The purpose of political corruption is not just for political insiders to cash in. It’s also to shovel the taxpayers’ money into the pockets of the president’s key supporters. This gives his faction more resources, while starving the opposition, making it easier for him to stay in power. A new case reveals that pattern in particularly stark form.
The New York Times reports:
The Trump administration has bypassed regular procedures to award more than $13 million in contracts to the company that helped organize President Trump’s rally on Jan. 6, 2021, repeatedly creating hidden business opportunities that only one firm could win.
Those contracts have transformed Event Strategies Inc., staffed by veterans of Mr. Trump’s campaigns and first White House, from a minor federal contractor into the government’s highest-paid event planner. The firm has arranged celebrations of the Navy’s 250th birthday and a Treasury Department event to tout new savings accounts for children, called “Trump accounts.”
By law, federal agencies are generally supposed to seek competing bids before awarding contracts, to get the best value for taxpayers. Event Strategies won contracts that were particularly lucrative, the kind that other companies say they would have liked to win.
In at least five cases, other firms never got the chance.
President Trump originally ran on a promise to “drain the swamp” of corruption in Washington, D.C. But he is not draining the swamp he is harnessing the swamp by engaging in unprecedented corruption for the sole benefit of himself and his allies.
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.
© The UnPopulist, 2026
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