald Risk,” referring to his repeated bankruptcies and refusal to repay loans, Deutsche Bank mysteriously continued to lend Trump hundreds of millions of dollars. The bank also lent Jared Kushner hundreds of millions, including almost $300 million one month before the 2016 election. Later, Trump somehow convinced Justin Kennedy, a senior executive at Deutsche, to convince his father, Justice Anthony Kennedy, to retire from the Supreme Court, allowing Trump to appoint yet another right-wing extremist to the Court. (See the article on judicial/constitutional impacts for a detailed account of what Trump has done to the judicial branch.)

· Trump also pardoned Scooter Libby, who was convicted of perjury after he leaked the identity of a covert CIA officer while chief of staff to Dick Cheney.

· A few days before Trump publicly announced new tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum, Trump advisor and billionaire Carl Icahn dumped more than $31 million in steel stocks.

· Most of Trump’s tweets are utterly unethical. But some have “crossed a line,” according to experts. As just one example, Trump tried to influence potential witnesses in a federal investigation involving his campaign in his tweets.

· In a spending bill, Republicans added riders attempting to deregulate campaign finance laws. One rider would have repealed the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits churches and religious organizations from contributing to candidates. Another would have allowed corporations to solicit money from employees to give to an unlimited number of trade association PACs.

· Trump’s operatives carried out a raid of Trump’s doctor to steal Trump’s medical records two days after the doctor revealed that Trump uses a drug to grow his hair. However, when questioned about the raid, Trumps press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders brushed it off as “standard operating procedure.”

· After Trump belittled a female reporter during a press conference, the White House modified the transcript of the press conference so that his outbursts were deleted.

· Trump regularly tears up papers that he’s mandated to preserve under the Presidential Records Act. Some of his staffers who actually care about the law have been taping them up “like a jigsaw puzzle.”

· In one desperate — and illegal — move, Trump allegedly bribed Ukraine by threatening to withhold the anti-tank javelin missiles unless Ukraine halted their own investigation into Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort. (Spoiler alert: The 2019 impeachment proceedings addressed Trump’s ongoing unethical and illegal behavior with Ukraine.)

Emoluments

· In a situation that ethics experts had feared and warned about, Trump’s business refused to leave and created a week-long stand-off in a Panama hotel that was attempting to fire the Trump Organization from the hotel’s management.

· In the first two months of 2018 alone the RNC spent more than $400,000 at Trump-owned properties. By the end of 2018, Trump’s for-profit businesses got $4.2 million from Republican campaigns, including from the Republican National Committee holding events at Trump’s for-profit businesses.

· At least 63 people in the “Russian elite” bought nearly $100 million in Trump property during the election.

· The tariffs that Trump imposed on China for everything from auto parts to medical devices conveniently left out clothes and shoes, which Ivanka Trump produces in China. (In fact, almost everything that the entire Trump family produces, including presidential swag, is made in China.)

· Ivanka Trump was, in fact, able to acquire 16 new trademarks in China. Coincidentally, immediately after, Trump pledged to help ZTE, a major Chinese telecommunications company, from collapsing and laying off its workers, even though “the company has a history of violating American limits on doing business with countries like Iran and North Korea.”

· Trump himself has benefited from China by obtaining dozens of Chinese government trademark approvals for Trump businesses, including new hotels, spas, escort services, massage parlors, personal security services, and insurance. Trump did NOT receive Congressional approval for these business dealings, which will personally benefit Trump and which are required to avoid violating the Constitution and ethics laws.

· Jared Kushner’s entire extended family was benefiting from foreign entities. A company linked to the Qatari government bailed out Kushner’s family in a real estate deal in New York.

· Yet when the Kushner family asked Qatar more recently to invest in a stressed development, the Qataris turned them down. Only a few weeks later, Trump called for the Arab world to crack down on terrorists and the Arab world, led by Saudi Arabia, organized a blockade of Qatar. In reality, Saudi Arabia wanted to punish Qatar for asserting independence from Saudi Arabia and used Trump to do it, even though the blockade actually harms United States strategy.

