In this episode of Terms of Engagement, Amanda Carpenter of Protect Democracy joins hosts Archon Fung and Stephen Richer to examine how political corruption undermines democratic institutions and public trust, distorts policymaking, and makes citizens increasingly cynical about the democratic process. Carpenter, a former journalist and Capitol Hill staffer, alleges that President Donald Trump has turned the presidency into a vehicle for personal enrichment, including a pay-for-pardons scheme between lobbyists and the White House. She argues that the U.S. should be preparing an anti-corruption infrastructure now to investigate the Trump administration, including civil forfeiture and other asset-recovery tools to claw back any ill-gotten gains. Carpenter says such measures—which would be pardon-proof—could act as a deterrent to public corruption in the future.
About our Guest:
Amanda Carpenter is a writer and editor at Protect Democracy, a cross-ideological nonprofit dedicated to combatting authoritarianism, who works with the group’s advocates and experts to promote its mission, ideas, and key priorities. Before joining Protect Democracy, she was a writer for The Bulwark and CNN Contributor. Prior to that, she worked on Capitol Hill as Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s communications director and South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint’s speechwriter. She brings over 15 years of political and media experience with her to Protect Democracy.
Voiceover:
You're listening to Terms of Engagement, a weekly show from the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard Kennedy School, featuring Ash Center Director, Archon Fung and Senior Practice Fellow in American Democracy, Stephen Richer. Now let's get to the show.
Archon Fung:
Hey, everyone. Welcome to Terms of Engagement. I'm Archon Fung, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and Director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation.
Stephen Richer:
And I'm Stephen Richer. I'm the former elected Maricopa County Recorder, and I'm now a fellow at the Ash Center. And I'm back. I'm back in Massachusetts. I just landed this morning and I am in town for fall semester teaching a class this semester called Make America Great Again, the Ideas Behind the Movement. And I know that, Archon, I think you're teaching the core curriculum ethics class, is that right?
Archon Fung:
In the spring I'll be teaching that.
Stephen Richer:
Okay.
Archon Fung:
I'm teaching a law and public policy class in the fall, so the students will be back pretty soon. Some of them are here already, but our classes haven't started yet.
Stephen Richer:
I'm excited to see them, but I'm also excited to talk about today's very important topic that is much in the news. And we have an absolutely fantastic guest who has really made a study of it over the past few months, over the past few years actually. But before we get into that, a reminder that we are doing this live and we do take questions in the chat. So please feel free to put them in, and Archon and I will do our best to respond to them and integrate them into the conversation.
Archon Fung:
And as always, we are speaking as individuals, not as representatives of Harvard University or the Kennedy School or even the Ash Center. And we should also mention, this is a big episode for us. This is episode 50, so big 5-0. And we are internally going through, considering looking back at the episodes, thinking about where we might go next. So it's a great time for feedback. If you have suggestions about guests or topics or overall directions and themes, please email us at info@ash.harvard.edu.
Stephen Richer:
What was the over under? Five, six? Is that what the line was? And by cracking, by getting above six episodes, we already proved a lot of editors wrong.
Archon Fung:
Yeah. [inaudible 00:02:22]. I couldn't see to 50. Yeah, I was just not thinking ... Yeah.
Stephen Richer:
Well, I still like hearing from Archon. I don't know if he feels the same, but at least he has the patience of Job.
Archon Fung:
And it's been a great ride and it will continue to be. But moving on to today's topic, we're going to talk about corruption today. We're going to talk about corruption in the Trump administration. Consider whether it is similar to or different from corruption in prior administrations, what forms it takes, what the definition of corruption even is, and what the relationship between corruption and the health of democracy is. For those of you keeping score, the Center for American Progress Tracker puts President Trump's realized earnings in cash and gifts, that's not even including unrealized crypto and Trump media holdings at $2.93 billion. So at the start of 2024, this tracker estimates President Trump's worth at 2.4 billion. It is now 6.3 billion up more than $3 billion. Here is the tracker. Wait, hold on. I'll put it in the YouTube chat for people who want to have a look at this. All right, over to you, Stephen, for the intro.
Stephen Richer:
All right. Well, to discuss this, we have somebody you may have seen lately on MS Now or previously on CNN, and that is Amanda Carpenter, who is a writer and editor at Protect Democracy. Protect Democracy is a wonderful organization doing lots of things to the benefit of our American governance, our American representative democracy. Check them out. Prior to joining Protect Democracy, Amanda was a writer for The Bulwark, and as I mentioned, a CNN contributor. And prior to that, she worked on Capitol Hill as Texas Senator Ted Cruz's, communication director, and South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, speech writer. She brings over 15 years of political experience and communications experience. And as of late, as I mentioned at the outset, she has been doing a lot of writing and talking on corruption. And so we're really pleased to have her here today, and we appreciate her time. Welcome, Amanda.
Amanda Carpenter:
Hey, thanks for having me. We got a lot to talk about, but it's good to connect with you guys.
Stephen Richer:
Yeah. So let's start with what are we even talking about? How are we defining corruption? Does it have to be unlawful?
Amanda Carpenter:
Yeah, corruption, I mean, I think the way it is defined is also the way the publicly just generally understands it intuitively. When a public official begins personally profiting off their official service, off their government service, that's a pretty easy definition of corruption that people can understand. We also see this at companies, but it's the idea of that you are abusing the power that you have in your position to not put the country or the company first, but you're also putting yourself interest first.
