A Crony Is Selling Meetings to Businessmen With Trump In Exchange for $500,000 to MAGA PACs and Backing His Offer With Threats

No administration in history has ever sold influence for cash so openly, so blatantly, and at such a scale as this one. In the latest example, a well-connected conservative influence-peddler has been openly selling one-on-one meetings with Donald Trump in exchange for $500,000 contributions to his favorite rightwing PACs—and warning businessmen that they had better get themselves “aligned” with Trump, or else.

Popular Information has the story:

An email sent by Sinan Kanatsiz, an obscure but well-connected figure in Trump’s political orbit, offers its recipients a “one-on-one meeting and private photo with President Donald Trump” in exchange for a “contribution of $500,000 to TPUSA PAC.”

Kanatsiz describes his invitation as “strictly confidential and non-transferable.” The bottom of the message warns, “NOT FOR SHARING—CONFIDENTIAL.” The email was obtained by Popular Information from a source who received it. The source shared the email on the condition of anonymity, fearing professional consequences for providing information to a journalist. …

Kanatsiz warned business owners to “align” with Trump or suffer the consequences. “Donald Trump is a businessman and any business owner who doesn’t want to align with this administration will be left in the dark,” Kanatsiz told the [Orange County Business Journal].

Meetings and access to top officials have always been dangled as a reward for large donors, but rarely is this offered with such a direct, explicit, and vast price tag—or accompanied by such a direct threat. Yet this is how our system works now.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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