· Kushner failed to disclose his stake in multiple companies, and he and Ivanka made about $82 million from sources outside of the White House last year.

· Trump has, in fact, declared that it’s “not practical” to adhere to the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, telling Congress that it’s “too difficult to track all its foreign revenue” while not even bothering to ask Congress for permission.

Hatch Act

· Kushner also neglected to disclose that he co-directed a foundation that funded Israeli settlements that were considered to be illegal under international law when he tried to swing a vote on the UN Security Council against an anti-settlement resolution. As Chris Riotta reported, this omission “would bar any other official from continuing to serve in the West Wing.”

· And in other appearances of unethical AND illegal behavior, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao (who happens to be conveniently married to Mitch McConnel), appeared on television with her father, who owns a shipping company that provides shipping between the US and Asia. In at least one appearance, the state flag is flying behind them. Federal employees are prohibited from using their public office for their own private gain, including the endorsement of any product or company. (Not that this law as stopped the Trump family from profiting nicely off of this presidency.)

· Secretary Chao also admitted that Trump personally asked Speaker Paul Ryan to block funding for a major New York City transportation project that has been described as the most important transportation project in the country.

· In fact, at least six members of the Trump administration were found by the Office of the Special Counsel to have violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from using their offices and resources for political purposes.

· Trump’s Treasury Department changed its rules to protect wealthy donors of “dark money” to politically active tax-exempt groups, making it so these groups no longer have to disclose who their donors are to tax authorities.

· Many private organizations benefited from their contributions to Trump. The GEO Group, a large private prison organization, donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Trump’s campaign and is the top donor to at least three of Texas’s congressmembers. For that, they’ve been rewarded nicely, especially contracts for detention centers, off of which they make up to $55 million per facility; in one facility alone the government pays $32 million annually. This is all despite the fact that the GEO Group has a long history of their facilities under investigation and shut down due to poor treatment of detainees, including sexual abuse and deaths. Once Trump was in office, the GEO Group asked Republicans to introduce a law to hold immigrant children indefinitely so they can make even more money, which they then did. (Spoiler alert: in 2019 Trump bypassed laws and created a policy to indefinitely detain immigrant children, which a judge thankfully struck down.) (Remember, President Obama had already begun phasing out private prisons due to their inherently unethical and harmful impacts.)

· If that wasn’t enough, the GEO Group was found to be a federal contractor, and under campaign finance laws, federal contractors cannot make political donations.

· Private organizations are not the only ones benefiting from Trump’s disgusting immigration detention policies: The Texas nonprofit group Southwest Key Programs, Inc., made almost a half a billion dollars to detain immigrant children. This is in addition to the almost one billion the administration has spent on detention in 2018 alone, as well as the several other private companies that are benefiting nicely from Trump’s draconian policies.

· In general, private prison stocks have increased 100 percent since Trump took office.

· All of the many atrocities that Trump is committing are detailed in the Immigration article in this series, but it warrants mention in this Ethics article that ICE officials have admitted that ICE flat-out lied to the American public about raids and enforcement issues.

Getty Images

Mueller Investigation

· Trump, Jr., held a meeting at Trump Tower just before the 2016 election with an Israeli specialist in social media manipulations, an emissary for Arab royalty, and a Republican donor who served as a private security contractor in the Middle East. The meeting was meant to help Trump win the election, and the relationships lasted long after the election.

· This meeting sparked the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller to determine any links between the Trump campaign and Russian interference in the election.

· An associate of both Trump and Putin, Aras Agalarov, used one of his offshore companies to transfer more than $20 million from his Virgin Islands, Russia, Switzerland, and Thailand accounts to his United States account to distribute to his son and at least two people who were at the Trump Tower meeting. The transactions occurred just before and just after the election. US investigators also found “new insight into the murky financial world inhabited by many of Trump’s associates, who use shell companies and secret bank accounts to quickly and quietly move money across the globe.”

· Speaking of Russian ties, the Paradise Papers included information about Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross keeping investments in a firm with significant business ties with Vladimir Putin’s inner circle.