Stephen Richer:
And is that inherently unlawful?
Amanda Carpenter:
It can be. I mean-
Stephen Richer:
But it doesn't have to be.
Archon Fung:
But it doesn't have to be right.
Amanda Carpenter:
And the arrangements that especially Trump has set up in the executive branch, like, you can see the conflict of interest. Conflict of interest is enough to potentially be corruptive. It doesn't always have to rise to the scandal of like, "Oh, we proved a quid pro quo exchange. This is bribery. This is extortion." I mean, this is a reason that we had used to enforce so many ethics laws so that you prevent the appearance of corruption, the appearance of conflict of interest. That should really be the standard. Once you start crossing that line, I think you're getting into corruption. And then there's all kinds of different shades that we can see.
Archon Fung:
Okay.
Stephen Richer:
So before we got into this present era, talk a little bit about your time with Senators Jim DeMint and Senator Ted Cruz. What were the types of things that you avoided so as to not even give that appearance of corruption?
Amanda Carpenter:
I mean, that seems like a totally different time. I still care. I used to really care about the Hatch Act, which is a rule for federal employees that we really took care to enforce, be conscious about when you were working, especially in an office for someone who's running for election, is that you don't use official resources, stuff that the taxpayer pays for, for political purposes. We were always thinking about, like, "How do we not cross that line?" When I was working for Senator DeMint, he set up a fund. We really worked on off campus, after hours, logging our time so that the taxpayer never paid for it when he was trying to endorse other candidates for competitive primaries and he started a fund to do that. But we were so careful. There was a townhouse that we would go to and we'd make sure that our time was logged because those were the rules.
You couldn't do that on official hours. And now that's out the window completely. You looked at the Republican National Convention held on the White House lawn. Every day when I look at the speech that is coming from people who are collecting a taxpayer salary that is so partisan and many times indecent and it is way clearly designed to get a competitive partisan political advantage. Those are the guardrails I would like to come back. Hatch Act should mean something again, but I'm afraid we have bigger fish to fry.
Archon Fung:
Yeah. I mean, those guardrails feel so far in the rear-view mirror-
Stephen Richer:
Yeah.
Archon Fung:
... in our age of, I think I attribute a lot to polarization and partisanship, right. I mean, the idea of the Hatch Act is look, once you get elected, you're serving all of America and you've got to put your politics in a box and at least not use public resources to advance politics, your politics in any way. And who's going to take that idea seriously right now? Yeah.
Amanda Carpenter:
Just one thing that comes to mind. When I was working on the Hill, we had a staffer who got engaged to a lobbyist. He gave her a diamond ring, an engagement ring, like everybody does when they get engaged. She went to the ethics council on the Hill to say, "We're not married yet. Is this technically a gift I need to report?" And they said, "Yes, it is."
Archon Fung:
Yeah, it's a gift.
Amanda Carpenter:
She went and asked him, "How much did this ring cost?" so that she could probably report it? Which typically is maybe you share that information, but they didn't. And so she had to get the dollar value for it. And then you see Trump, what was it? It was reported recently, but it came up at the time, that Belgian diamond company gave him a beautiful ring, encrusted in diamonds. There was a tariff against the country. They gave him a ring, had 45 and 47 on it. Clearly not designed to be gifted to the government when it's perfectly designed for Trump. Then the tariff was lifted. I don't know. Nobody cares about that apparently.
Archon Fung:
He's probably going to give it to the Smithsonian, I imagine, right.
Amanda Carpenter:
He needs to give it back.
Stephen Richer:
Well, so that is one of the things that-
Amanda Carpenter:
Melt it down.
Stephen Richer:
... past presidents have done is they've taken some of those gifts and they've put them in their presidential libraries for the benefit of the general public, presumably. But I sort of wonder if that situation led to an awkward conversation between fiance and fiancee because if it's above $5,000, you have to declare it, but if it's not, and then you have to be honest, if you bought a lab-created diamond or something, which was totally what I wanted to do originally, but then-
Amanda Carpenter:
Sounds like free diamonds, baby. It's okay.
Archon Fung:
Yeah, I don't think so.
Stephen Richer:
So how much of this is just a culture? Because obviously that staffer you described, that was an embedded culture. It wasn't that you had to go through the metal detector in the morning when you entered the senator's office and beep, it flagged her ring and then you had to declare it. It's just she was sort of aware of it.
Archon Fung:
Definitely.
Amanda Carpenter:
Yeah, she was aware of it.
Archon Fung:
And the culture's not gone. I mean, when federal employees come to the Ash Center for a conference or anywhere, right, any academic institution or any institution, and the meals cost more than the federal regulations allow. It's a small amount of money. I think it's probably 40 or $50, maybe even less for some of these. And they have to make up the difference. That's part of the federal ethics regulation. In my view, that one is too constraining, but still it's there and people respect it and they abide by it, at least that's in my experience.
Amanda Carpenter:
Yeah, I remember when those rules came down, I think it was maybe in 2007 or 2008, we came to know it as the toothpick rule. Could you eat the food off a toothpick like an appetizer? That was probably okay. But if it required a fork and knife, it probably wasn't.
Archon Fung:
Wow.
Amanda Carpenter:
Though that's the way I was taught.
Archon Fung:
That's a good heuristic. I'd never heard that.
