Host Simone Leeper speaks with Mark Lee Greenblatt, Jodi Vittori and Kedric Payne to examine how corruption and abuses of power are eroding safeguards in government; how failures of accountability in Congress and the courts are weakening public trust; and what reforms could protect against corruption and conflicts of interest now and in the future.
Corruption defines both the perception and reality of government, eroding trust and even threatening national security. Today, the safeguards meant to keep our government accountable are failing. From the mass firing of inspectors general to congressional stock trading and Supreme Court ethics scandals, abuses of power are weakening public trust and raising fears that the U.S. could slide toward kleptocracy.
In this episode, host Simone Leeper speaks with Mark Lee Greenblatt, former Inspector General of the U.S. Department of the Interior; Jodi Vittori, Georgetown University professor and expert on corruption and national security; and Kedric Payne, Vice President and General Counsel at Campaign Legal Center. Together, they trace America’s long fight against corruption — from the founders’ earliest fears to Watergate reforms — and examine how today’s failures of accountability threaten American democracy. The episode closes with solutions for restoring integrity, eliminating conflicts of interest and rebuilding trust in American government.
Timestamps:
(00:05) — Why did Trump fire 17 inspectors general?
(07:36) — How has corruption shaped U.S. history?
(11:14) — What reforms followed Watergate?
(18:22) — Why does corruption feel worse in daily life now?
(23:01) — How did Trump weaken watchdog offices and ethics enforcement?
(28:47) — Why does congressional stock trading undermine trust?
(33:58) — What do Supreme Court ethics scandals reveal?
(39:59) — Could the U.S. slide toward kleptocracy?
(46:04) — How does corruption threaten national security?
(56:57) — What reforms could restore accountability and integrity?
Host and Guests:
Simone Leeper litigates a wide range of redistricting-related cases at Campaign Legal Center, challenging gerrymanders and advocating for election systems that guarantee all voters an equal opportunity to influence our democracy. Prior to arriving at CLC, Simone was a law clerk in the office of Senator Ed Markey and at the Library of Congress, Office of General Counsel. She received her J.D. cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center in 2019 and a bachelor’s degree in political science from Columbia University in 2016.
Mark Lee Greenblatt is an expert on government ethics and compliance, an attorney and author. Most recently, he served as Inspector General for the U.S. Department of the Interior. His work bolstered the integrity of the agency’s programs, rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in the Department’s $10 billion in grants and contracts and $12 billion in natural resource royalties. Mark was elected by the 74 Inspectors General to serve as the Chairman of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency in 2022. He previously served in leadership roles at the U.S. Department of Commerce Office of Inspector General and the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. He also served as an investigative counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice. He clerked for U.S. District Judge Anita Brody and was a litigator in two international law firms. Mark is the author of Valor, which tells untold stories of 21st century American soldiers, sailors and Marines who faced gut-wrenching decisions to overcome enormous odds. He is a frequent speaker at industry events, and he regularly appears in the news media. He graduated from Columbia University School of Law, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone scholar, and he earned his undergraduate degree from Duke University.
Jodi Vittori is an expert on the linkages of corruption, state fragility, illicit finance and U.S. national security. She is a Professor of Practice and co-chair of the Global Politics and Security program at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. Jodi is also an associate fellow with RUSI’s Centre for Finance and Security and was previously a non-resident fellow with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Before joining the Georgetown University faculty, she was the U.S. Research and Policy Manager for Transparency International’s Defense and Security Program and a senior policy advisor for Global Witness. Jodi also served in the U.S. Air Force; her overseas service included Afghanistan, Iraq, South Korea, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, and she was assigned to NATO’s only counter-corruption task force. She was an Assistant Professor and military faculty at the US Air Force Academy and the National Defense University. Jodi is also a founder and co-moderator of the Anti-Corruption Advocacy Network (ACAN), which facilitates information exchange on corruption-related issues amongst over 1,000 participating individuals and organizations worldwide. She is a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy and received her PhD in International Studies from the University of Denver.