· As part of the Mueller investigation, Jared Kushner’s discussions with foreigners during the presidential transition were investigated to determine whether they were designed to benefit or retaliate against Trump’s White House policies.

· Trump excluded any Democrats from a White House meeting with the Department of Justice to discuss an FBI informant involved in the investigation of Trump’s campaign contact with Russia. Trump’s goal was to “brand” the informant as a “spy” because “he thought it sounded more nefarious” and thought that “these embellishments would produce a greater response among media and the public.”

· Trump tried all he could to end the Mueller investigation. And his tantrums were somewhat successful in keeping his base and Congressional Republicans on his side, as political analyst Julian Zelizer noted.

· Yet Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen revealed to the world that Trump knew in advance about the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower between Trump, Jr., and Russians colluding about getting “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. Trump also admitted to this.

· In another inadvertent confession, Trump’s then-personal attorney John Dowd reacted to Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s firing of FBI director Andrew McCabe by confirming that the firing was done to discredit the Mueller investigation. Or perhaps Sessions fired McCabe because McCabe oversaw a federal investigation about whether Sessions was forthcoming in Congressional testimony about contact with Russian officials.

· Later, John Down resigned after Trump decided to ignore his legal advice.

· Before then firing Sessions, Trump ordered Sessions via twitter to shut down the Mueller investigation.

· Under Trump, Republicans plotted to remove Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. They claimed it was because Rosenstein was too slow in investigating FBI agents who Trump accused of bias, but was really an effort to undermine Mueller’s investigation, which was supervised by Rosenstein. (Spoiler alert: The Mueller investigation ultimately found that they could not conclude that the President committed a crime, but also does not exonerate him.)

· After Trump denied for ages Russia’s involvement in the DNC’s hacking, 13 Russian intelligence officials were indicted in connection with that hacking and with the subsequent leaking of emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager. This resulted from one of the charges in Robert Mueller’s investigation and left no doubt about Russia’s meddling in the election to get Trump elected.

· In fact, even Senate Republicans concluded that Russia’s effort to help Trump and hurt Clinton during the 2016 election was extensive, sophisticated, and ordered by President Putin himself.

· Part of the Mueller investigation led to 34 indictments, including that of Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort. Manafort was ultimately convicted of eight counts of tax fraud, hiding foreign bank accounts, and bank fraud.

· Also among those indicted was Roger Stone, a Republican operative and Trump’s confidant. He had seven counts that included obstruction, witness tampering, and making false statements in connection with the Russian attack on the 2016 election.

· Yet even after the indictments and 5 guilty pleas and evidence that the Russians hacked the DNC and the DSCC, as well as individual email accounts, stole the identities of American citizens, and hacked voter registration systems and a company whose software is used to verify voter registrations, Trump stood beside Putin and questioned and criticized his own intelligence agencies, as well as the special counsel investigation into all of that.

· Karen Yourish, Larry Buchanan, and Alicia Parlapiano of the New York Times have detailed the more than 100 criminal counts against dozens of people in connection to the 2016 election investigation.

Special Access

· Russians weren’t the only ones who were made to believe that they would have special access to Trump as president. The Chinese government contributed $500 million to help build Trump properties in Indonesia.

· Immediately after this transaction, and in yet another apparent violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution, Trump ordered a bail-out for a Chinese government-owned cell phone company

· Under Trump’s direction, Michael Cohen paid off former Playboy model Stormy Daniels, who Trump was sleeping with while his wife was pregnant and giving birth to their child. A secret recording of a conversation between Cohen and Trump revealed the unethical AND immoral actions.

· In his testimony, Cohen implicated the longtime Chief Financial Officer of the Trump Organization Allen Weisselberg in helping with the hush money. Weisselberg was eventually granted immunity for his testimony.

· Cohen created a shell company and convinced major corporations to invest in it in exchange for access to Trump. This shell company eventually was behind the payments to Stormy Daniels to obstruct her from talking about her relationship with Trump.

· That bribery scheme enriched Cohen himself and also funneled domestic and foreign funds to Trump and Trump’s family.