Amanda Carpenter:
Yeah. But the reason why we cared about it was one, because we wanted to do our jobs well. But at least for me, I was worried if I violated this and someone found it out and I was at a party where lobbyists happened to be paying for it, I would get in trouble. Like, maybe it would be written up in the paper and then I would have to pay a fine and I wouldn't be eligible for public service again. So these laws mattered because they were believed to have teeth.
Archon Fung:
Yeah.
Amanda Carpenter:
But now these laws are on the books and if they're not enforced and you see everyone above you walking all over them, why would the young staff who are coming up in this culture have any reason to abide by it?
Archon Fung:
Yeah. And for me, what I teach in political ethics to the master's students, a big part of it is a huge motivation for these constraints and these norms and these regulations is so that the public, we, in the public, can have confidence that you working in government or you're her president or senator or representative are there because you're doing your level best to serve our interests as Americans, not to line your pockets. And then as you say, the appearance of a conflict or a conflict of interest comes up is, "Oh, this thing may benefit me personally. Is that going to distort my judgment about what's good for America when I'm deciding on a regulatory license?" Or any number of issues. And so that's for me, a huge reason why these norms and regulations are so important is so that the 300 million of us Americans can have confidence that the people in public service are really there for public service, not to enrich themselves.
Stephen Richer:
So if we thought of corruption in this previous version, whatever it was, 1.0, 2.0, as not working for a political cause or a political activity while on the government clock, not accepting an inappropriate amount of in-kind services or foods or gifts, what are we talking about today? And maybe some concrete examples, because it seems like you can open the New York Times any day of the week and you can hear a corruption, at least adjacent story. And even in the chat box we see going here, we see Qatar playing. We see-
Archon Fung:
Hunter Biden.
Stephen Richer:
... growth of net worth. We see Hunter Biden using his influence or using his dad's reputation. If you could capture corruption as you're seeing it today, are there one or two or three examples?
Amanda Carpenter:
Yeah, I would say nepotism has always been a problem, but in terms of looking at the corruption in the Trump 2.0 era, it's been hard to categorize it and get your arms around it. But I can tell you the five categories that I tend to bucket themselves into. And largely I pick them because I think there's potentially recourse to claw the money back in these buckets. So maybe I'm not including everything, but these are the big ones where I think taxpayers have a legitimate complaint to pursue it and there's a potential for oversight later. So the first one is contracts. Like, all the no bid, shady federal government contracts that are being handed out right now that ultimately I think cheat the taxpayer because we're not hiring the most qualified people and not getting the best services that are possible. You can-
Archon Fung:
And the reflecting pool is not a lot of money, but it's captured the imagination in there.
Amanda Carpenter:
Yeah. The reflecting pool is the ultimate-
Archon Fung:
I mean, it is a lot of money, but not if you're the federal government.
Amanda Carpenter:
Absolutely. When people say, "Why does corruption matter to the taxpayer?" The corruption in the reflecting pool is the best example because everybody has seen it. This was a project that nobody asked for, that nobody wanted except for Trump because it was his little pet project. They hired a contractor through loose, shady connections that were not qualified for the job. They did not do the job. So who's paying for that? The taxpayer. It was supposed to cost a couple million dollars. Now it's $14 million. We're probably going to have to reline it three or four times over at this point. And then the cherry on top of that whole story is that the people who pointed out what a crappy job it was and happened to go down to the pool to look at the lining floating and maybe grab a piece of it, they were smeared, they were attacked, and some of them were arrested.
Archon Fung:
Charged, right. Yeah.
Stephen Richer:
Yeah.
Amanda Carpenter:
Charged.
Stephen Richer:
Okay. So I'm going to-
Amanda Carpenter:
And are still going through it and being targeted by the President for having the audacity to just point out that flaw. Just look at that flaw as a regular person. So that is just an amazing example.
Stephen Richer:
I'm sure we could have a entire reflecting pool of conversation. I went down there, I checked it out. I did not touch it, mostly because I'm grossed out by it. I never touched it before, so I didn't touch it. But bringing us back to the manifestations today of corruption, so you're saying these contracts as number one.
Amanda Carpenter:
Yeah. The no-bid contracts is number one. The second one is crypto. Crypto, the arrangement that they have established, that they have set up, it is the ultimate dark money machine where all kinds of shady, even foreign actors can just dump money into the President's family account. They are just dumping money. It's meant to not be traceable, not easily understood by the public. And we know from reporting that people who have donated, invested generously have gotten favors directly from the President. We are talking about pardons for the Binance founder. We're talking about SEC investigations that were lifted for the crypto billionaire, Justin Sun. We're talking about the UAE linked firms which generously invested in stablecoin.
And then after that investment was made, they got the ability to sell their chips in the way that they were seeking from the Trump administration. So you can connect those dots right there. In the crypto industry, because it's newly emerging, people don't totally understand it, what Trump and his family has done have made themselves both ... Like, it's a casino market. They're dealing out the policy and cashing in at the same time. So I mean, that could be an entire discussion in itself, but that's just number two. Number three-
Archon Fung:
I mean, a lot of that does feel quid pro quo, right. I mean, it's not just the appearance of corruption or the existence of a conflict, feels like a deal.
