Trump’s Corruption Palooza Scales New Heights: An Executive Watch Roundup
Our late-March selection of the president's latest and greatest assaults on the rule of law
We launched Executive Watch, a real-time tracker of presidential abuses of power, early in Trump’s second term. It has been meticulously documenting the illicit actions emanating from the White House.
Below is our biweekly selection of new entries posted in Executive Watch. You should bookmark this page that contains a chronological scroll of the abuses and this post that sorts and lists them under our 5 P categories:
After reading this roundup, tell us in the comments: Which of these abuses is the most troubling, and why?
March 25, 2026
Trump Helps His Crony to Loot Taxpayers By Requiring DOJ Loyalists to Hand Over Millions to Settle a Bogus Lawsuit
Category: Personal Grift
Donald Trump’s most direct attempt to loot the federal Treasury is to file a lawsuit against the U.S. government that will be settled by Justice Department officials directly taking his orders—allowing him to order them to pay himself millions. Trump’s cronies and supporters are already getting in on this racket for themselves.
The Associated Press reports:
The Justice Department has settled for roughly $1.2 million a lawsuit from Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser to President Donald Trump who pleaded guilty during the Republican’s first term to lying to the FBI about his conversations with a top Russian diplomat and was later pardoned.
Court papers filed Wednesday do not reveal the settlement amount, but a person familiar with the matter, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to disclose nonpublic information, confirmed the total as about $1.2 million.
The settlement resolves a 2023 lawsuit in which Flynn sought at least $50 million and asserted that the criminal case against him amounted to a malicious prosecution. It also represents a stark turnabout in position for a Justice Department that during the Biden administration had pressed a judge to dismiss Flynn’s complaint. Attorney General Pam Bondi, a former personal lawyer for the president, has openly criticized the Russia investigation in which Flynn was charged and the Justice Department in the last year has opened investigations into former officials who participated in that inquiry. …
Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to the FBI when he said he had not discussed with the Russian envoy, Sergey Kislyak, sanctions that the outgoing Obama administration had just imposed on Russia for election interference. During that conversation, Flynn advised that Russia be “even-keeled” in response to the punitive measures and assured him “we can have a better conversation” about relations between the countries after Trump became president.
Flynn admitted to lying, and the facts of the case are not under dispute. But as with Trump’s lawsuit, the government’s lawyers are not trying to protect our money from being siphoned off through frivolous lawsuits. They are actively cooperating with the looting.
March 24, 2026
Minnesota Is Suing the Trump Administration for Illegally Withholding Evidence About Shooting Deaths by ICE Agents
Category: Power Consolidation
Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign predictably turned into a reign of terror over American cities, culminating in ICE goons shooting several U.S. citizens. Trump’s administration has refused to investigate these shootings, and it is now being sued by the state of Minnesota for withholding evidence from the state’s independent investigation.
MS Now reports:
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty and Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Superintendent Drew Evans want a judge to force the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security to share evidence, as would typically happen in such cases.
“Instead of sharing information, federal authorities took exclusive possession of evidence that had been collected, and they denied Minnesota investigators access to key information,” the plaintiffs wrote in the complaint filed in federal court in Washington.
Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen, was fatally shot Jan. 7 by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis. Several videos of the shootingindicate that Good was driving away, not toward, the officer, who stood in front of Good’s vehicle and shot her.
Despite that, top administration officials labeled Good a “domestic terrorist,” and Vice President JD Vance said federal officers were “protected by absolute immunity”—a comment he later walked back.
The BCA—the state’s primary investigative agency—began a joint investigation into Good’s killing with the FBI, but the FBI reversed course, informing the BCA that the investigation would be solely led by federal officials.
Refusing to allow access to evidence is an admission that, despite its claims, the administration knows these shootings were unjustified. But Trump’s Department of Justice, rather than holding government agents accountable to the law, has set out to provide them with absolute impunity.
March 23, 2026
Administration Insiders Might Be Illegally Making Billions on Massive Iran War Insider Trading Without Fear of Being Investigated
Category: Personal Grift
It has long been speculated that Trump insiders are using advance knowledge of his chaotic decisions to make huge amounts of money from stock market fluctuations as he imposes, lifts, and reimposes tariffs. Now it looks like they’re doing the same thing in a grimmer context, trading off of Trump’s ever-changing pronouncements about his war with Iran.
CNBC reports on the suspicious pattern:
S&P 500 futures and oil futures flashed an unusual burst of activity early Monday minutes before a market-moving social media post from President Donald Trump.
At around 6:50 a.m. in New York, S&P 500 e-Mini futures trading on the CME recorded a sharp and isolated jump in volume, breaking from an otherwise subdued premarket backdrop. With thin liquidity typical of early trading hours, the sudden burst stood out as one of the largest volume moments of the session up to that point.
A similar pattern was observed in oil markets. West Texas Intermediate May futures also saw a noticeable pickup in trading activity at roughly the same time, with a distinct volume spike interrupting otherwise quiet conditions.
