Reed Shaw and Winston Berkman-Breen write:

The press, elected officials, and advocacy groups have sounded the alarm about what they describe as rampant corruption in the Trump administration: pardons issued following political contributions or a business deal that benefited the president and his family personally; mergers approved following multimillion dollar payoffs and backroom deals; access provided to government data that could benefit corporate interests aligned with the president; and some secret donations for the president’s gilded ballroom, in return for as-yet-undisclosed benefits. The New Yorker has tabulated “some three and a half billion dollars in Presidential profits” for Trump and his family since 2016, and others have put “the total ‘Trump Take’ at $1.8 billion” so far in his second term alone. And that’s just the potentially corrupt activity we know about: investigative reporting can only take us so far in uncovering wrongdoing by sophisticated actors, especially when those actors are steadily dismantling the internal oversight structures meant to detect it.

The executive branch has ample tools to police corruption, including laws designed to prevent bribery, conflicts of interest, and abuse of government data.

But through a multifront attack, the Trump administration has drastically eroded the system that is supposed to protect Americans from grifters in the government. Take, for example, the Department of Justice (DOJ). Among other things, DOJ is tasked with enforcing anti-corruption laws and running a process for recommending presidential pardons. To do so effectively, it has historically been somewhat independent from the President. Soon after taking office, Trump dismantled post-Watergate safeguards that had insulated the Justice Department from White House direction, redeploying the agency to shield allies and pursue opponents — likely enabling some of the conduct described above. The pattern has played out across the executive branch, with agencies reportedly dropping enforcement actions against entities that have relationships with Trump and granting fast-track approval for corporations connected to Trump, raising questions about potential bribery inside the companies themselves.

A future DOJ could investigate today’s lawbreaking. (And it appears that at least some executives have resisted the pay-to-play perhaps due to this possibility.) But the prospect of federal pardons and the statutes of limitations on some potential violations could get in the way; not to mention, any future administration will have an overwhelming list of other priorities as it sifts through the Trump administration’s legacy.

So how might those committed to democratic principles begin to punish, deter, or at the very least expose corrupt dealings in the federal government? Part of the answer lies in so-far underutilized state laws related to unfair competition and additional applications of federal administrative law – two of several possibilities, including those that others have identified. Together, the two target opposite sides of the same transaction: the private actors who seek corrupt advantage, and the federal agencies that grant it. [Continue reading…]