Amanda Carpenter:
Yeah. The arrangement itself is a scandal. The fact that they're raking in this money, I mean, we used to talk about things we used to care about. Dark money used to apply to super PACs. At least you could see the entity that was set up in that scenario. You could see they're doing political work. You can trace direct contributions, you can look them up in open secrets. This, nobody has any idea. And it is billions of dollars. Trump reported making 2.2 billion in 2025. Most of that is from crypto. So it's just like a dark money ATM machine. That's how I view it. So that's just number two. Number three are the slush funds. Everybody heard about the January 6th slush funds, Riot Reward, Thug Fund that they wanted to set up for the January 6th rioters. I do not believe that is dead. I think there's other settlements that have gone to other actors for unlawful action. If you look at Michael Flynn and others, so I don't think that issue is dead, but that's on my board. Number-
Archon Fung:
So that one's a little bit different because those are not enriching the President or his family directly. So how does that fit into your picture of corruption?
Amanda Carpenter:
Because I think that it's pretty easy to make the case that they're being paid off for helping the actors in the administration pursue their political goals.
Archon Fung:
Right.
Amanda Carpenter:
And so corruption doesn't always have to mean money. In my mind, if people are engaging in political action that benefits you and helps you entrench power especially, because I think that's a big element of the corruption. A lot of people do the corruption to cash out, but then they have to stay there. You don't amass all this power and do all this stuff just to give it up in the next election. The entrenchment always comes along.
Archon Fung:
Yeah. I mean, it's a kind of January 6th version of a political machine giving somebody a no-work job if they can round up a thousand votes for them in south side of Chicago or something back in the day.
Amanda Carpenter:
Yeah. And they could say, "That wasn't fraudulent and you were unfairly attacked by the government, and so here's a million dollars-
Archon Fung:
Yeah.
Amanda Carpenter:
... Go do it again." Right.
Stephen Richer:
Yeah. Although that feels different to me than, "Hey, you worked really hard on my campaign. I'm going to give you a position in the constituent services team in the field office." You could say that's maybe not how it should be. Maybe that should be open to the general public. And once you're in office, you have to almost have a competitive application process. But the reality is that happens a lot. Any congressional office often has, especially in the state, the home office, a lot of people who were foot soldiers on the campaign. This to me, especially because some of the things that are being asked for are just so outside the ordinary course of business and have a normal process. So if you're seeking restitution from the government or something like that, there is a normal process for that. And I think that's probably being circumvented.
Amanda Carpenter:
Yeah, but I think that the difference of what makes the January 6th payments so egregious, for example, is that the people who are receiving the payments clearly engaged in unlawful action. Like, people have a right to choose the people that they work for, especially in a personal office, even though it's unofficial, it's personal staff. Handing out money to people who were ruled by the courts in a process of engaging in lawful-
Stephen Richer:
Good distinction.
Amanda Carpenter:
... action crosses a different line.
Stephen Richer:
Okay. I-
Amanda Carpenter:
Okay. I got two more.
Stephen Richer:
Oh, all right.
Amanda Carpenter:
Two more left.
Stephen Richer:
We're free, so-
Amanda Carpenter:
Let me go quick.
Stephen Richer:
Yeah. So we've one, contracts-
Amanda Carpenter:
Fourth one-
Stephen Richer:
One, contract, two-
Amanda Carpenter:
Yeah. One is contracts, two is crypto.
Stephen Richer:
Two, crypto. Three, the slush funds.
Archon Fung:
The slush fund.
Amanda Carpenter:
Number four is gifts. The big diamond ring-
Archon Fung:
The jet.
Amanda Carpenter:
... the Qatari plane, the gifts that clearly potentially have some kind of corruptive influence and are not being donated to the benefit of the government, don't actually go to the government, can be designated for personal use, et cetera. And then number four, which is a bigger one potentially, is all the pay for play arrangements. And when I think of that, I'm primarily thinking about the pardon lobby that materialized in Washington in Donald Trump's second term where it appears that pardons are for sale. And the reporting on that is extensive and convincing.
Archon Fung:
Yeah. That has a little bit of a precedent. I mean, maybe not the mechanical aspect of it, the ATM aspect that we're seeing now, but during the Clinton administration, there were concerns that some of those pardons had relationships with the Clintons and their business interests and so on. So your concern in this moment is, it's more systematic and much larger? Is that-
Amanda Carpenter:
Definitely. More systematic, larger, and definitely, like, presidents have had controversial pardons and suffered backlash for it because the public perceived that as being wrong. But the reporting in that, I mean, Trump is ... Typically, it's suffered at the end of administrations where you always have that temptation from the presidents just to give a way of pardons. Like, you saw that with Mark Rich, Joe Biden with his son Hunter. But what appears to be different with Trump is that there are people with ties to the President who are assigning price tags essentially to the pardons and the lobbying industry that has cropped up.
And especially his growing interest in pardoning white collar financial crime. That seems something ... Like, Obama, sometimes there will be mass pardons, but it will be connected to some kind of policy, like, President Obama did with drug crime. Right. Like, okay, this is a policy campaigned on-
Archon Fung:
Right, right. Oversentencing drug crime. Yeah.
Amanda Carpenter:
... other people have processes. Trump has utterly destroyed the pardon office and there seems to be no rhyme or reason or defensible policy that's consistent that you can tie to the pardons.
Archon Fung:
Yeah. Your discussion of the first two, the reflecting pool, the no-bid contracts, and then the crypto highlighted for me, there's two different problems going on there. One is the money flows and the corruption. The second is the lack of information and the lack of transparency in the crypto, like, what's going on there feels like a really solid black box that's very difficult to peer in. And then with the reflecting pool and perhaps with other examples is it's active punishment for trying to blow the whistle or hold accountable the shoddy work that's going on, et cetera. So that second one is a kind of huge harm to democratic accountability efforts to hold power accountable.