Roughly 15 minutes later, at 7:05 a.m., Trump said on Truth Social that the U.S. and Iran had held talks and that he was halting planned strikes on Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure. That announcement prompted an instant rally in risk assets, with S&P 500 futures soaring more than 2.5% before the opening bell. West Texas Intermediate futures dropped nearly 6% following the announcement.
The timing of the earlier volume spikes across both equities and crude caught the attention of traders, particularly given the absence of an obvious catalyst at the moment they occurred.
What is perhaps even worse than the fact that insiders are making money off of matters of life and death for men and women in uniform is that none of this has a prayer of being investigated by Donald Trump’s Securities and Exchange Commission.
March 23, 2026
Prediction Markets Getting Flooded with Accounts Making Money Off Iran War Raise Concerns About Corrupt Betting by Trump Insiders
Category: Personal Grift
Alongside cryptocurrency, the Trump administration has championed online “prediction markets,” a kind of legalized gambling that gives scope for corrupt insiders to make money by “predicting” events that they already know are going to happen. Combine those two, and you get Trump insiders using crypto to scam the prediction markets.
The Guardian describes the pattern:
Eight accounts, all newly created around 21 March, bet a total of nearly $70,000 on there being a ceasefire. They stand to make nearly $820,000 if such a deal is reached before 31 March.
An account that made the same bet was created shortly before the US struck Iran on 28 February. It also placed a winning bet on those strikes, which raised similar questions around insider trading, and so far has bet on nothing else.
The new accounts all appear to have been created late last week, around the time when the U.S. president, Donald Trump, appeared to first double down on war with Iran, then suggest in an after-markets Truth Social post that he was considering “winding down” military operations.
The wallets “definitely [look like] someone with some degree of inside info”, said Ben Yorke, formerly a researcher with CoinTelegraph, now building an AI trading platform called Starchild.
Polymarket accounts are anonymous, and it is extremely difficult to trace the owners of the crypto wallets that laid the bets.
There is a segment of the tech industry that is devoted to finding technologically novel ways to commit white-collar crime. They are matched, at this moment, by an administration that is determined not to investigate, prosecute, or regulate such crimes—perhaps because its own insiders are busy committing them.
March 19, 2026
Trump’s Lackeys Shamelessly Approve Putting His Face on a Coin In Violation of America’s Tradition Against King Worship
Category: Power Consolidation
Ancient societies put the face of the king or the emperor on a coin, because that one man was the ultimate source of authority. In America, authority flows from the people, not from a king. So both in law and custom, we have long opposed putting the faces of current political leaders on our currency, only honoring them after their deaths. Donald Trump has ended this tradition.
The New York Times reports:
President Trump’s handpicked arts commission voted on Thursday to approve a commemorative, 24-karat gold coin bearing Mr. Trump’s image, brushing aside debate over whether the coin violates American tradition.
The coin, which is supposed to commemorate the nation’s 250th anniversary, shows Mr. Trump with his fists pressed against a desk and a glowering expression on his face. The back of the coin features an eagle.
It is one of at least three coins featuring Mr. Trump’s face, including a $1 coin that will circulate as currency, that the administration is planning….
Many of America’s founders, including George Washington, were fiercely against taking steps that would make its government officials appear like kings, and that included featuring them on the country’s coins. Only a handful of times in history have people been featured on US currency while they were alive.
The administration’s move to mint official coins with Mr. Trump’s face is also legally aggressive. An 1866 law called the Thayer Amendment states: “Only the portrait of a deceased individual may appear on United States currency and securities.”
“Legally aggressive” is yet another press euphemism for “blatantly illegal.” The last word on this should go to the chair of the Citizens Coinage Advisory Council, which refused to even consider this proposal: “If you issue a coin with a portrait of a sitting president, it will send a message that the sitting president is a king.”
March 19, 2026
Trump Is Continuing to Weaponize the Justice System Against James Comey for Investigating Russian Election Interference
Category: Presidential Retribution
Donald Trump has suffered repeated setbacks in his attempts to gin up bogus federal prosecutions of his political enemies—but he keeps trying. Most recently, he has used the same sympathetic judge who bogged down Special Counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of him, who is now supervising a grand jury tasked with churning out indictments of Trump’s enemies.
Axios has the story:
Former FBI Director James Comey has been subpoenaed in the wide-ranging “grand conspiracy” case against the ex-officials who investigated and prosecuted President Trump, two sources with knowledge of the situation tell Axios. …
The Trump administration’s grand conspiracy theory posits that Democratic officials bent the rules, broke the law, and lied under oath to investigate, prosecute, and otherwise undermine Trump from his election in 2016 through his federal indictments in 2023.
The Comey subpoena, issued last week, relates to his alleged role in the drafting of a January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) concerning Russia’s election interference that favored Trump. …
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump nominee who threw out the federal prosecution against him in his classified documents case in 2024, impaneled the grand jury in the Southern District of Florida.