· In addition, Cohen enlisted the drug company Novartis into a deal, telling the company that he “was knowledgeable about the individuals President Trump was likely to appoint and could provide the company with information as to how these individuals would approach the healthcare-related issues Novartis was focused on.” The Senate detailed these relationships in a report after everyone involved denied any relationships.

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

Spending

· The Government Accountability Office spent more than a year trying to obtain documents from and have meetings with the White House in an effort to hold hearings about various topics, including the cost of presidential travel. The White House obstructed all efforts and refused to respond.

· Trump, Jr., cost taxpayers nearly $100,000 to take a lavish trip to India to sell his family’s condominium project.

· Taxpayers also subsidized Trump’s New Year’s Eve for-profit party at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. Secret Service paid more than $50,000 for tent rentals for the party. And this was while more than 800,000 went without a paycheck during Trump’s government shutdown.

· And of course, there’s Trump’s golf trips. As of November 2018, Trump spent 212 days at a Trump property, playing golf one out of every five days he had been President. His trips to Mar-A-Lago alone have cost taxpayers an average of $3.4 million EACH. By only mid-2018, the costs of Trump’s golf trips were more than $56 million. The Secret Service even broke a record in spending costs for presidential golf carts. The Trump administration spent almost $400,000 on golf carts by the end of 2018. The website trumpgolfcount.com keeps a count of Trump’s golf trips.

· In the meantime, Trump and his children faced a lawsuit for misusing funds donated to his nonprofit organization to pay off his business debts, decorate his golf clubs, and help his campaign events. (Spoiler alert: in 2019 a judge found Trump guilty and ordered him to pay $2 million to nonprofits.)

· In fact, nearly every organization that Trump has led in the past decade has been under investigation.

· But back to frivolous and unethical spending, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin spent nearly $1 million on seven unnecessary military aircraft trips while specifically leaving off the manifests passengers who didn’t have security clearances.

· On the topic of unethical frivolous spending, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke spent $139,000 on new doors for his office.

· Zinke actually had 18 investigations about his actions at Department of Interior, more than the last 4 secretaries combined.

· Perhaps that’s why Zinke fired the Interior Department’s inspector general and wanted to replace her with a “loyalist political operative.” When the pushback became severe, Zinke backpedaled and chose to not appoint the loyalist.

· Zinke also established a foundation, headed by his wife, that played a key role in a real estate deal affiliated with the chairman of Halliburton, which will benefit from any decisions by Zinke’s Interior Department to open public lands or change regulations for oil drilling.

· Secretary of the Environmental Protection Agency Scott Pruitt spent more than $1500 on 12 customized fountain pens.

· Pruitt also bypassed required White House permission and gave giant raises to two of his staffers who followed him from Oklahoma to DC. He then lied about knowing about the raises to cover up his actions.

· Pruitt then gave special permission for one of his staffers to simultaneously consult for private clients to make extra money. Of course, the clients were kept secret by the administration.

· At least five high-ranking officials were re-assigned or demoted after raising concerns about Pruitt’s spending and management of the EPA.

· In the meantime, Pruitt used his staffers and Republican donors to get his wife a job at the Judicial Crisis Network, an ultra-conservative organization, even though Federal ethics rules prohibit public officials from using their positions for private gain or receiving free services or other gifts from their subordinates.

· Pruitt’s agency had other bad actors, too. Senior administrator Onis “Trey” Glenn, who was in charge of nine states, was indicted in Alabama for violating state ethics laws, including bribery, inappropriate solicitation or receiving of funds, and rules against using a public office for personal gain.

· In the type of retaliation that now seem rampant in this administration, one high-ranking civil servant in the Department of Housing and Urban Development was demoted for raising concerns about frivolous spending by HUD Secretary Ben Carson.

· Ben Carson’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) worked with shell companies to buy about $90 million in houses across the country. And none other than Fox’s Sean Hannity was connected to these shell companies.

Photo from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington's report “Trump’s Conflicts in Year Two”

The next article will cover Trump’s targeting of free speech, free press, and privacy.