Amanda Carpenter:
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I do think there's a lot of criticism for the Trump administration in that they're acting recklessly and maybe dumb. You get that word thrown around a lot, but they're really people who I think you have to think of them as, and I don't mean this as a compliment, but as a kind of political entrepreneur when it comes to the entrenchment and corruption. I mean, the fact that if you look back in the 2024 campaign, Donald Trump was originally a crypto skeptic. The SEC under Joe Biden was being pretty tough in the crypto industry as it was emerging. And somewhere in there, they realized that there was a huge opportunity that if they wanted to be the champion of crypto, there was a ton of money to be made. Not only was there a ton of money to be made, but there was a ton of money who were willing to donate to the political process to support their champion.
And so Trump gave a speech in Nashville that summer where he essentially said, "We are not going to prosecute these crimes. I am your guy. I am all in for this." And the crypto industry rallied behind him. And an element of that is just traditional politicking.
Archon Fung:
Right, right.
Amanda Carpenter:
You see a market, you want to go for it, but the promises to drop crimes, to pardon people who are charged with things like money laundering and drug trafficking around the world was really eye-opening at the time, but it flew completely under the radar because again, people, I think they make the industry more complicated than it should be, but this is just dark banking. That's it. You don't have to make it super complicated. That was pioneered by people that wanted to hide their money from governments. And listen, there's good reasons for that. I still got the conservative bones in my body. Nobody likes to pay taxes. I understand all that. But when it's people committing crimes that want to hide their money from the government, you should be very sensible of people that want to get involved in the industry.
Stephen Richer:
I appreciate that framework, those five buckets, and I think it's a good vehicle through which to read future New York Times stories. But I think the more interesting questions are, do people care and what can be done about that? But before we get to those, one more sort of table setting question, which is a number of people have likened this to past moments or to past quotes. Monty Merchie put in the chat, George Washington Plunkitt, a Tammany Hall person said, "I seen my opportunities and I took them." So what do you say to somebody who says, "Yeah, there's corruption. Welcome to government"?
Archon Fung:
Yeah.
Amanda Carpenter:
Again, I think this is happening so systemically on all levels that it is impossible to ignore. When Donald Trump was elected in the second term, we knew corruption was going to be a problem, but we imagined it on the scale looking back at his first term. I was like, "Okay, he's probably going to push investigations and he's probably going to try to extract support from companies in exchange for regulatory favors. And yes, pardons are going to be a problem." But again, what's happening with the crypto and just the solicitation of gifts and the poor delivery of government services that we're getting despite being promised that government spending was going to go down with DOGE. I mean, there's all the promises that you can line up. And DOGE was also another form of corruption where you just let somebody in with no qualification to start firing people willy-nilly who had expertise and probably did know how to solve some of these problems.
But you were seeing this show up in the polling. I though corruption was going to be a harder sell because it was going to be about these little issues that are like, "Oh, who cares about norms? Like, shut up about the Hatch Act." Right. Now you are seeing the Trump family rake in billions of dollars and people are like, "Why? Are you doing a good job for me?" And so corruption is starting to pop up in public polling, and I do not think it's going away. Not at all.
Archon Fung:
So in one piece that you wrote, you looked at Hungary and Orban. And in some of those, in Turkey as well, corruption became a big political problem because people felt like it was affecting their lives. Like, in a big construction boom, and the politician is paying people to make shoddy buildings and the concrete is a disaster. That affects me directly. A lot of these things seem very distant from people's lives, like a Qatari plane, like, who cares?
Stephen Richer:
Yeah. Or the ring.
Archon Fung:
Yeah.
Amanda Carpenter:
Yeah.
Stephen Richer:
The ring is not ... The nexus to making government services worse for the ring is pretty attenuated.
Archon Fung:
Yeah. And it doesn't affect my egg prices or what I'm paying at the pump. I mean, it might actually affect a food infection and the lettuce thing. But is there a case there or is this kind of corruption primarily about enrichment and so an unfairness issue rather than a services issue like it's hurting my life?
Amanda Carpenter:
Yeah, frankly, I mean, leave the politicking to the politicians and I think Democrats really believe you have to tie it to affordability. I don't really think so. I think most people, whether you're Republican, you're Democrat, whatever, you understand when you're getting ripped off. You understand when your public officials aren't working for you first. One of the weird ways you kind of see this materialize when people look at the Iran war, they don't understand why we're in this war, what they're getting out of it. And so they start to, for better or for worse, try to fill in the gaps with reasons why. And it's like, "Well, is he making money?" It's like, yes, he's making more money than any president has in history while he's in office. And so I can't tell you how voters are going to tie that together exactly, but I do believe there is concern.
And it's very clear that at least by Donald Trump's own standard, the promises that they set out are not being fulfilled. And so what are they doing? And I think people can very easily fill in those gaps when they see the numbers and the amount of wealth that is being generated by the people in power.
Archon Fung:
Yeah.
Stephen Richer:
Archon, what does the comparative politics literature say on that? Is that something that will drive electoral change? You guys have both mentioned Hungary. I think people are grabbing onto that, but that election was probably about many things. Some people cast as a referendum on Orban's corruption and the inability to get things done. We have a colleague here at the Ash Center, Archon, who says, "Berlusconi, everyone knew that he was fraudulent or that he was corrupt and that there was lots of pay for play stuff going on in the Italian government, but that wasn't what ultimately brought about his downfall." Do you have any sense of where the body falls writ large?