The main corrupt motive here is simply for Trump to seek revenge against his political enemies. The deeper corrupt motive is to criminalize the process of drafting Intelligence Community Assessments whose results the president does not like, making it impossible for career officials in the administration to do their jobs without political interference.
March 19, 2026
Kristi Noem’s Unofficial Chief of Staff and Rumored Lover Corey Lewandowski Is Accused of Soliciting Bribes In Exchange for DHS Contracts
Category: Personal Grift
Kristi Noem may be on her way out at the Department of Homeland Security, but her tenure has shown us the vast corruption that is tolerated and encouraged in this administration. Much of it involves her unofficial chief of staff and rumored lover, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski who was thrown out, among other things, due to allegations of unwanted sexual overtures toward a donor.
NBC News reports on just one allegation of Lewandowski soliciting bribes:
Lewandowski took a role as an unpaid “special government employee” at DHS once the new administration was sworn in, where he advised and acted as a “de facto chief of staff” to Noem and, sources said, influenced contract awards. …
Zoley offered to put Lewandowski on retainer—a recurring consulting fee—with GEO Group, according to two industry sources familiar with the matter.
Lewandowski balked, saying he wanted to be compensated based on the company’s new or renewed contracts with DHS, the two sources said.
“He wanted payments—what some people would call a success fee,” said a person with knowledge of the meeting. Zoley declined, the two sources said. ...
A senior DHS official told NBC News that within weeks of Lewandowski’s second meeting with Zoley, Lewandowski told him not to award more contracts to GEO Group. …
White House officials have not taken any action against Lewandowski, in part out of fear that Trump will come to his defense, according to three sources familiar with the thinking inside the West Wing.
That last part is important. This is not just a story about a guy seeking to profit from his proximity to power. It’s about the impunity granted to him by his loyalty to a president who sees this kind of corruption as merely one of the perks of power.
March 18, 2026
Trump Hands a No-Bid Contract to the Company That Planned the Jan. 6 Rally
Category: Personal Grift
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.
March 15, 2026
Trump Threatens to Revoke Broadcast Licenses of TV Stations That Don’t Boost His Iran War
Category: Power Consolidation
Donald Trump’s favorite executive power to abuse is the FCC’s ability to revoke a broadcast license if it decides a broadcaster isn’t serving the “public interest.” Trump interprets the “public interest” to mean not being critical of him, and now he and his loyal FCC chair Brendan Carr are once again threatening broadcasters, this time over their coverage of his war in Iran.
Forbes provides an overview of Trump’s amplification of Carr’s threat:
Speaking to reporters on board Air Force One on Sunday, Trump said Iran “is known for a lot of fake news” before claiming without evidence that U.S. television networks were working with Iran to disseminate that material. Trump told reporters that this was a “very dangerous thing for our country,” and broadcasters “could be in serious jeopardy.” The president made this unsubstantiated claim in his [social media] post as well, writing that Iran was “working in close coordination with the Fake News Media” to push an AI-generated video of the USS Abraham Lincoln Aircraft Carrier on fire.
Trump’s post comes a day after Carr issued a threat to broadcasters over purported “fake news” while resharing an earlier post made by the president complain about the war coverage. The Trump appointee wrote: “Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions—also known as the fake news—have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up.” Carr…appeared to threaten the networks saying: “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not.” Like with Trump, Carr did not provide any evidence of so-called fake news or distortions pertaining to the war.
Over the past few days Trump has repeatedly complained about the media’s coverage of the conflict. Last week, Trump insisted that the U.S. was “winning” the war and said: “If you read the Failing New York Times, you would incorrectly think that we are not winning.”
We need a free press for the same reason we need a Congress that asserts its power—so someone independent of the president can question the reasons for the war, its goals, and whether we really are winning or not. Trump is trying to prevent the American people from making such an independent evaluation.
March 13, 2026
Trump Is Now Openly Selling Spots to Donors on His Private ‘National Security Briefings’
Category: Political Corruption
Corrupt politicians have frequently solicited support from their donors with an implied promise of influence over policy-making and access to inside information. The difference with Donald Trump is that he does this on a much larger scale—and all right out in the open.
CNN reports:
A fundraising email from President Donald Trump’s political action committee has a provocative pitch: using an image from Saturday’s dignified transfer honoring six fallen US soldiers, it promises access to the president’s “private national security briefings.”
The email, sent by Never Surrender, Inc., promotes what it calls a “National Security Briefing Membership” and urges recipients to “claim your spot” with multiple links to donate, in what it describes as an exclusive group receiving updates about national security threats.
It promises that members will “receive my private national security briefings, unfiltered updates on the threats facing America. The straight truth on border invasions, foreign adversaries, deep state sabotage, and every danger the fake news hides.”
Much of the attention to this story focused on Trump’s exploitation of the transfer of U.S. troops killed in his Iran war. But the promise of special access to national security information is even more remarkable. The only mitigating factor is that these donors are likely to just hear a rambling airing of Trump’s grievances, instead.
© The UnPopulist, 2026
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Horrifying!
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