Kedric Payne leads the government ethics program at Campaign Legal Center, where he works to strengthen ethics laws and hold public officials accountable at the federal, state and local levels. He conducts investigations into government corruption and initiates legal actions against officials who violate the law. At CLC, Kedric has been at the forefront of advancing reforms on issues such as congressional stock trading, Supreme Court ethics enforcement, executive branch conflicts of interest, and state ethics commission autonomy. His legal work and analysis have been featured in major media outlets. He has also testified at congressional hearings on government ethics and accountability. Before joining CLC, Kedric built a broad legal career across all three branches of the federal government and in private practice. He began as a litigator at Cravath and later practiced political law at Skadden. He went on to serve as Deputy Chief Counsel at the Office of Congressional Ethics and as a Deputy General Counsel at the U.S. Department of Energy, where he advised on federal ethics laws. Earlier in his career, he clerked for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Links:
Understanding Corruption and Conflicts of Interest in Government – CLC
Holding Government Officials Accountable for Unlawful Conflict of Interest Violations – CLC
Ethics Pledges by Trump Cabinet Draw Questions and Skepticism – NY Times
CLC Sues to Stop Elon Musk and DOGE’s Lawless, Unconstitutional Power Grab – CLC
Elon Musk Stands to Gain Even More Wealth by Serving in Trump’s Administration – CLC
Is Musk Using the FAA to Benefit Himself and His SpaceX Subsidiary, Starlink? – CLC
Have Wealthy Donors Bought the Trump Administration? – CLC
How a Second Term Introduces More Conflicts of Interest for Trump – CLC
CLC's Kedric Payne on Trump's Brazen Removal of Nation’s Top Ethics Official – CLC
The public won't get to see Elon Musk's financial disclosures. Here's why that matters. – CBS
Justice Clarence Thomas Should Be Held Accountable Under Federal Ethics Law – CLC
Judicial Conference Decision Lowers Ethics Standards for Federal Judges and U.S. Supreme Court – CLC
Improving Ethics Standards at the Supreme Court – CLC
The Justice Department Is In Danger Of Losing Its Way Under Trump – CLC
Congress Has an Ethics Problem. Now It’s Trying to Get Rid of Ethics Enforcement – CLC
A Win for Ethics: CLC, Partners Succeed in Preserving Office of Congressional Conduct – CLC
Crypto Political Fundraising Raises Questions About Senate Ethics Committee Efficacy – CLC
Stopping the Revolving Door: Preventing Conflicts of Interest from Former Lobbyists – CLC
The Trump Administration Has Opened the Door to More Corruption – CLC
Solving the Congressional Stock Trading Problem – CLC
About CLC:
Democracy Decoded is a production of Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization dedicated to solving the wide range of challenges facing American democracy. Campaign Legal Center fights for every American’s freedom to vote and participate meaningfully in the democratic process. Learn more about us.
Democracy Decoded is part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what’s broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.
Mark Greenblatt: I said, " Mike, I was just fired." And he said, " Me too." And that's when I knew this was going to be not just one or two people. This is going to be a bloodbath.
Simone Leeper: This is Mark Greenblatt. At the beginning of 2025, he was serving as the inspector general of the U. S. Department of the Interior, the head official assigned to weed out any corruption, fraud, waste, or mismanagement, and a department of 70, 000 employees. Then at the end of Trump's first week back in office, he got an email.
Mark Greenblatt: I received an email at 7: 30 at night that said, due to changing priorities, my position as IG at the Department of the Interior had been terminated, effective immediately. " Thank you for your service."
Simone Leeper: The former inspector general's first call was to a fellow inspector general, who confirmed he had just been fired as well. When the smoke cleared, Trump had fired 17 inspectors general from various agencies.
Mark Greenblatt: It was absolutely disorienting. It was a shock. 23 years of dedicated public service where all I'm trying to do was represent the American taxpayer. It was a punch in the gut. I'm not going to lie.