Archon Fung:
I don't. I know that in a Hungary case, the opposition very much campaigned on anti-corruption issues. And in other contexts as well, corruption can become a crystallizing issue for opposition politicians. Here, I worry that that's a little bit harder because of the high polarization. And so President Trump's supporters will say, "Yeah, there's lots of corruption and it's on all sides. So getting rid of him isn't going to help the corruption problem per se." So that's the polarized division thing I think may make the corruption as a campaign issue harder to stick, but I don't know. The future will tell.
Stephen Richer:
Okay. So let's take it into the arena where facts and law do seem to still matter, at least to an extent. Maybe not in elections or on Twitter or the like, but in courts. And I think a cynic, which I'm getting a sense of that from say Peter Goforth in the comments, which is, I don't know if we can move people on this. I don't know if we can convince them that this is completely out of scope of what's been done in the past and this isn't just your normal sort of Obama did this, Clinton did this, George W. Bush did this, and now Trump's doing this. So if you can't convince those people, then the only remedy is legal recourse. What is available there? And are people already suing on this or whatever?
Amanda Carpenter:
Yeah, I do think there's a lot of factors-
Archon Fung:
And does the immunity kind of provision ... And the president himself is not subject to a bunch of federal anti-corruption legislation and conflict of interest regulation. So yeah, what is the recourse, if any?
Amanda Carpenter:
Well, just on the political question about whether people will be animated by it. Again, I don't work for a political party or anything like that, but I can tell you, if you look at some of the Democrats on the campaign trail or positioning themselves particularly, I'm thinking of Jon Ossoff, he's testing out those messages and he's getting a good response. Chris Murphy in the Senate gave a lot of, I thought, really good hard-hitting speeches trying to build the case on it that did get some reach, which is hard. Working for previous US senators, it's hard to do. So I do think people are testing it. Go give them a look, see if you find it convincing or not. And so there are people in the minority party, I don't want to say Democrats, because it doesn't have to be partisan. Like, any Republican could grab this issue too, because I do think it is going to be so compelling.
There is the ability for oversight after the midterms because there's been absolutely no checks on this whatsoever. I mean, you think about the ballroom. Donald Trump went to Congress, asked for funding for the ballroom, completely bypassed Congress, went around to just grab the money from the Secret Service and National Parks anyway. There should be at least members of Congress who are interested in protecting their spending authority. I mean, that's a minor issue, but there's stuff like that where there could be bipartisan work just because Republicans in Congress did tell him they weren't going to fund it.
So there will be ability for some oversight after the midterms. I don't know where that's going to go, if it's going to be effective. Depends on if they get gavels or not. But one vector where I am interested in is you got to consider the fact that when it comes to bribery or corruption, it's not just done by one party. Donald Trump can put a for sale sign in front of the Oval Office, but these CEOs are lining up to pay their way in. You've seen Apple go there and give the gifts. So what is-
Stephen Richer:
That's a good point.
Amanda Carpenter:
What is up with that?
Stephen Richer:
It's two-way street. No, but I mean it takes two to tango. And now they might characterize it as like, "Hey, we didn't know this was an avenue through which we could exert influence. We're rational actors. We do what's best for our corporation and that this is now an avenue." I would say if it's unlawful, you still shouldn't do that. If it's just sort of wasn't kosher previously, then I think that's a different conversation.
Archon Fung:
Yeah. And we're responsible-
Amanda Carpenter:
But I think there is reporting-
Archon Fung:
... to our stockholders and we need the federal government to be nice to us.
Amanda Carpenter:
Yeah. I mean, that's a bad situation to be in. It makes me feel terrible as someone that believes in the free market. But yeah, they're allowed to do that. And a lot of CEOs will be like, "Oh, it's great. Donald Trump will talk to you." But if there is unlawful action, and I think there's threads to pull on there, state AGs have the ability to investigate. State crimes, if you are working for a corporation engaging in this kind of pay-to-play stuff, there is a vector to get the money back at least. And so I think state AGs could be a lot more animated or at least sending the message that we will look into and prosecute these kind of crimes. That's a big vector right there.
Stephen Richer:
But the target is, and I'm so glad you said this. We had someone write in before the show even started and said, "I'm worried that this will descend into a game for tit-for-tat if when the next Democratic administration comes in, they uncover this stuff and they start prosecuting people who were part of the Trump administration for some of this alleged corruption." But you can target the corporate side of it as well-
Amanda Carpenter:
Absolutely.
Stephen Richer:
... and then maybe it doesn't descend into such a political tit-for-tat game, but you still would presumably curb the corruption if those types of companies wouldn't do it no matter who's the next person in office.
Amanda Carpenter:
Yeah. And I think it's absolutely, just for effectiveness down the road, it is absolutely essential that there is a spotlight shined on that side of the deal in pressure and scrutiny so people know that they will be prosecuted if they break the law. Because quite frankly, one of the reasons we've been looking at civil disgorgement laws, which you people may understand, which means essentially it's a recourse to get the money back. Disgorgement is a terrible word, but that's what it is. Those are pardon proof. Donald Trump has, if you look at the reporting from people like Maggie Haberman and others, Wall Street Journal, Donald Trump has been talking about handing out pardons to anyone within 250 feet of the Oval Office, right, because I think they know what they're doing is unlawful, and I think they want a free pass to do it.
