Donald Trump is the most corrupt president in American history.
Just this week, we found out that in the first quarter of the year, Trump made more than 3,700 financial trades, worth tens of millions of dollars. That averages out to 59 trades a day and nine trades per hour.
The conflicts of interest and personal corruption are simply astonishing. Many of the companies do business with the federal government. In fact, Trump allegedly bought stock in Amazon and Microsoft months before the Pentagon announced agreements with both companies.
Earlier this year, Trump bought a sizable amount of Nvidia stock right before the artificial intelligence chipmaker received permission to export its advanced H200 AI processors to China. Not surprisingly, Nvidia’s stock shot up, earning Trump a tidy profit.
The conflicts of interest and personal corruption are simply astonishing.
Trump also bought a significant share of Intel, the chipmaker the Trump administration took a 10% stake in last year. The company’s stock is up 178% since the beginning of the year. According to Popular Information, an independent newsletter that reviewed the disclosures, Trump bought between $1 million and $5 million in Dell stock, and then nine days later, in a speech in Georgia, told people to “go out and buy a Dell computer.”
“Neither President Trump, his family, nor The Trump Organization plays any role in selecting, directing, or approving specific investments,” the Trump Organization said in a statement. “They receive no advance notice of trading activity and provide no input regarding investment decisions or portfolio management of any kind.”
Even if it’s true that Trump is not involved in these stock purchases, the mere appearance of a conflict of interest is why, in the past, presidents have avoided day trading while in office. But not Trump.
These stock sales are bad enough, but with Trump, there’s always a worse tale to tell.
The Department of Justice agreed Monday to settle a $10 billion lawsuit brought by the president against the IRS, by establishing a $1.776 billion fund to provide what the department says will be “a systematic process to hear and redress claims of others who suffered weaponization and lawfare” under former President Joe Biden.
In other words, the Justice Department has created a slush fund for Trump officials to dole out billions to his political allies and supporters who were prosecuted during the last administration, which could very well include those who were convicted for their actions on Jan. 6. It’s not enough that Trump pardoned his supporters, who stormed the Capitol and tried to stop the certification of the 2020 election. Now he’s ensuring that they get paid — with taxpayer dollars.
Trump officials orchestrated the creation of the fund after the president formally withdrew his lawsuit, thereby preventing the federal judge in the case, Kathleen M. Williams, from approving a settlement agreement. So instead, what we have is a deal between Donald Trump, the president, and Donald Trump, a former private citizen, to create a roughly $1.8 billion fund that will be distributed with no oversight beyond that of officials appointed by Trump.
It’s difficult to imagine a more egregious violation of the public trust, but then again, in Trump’s second term, this kind of corruption is as common as a day that ends in “y.”
Trump and his family have invested heavily in cryptocurrency, so the Trump administration has relaxed regulatory standards on the crypto industry.
It’s difficult to imagine a more egregious violation of the public trust.
Earlier this month, Trump met with a group of executives from the tobacco industry, which has given millions in campaign contributions to Trump-related causes, including his proposed White House ballroom. They complained about the Food and Drug Administration’s regulation of e-cigarettes, and Trump immediately called Dr. Marty Makary, who ran the agency, and demanded a regulatory change. Less than a week later, the FDA issued new guidance that relaxed federal rules on the sale of flavored vapes. Makary resigned in protest.
Perhaps the most egregious example of corruption is Trump’s manipulation of the president’s unilateral and unreviewable pardon power into a pay-for-play system in which lawbreakers hire lobbyists to persuade the president to let them avoid justice. The lobbyists’ going price, according to The Wall Street Journal, is $1 million. Meanwhile, those without deep pockets, who have followed the standard rules for pardon applications, are left waiting.
According to one estimate by The New Yorker, Trump and his family have taken in nearly $4 billion since he took office in January 2025.
But that story — like Trump’s stock sales, like the billions he’s made in crypto while deregulating the industry, like his relaxing public health regulations to benefit his donors, like his selling of presidential pardons and like his $1.7 billion slush fund — will quickly be forgotten. Just throw it in the pile of Trump’s ever-teetering pile of corrupt acts.
Sure, congressional Democrats will complain, but it’s not like they can do much about it. Republicans, who control Congress and spent years complaining about the alleged corruption of the Biden family, will say nothing. There will be no hearings, no congressional investigations and not even a press statement complaining that the president of the United States is using his position to financially benefit himself, his supporters and, above all, his donors. Instead, Republicans will continue to see no evil and hear no evil routine they’ve perfected for the past 10 years.
To be sure, voters can do something about it in November, and from all indications, a healthy majority is fed up with Trump. But their anger has as much to do with higher prices at the pumps and the grocery store as with Trump’s egregious corruption.
Even if Democrats win big in November and they decide to go down the impeachment trail once again, there’s zero reason to expect Senate Republicans will grow enough courage to do anything about it.
Until Trump leaves the White House, he will continue to find new, once-unimaginable ways to use the awesome powers of the federal government to enrich himself.
And a nation that once took public corruption and self-dealing seriously and expected its leaders not to use public office for private gain will steadily move further and further away from our founding ideals.
Michael Cohen is the publisher of the newsletter Truth and Consequences and hosts the weekly podcast “That ‘70s Movie Podcast.”