But anyone who profited from these ill-gotten gains, there is pardon-proof accountability that can be done to claw the money back. And I think there's a role for people in the states to start sending that message loud and clear to corporations say in California, in Virginia, who think that this is the new way to do business with the federal government. They may be getting away with it for now, but those crimes absolutely can be prosecuted later.
Archon Fung:
And so how would that process work for civil disgorgement or is it related to civil forfeiture, which is often levied on much more unfortunate kind of disadvantaged people in America? So how would it work exactly?
Amanda Carpenter:
Well, that's absolutely the model. I mean, the beauty of it is the laws are on the books already to do this. There are models to follow. They're established. It's not like, "Oh, people are inventing these new legal structures to go after Trump and isn't this retribution?" No, this is what happens. If you profit from ill-gotten gains, fraud, bribery, you have to give the money back. I mean, this is a long-established legal process. And so I think that could be done. But if there is accountability after the midterms, one thing that I think would be fabulous if there's some oversight to start auditing the White House. The Republicans, conservatives got a lot of energy and enthusiasm out of Audit the Fed. I was part, you know, I was excited about those ideas. I think we need to audit the White House and see-
Stephen Richer:
Remind us.
Amanda Carpenter:
... what money is being, where the money is going, who's paying it, and who's getting favored.
Archon Fung:
Who's getting it.
Stephen Richer:
I'm not doing this tongue-in-cheek to prove a point, but where did that end up, the Audit the Fed movement?
Amanda Carpenter:
I got to ... Well, what do you mean in terms of Ron Paul?
Stephen Richer:
Like, did that manifest in anything that brought more transparency to the Fed?
Amanda Carpenter:
Yes, I do believe it did.
Stephen Richer:
Okay. Then it is perhaps a good-
Amanda Carpenter:
I think Audit the White House is far easier to understand though.
Archon Fung:
Oh.
Stephen Richer:
Okay.
Archon Fung:
So do you have a ... I mean, I think you're right. The level of just money flows is historically unprecedented. That's the cliche that everybody's throwing around about a lot of things. But in this case, I think it's really true. In some administration, '28 or '32, if there's a kind of Watergate moment in which post-Watergate, all of these federal reforms on campaign finance and inspector generals and other things were done, are you starting to build a wishlist of legislation or regulation to bulletproof the federal government and the White House against this sort of thing in the future?
Amanda Carpenter:
Yes, but I don't think we have a full understanding of what problems are biggest to attack. I can tell you number one on my list, and probably is going to stay there for a long time, is the pardon authority has to be tightened up because that is effectively functioning as a legal shield for wrongdoing. Many times to benefit the President directly, whether that's politically, whether that's financially. But the pardoned power has been misused by presidents, as you guys have pointed out for quite some time. But the abuse now is on such a scale that were unimaginable and it actually increases the likelihood of future wrongdoing instead of providing mercy and amnesty for people who have expressed contrition. I think it's time to severely restrict it.
Archon Fung:
And that might be low-hanging fruit because by design, there's a huge amount of executive discretion on pardoned power. So there's a lot of latitude to tighten up if there's political will for that.
Stephen Richer:
Yeah. What would you say to a new administration? New president comes in, Republican or Democrat, and he says, "This doesn't strike me as the way that things should be done. What can we change?" And I guess baked into that question is this, like so many questions, say a culture issue or is this a law issue? Because we can fix law questions hopefully. I mean, that's very challenging in the federal context, but culture's even more challenging, potentially.
Amanda Carpenter:
I think it's a culture issue because we had laws previously that did work. Wasn't perfect. Always need reform, always need to be working on things. But you can't legislate decency, which is I think a lot of this comes down to, again, I still have in the back of my mind some of the ex-postings coming out of White House staff right now that are just ... I mean, they've always been, and the Truth Social posts, just the language that we use with each other. We have to put decent people in office then you don't have to worry so much about the corruption and the ethics laws. The ethics law should always be there as a reminder so you don't go near these lines. But I don't know what you do when you elect people who disrespect the laws in their entirety.
Stephen Richer:
Well, it sounds like the first thing you think we need to do is at least give the American people the chance to understand that it's happening, understand the scope of it, and then to exert moral condemnation. And so maybe you would say to that incoming president that it starts with that audit the White House, audit the government. Even if you're not going to retroactively prosecute any of these people, it at least needs to be documented the full breadth of everything that was done during this course of governance.
Amanda Carpenter:
Yeah, and I think that could potentially start off the midterms. I mean, there's no way to right the ship unless you clearly understand what went wrong and you explain to people why we have to make these changes to protect you. Not only the economy, our national security, our liberties, our freedom. I mean, so much of this, I mean, to the unlawful ICE deployments and the Americans that got killed as a result of that. I mean, there's so many things, like, I don't think it's difficult to explain to the regular person why it should matter to them. I understand it's an afterthought for many, but through a robust political process where there are people connecting with people every day and trying to earn their vote in a meaningful way, I don't think it's actually that difficult.
Archon Fung:
Yeah. I think you guys, you're both right. Culture and the norms are really, really important in rebuilding those. I can't remember quite the quote, but I think it was in the first Trump administration when he said, "I'm the President and I can't have a conflict of interest." So there's just a fundamental-
Amanda Carpenter:
Article II, I can do whatever I want.
Archon Fung:
... moral misunderstanding about what a conflict of interest is and who can have it and who can't. We all can have it. And so I think teaching people that and making it more of a public discussion and making an expectation of public leaders is really important. I don't know ... In this administration, part of what we ... We haven't talked about so much is kind of the brazenness of it. Prior administrations would've been, maybe they did things that were on the edge, but they knew it was on the edge and they felt bad about it and embarrassed and maybe tried to conceal it a little bit more. But here it's like, "No, it's my prerogative here to enrich myself," which feels a little bit different. Do you feel like it's more upfront in a way and less embarrassing?
Amanda Carpenter:
Yeah, I do. And one of the defining characteristics of Trump and how his presidency has unfolded is the shamelessness. And I don't know if that's directly a Trump thing or it's become more accepted because that's sort of the ethos of the internet where you can be your most bombastic self. And that is how you get engagement and attention and dominate that attention economy and backing down, apologizing, pivoting is a sign of weakness. It's a mix of those two things, but the good news culture can change again, hopefully for the better-
Archon Fung:
Hopefully.
Amanda Carpenter:
... and not for the worse.
Stephen Richer:
Okay. My last question is going to be unfair, and it's going to be a psychoanalysis question. Why is Trump doing this? He's in his 80s. He's very well off. He was well off before he entered the White House. His family's going to be fine. They're going to have all the money to do whatever they want. He's going to go down as one of the most consequential people in the world for the last 50, 100 years already. Why do you think this is?
Amanda Carpenter:
I mean, why did he want to build the biggest towers in New York? Why did he put his name on every building? Why has he always been this way? I mean, I don't understand, but I do think one of the biggest changes that really doesn't have to do a lot with the corruption, but does some, is that I think in the second Trump administration, they got a lot more interested in boosting his international standing, especially with the creation of the World Board of Peace where he gets to be the forever chairman and the direct dealing with global partners. I think there's something in trying to be bigger than America at this point that I think he and his family have been positioning towards. I can't give you the emotional motivation for that, but I do think that is why the corruption has gone a little bit more global and is part of the interest of crypto, especially.
Archon Fung:
Yeah, yeah.
Stephen Richer:
Yeah.
Archon Fung:
Wow.
Stephen Richer:
I mean, you just often can understand it a little bit more with some of these municipal corruption. You're not living this grand life sort of thing. $100,000 here, $100,000 there-
Archon Fung:
A trash contract, yeah.
Stephen Richer:
... has a material impact on what you will do post-elected office. I don't think that the President's life was necessarily going to change all that most post-election. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there's some grand plan that he has that he could only implement if he gets the $5 billion net worth.
Amanda Carpenter:
Or he gets the arch. The arch in the ballroom. I mean, it's all-
Archon Fung:
I don't know.
Amanda Carpenter:
... admire my greatness.
Archon Fung:
Yeah. All right. So my last question, Amanda, is, well, I guess twofold. One, what should people do? What would you ask ordinary voters? I mean, the crypto stuff, the pardon economy seems so up here. I think you're right, probably a lot of people are pretty angry about the unfairness and the corruption that's going on. So what would you ask people to do? And then maybe related to that, where do you see the hope in all of this that it won't just keep getting worse and worse and worse in upcoming administrations?
Amanda Carpenter:
Yeah, sure. I mean, there's always the standard stuff. Register to vote, obviously, make sure you have a plan to vote, call your congressman. But I believe be an online activist. Literally anybody can be ... Like, people make fun of keyboard warriors. Go do it. Actually do it. Go read the articles, get the subscriptions if you can. Post about it. It actually does make a difference if your local official hears it. Like, be a part of that noise. Yes, of course you can go join protests, but anybody can do that from the phone. There's a chance you're already doing it if you're listening to this podcast, but I'm just going to encourage you to, because I think there's people that downplay it. But all these officials, they read their comments. They read their comments. I know they do.
Archon Fung:
And they care. Yeah.
Amanda Carpenter:
So get in their mirror. Get in their mirror.
Stephen Richer:
Guilty. Guilty.
Archon Fung:
Guilty as charged.
Stephen Richer:
Okay. Well, thank you very much, Amanda. We really appreciate it. If people want to follow you, and this is a topic you continue to write about, continue to talk about, where should they go to follow you?
Amanda Carpenter:
I am more on Bluesky as Amanda Carpenter, but I'm also on X because that's where I feel like people need to hear some of these corruption messages, so you can get me either place.
Stephen Richer:
And you can go to protectdemocracy.org as well to see the organization's work, and you can also find some of Amanda's work through the Protect Democracy website. We appreciate everyone joining live today. Appreciate lots of the comments that came through. Hopefully we integrated a few of those. And then we appreciate those of you who are listening to this later. We will post this as always to YouTube and to all streaming platforms. We appreciate, in addition to Amanda, the team that puts this together, Ralph, Colette, Courtney, and Evelyn and Archon.
Archon Fung:
And thanks everyone for sticking with the show and through our 50th episode, and especially to the Ash team for making all of this possible. And thanks, Amanda, for spending some time with us and enlightening us about the level and dimensions of corruption that are happening right now in our democracy.
Amanda Carpenter:
You bet. Happy 50th.
Archon Fung:
Thank you.
Voiceover:
Thank you for listening to Terms of Engagement. Email us your questions, suggestions, or thoughts for future episodes. You can find an email address in the show notes below. See you next time.