Simone Leeper: Inspectors general are explicitly independent watchdogs who work on behalf of the American people to hold government officials accountable. Politics and elections shouldn't affect their jobs. Mark Greenblatt, in fact, had been appointed by President Trump during his first term. Something very unusual was happening.
Mark Greenblatt: These positions are designed to be apolitical. If we introduce political actors into those inspector general positions, that is to the detriment of the American people, as well as Congress and the administration, because we won't know whether their reports and findings are based on the merits or based on their desire to achieve a political outcome.
Simone Leeper: Several of the fired former inspectors general joined a lawsuit against the administration. They asked a judge to reinstate them on the grounds that Congress requires a president to give 30 days' notice before firing an inspector general. Trump gave no notice at all. Mark Greenblatt isn't a party to that lawsuit, so he could speak freely to us about what he saw as the consequences of the firings. His biggest concern? That any of the Trump administration's replacements for the inspectors general might be seen as partisan political actors.
Mark Greenblatt: The impact of the collective 73 offices of inspector general two years ago, it was $ 93 billion in potential savings. The benefits to having an independent inspector general rooting out corruption and waste, fraud, and abuse is that you know you're getting a fair shake. The American people can rest assured that whatever findings and recommendations come from that oversight, be it an audit, inspection, evaluation, or an investigation, it's going to be fair.
On the flip side, if you have someone who's perceived to have their thumb on the scale in favor of a particular outcome, that's going to undermine the credibility of that work, and that's a key concern for us here. What is the future of that oversight going to look like? Is it going to be fair, objective, and independent? Are they going to be watchdogs, or are they going to be lapdogs? That is the key question for the American public going forward.
Simone Leeper: Avid listeners of Democracy Decoded might have noticed some similarities between the beginning of this episode and the start of our second episode from this season, which also featured the dismissal of an independent government official. That's because these dismissals aren't just isolated incidents. They're part of a larger, disturbing trend.
In the first year of Trump's second term, we have seen the systematic dismantling of many anti- corruption guardrails by the executive branch, guardrails that were designed to protect the integrity of our system of government. When polled, Americans historically haven't thought of their country as suffering much corruption. Protections here have been some of the best in the world for a long time.
But in recent years, that trend has begun to shift, and the change has accelerated during Trump's second term. The deterioration of many of the safeguards of our democracy has created a ripple effect that many Americans are now feeling in their daily lives. I'm Simone Leeper, and this is Democracy Decoded, a podcast where we examine our government and discuss innovative ideas that can lead to a stronger, more transparent, accountable, and inclusive democracy.
I work for Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to solving the wide range of challenges facing American democracy. This season on Democracy Decoded, we're focusing on acute threats to our system of government. Safeguards at the core of our democracy are being challenged or ignored, threatening our very form of governance.
Today, we're examining what happens as a result. When enforcement bodies are dismantled and conflicts of interest among elected officials go unresolved, corruption can thrive. And while corruption, in and of itself, is bad enough, another concern is how it might eventually pave the way for the dissolution of our very democracy. But let's back up. For as chaotic as the current moment feels, concerns over integrity and corruption have a long history in America. They go to the very founding of our country.
Jodi Vittori: The United States is really unique, because issues of corruption, anti- corruption go all the way back to the Articles of Confederation and our Constitution.
Simone Leeper: This is Jodi Vittori. She's the co- chair of the Global Politics and Security concentration at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. She's also an assistant fellow at a British military think tank called the Royal United Services Institute. Her academic areas of specialty are corruption and national security.
Jodi Vittori: The Emoluments Clause, which was in both the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution, this idea that U. S. leaders cannot take foreign gifts. Our U. S. Founding Fathers were very concerned that their officials not be easily bribed. Why did the Founding Fathers care about that? They had seen these cases, like you see in bad Hollywood movies, where you have some sort of foreign potentate brings a treasury chest full of gold, and then the foreign potentate does what they want.
Simone Leeper: This word corruption gets thrown around a lot, and usually for cases more subtle than a treasure chest exchange. So we asked Jodi for a definition.
Jodi Vittori: From a political science perspective, there is not one definition of corruption, but the most common one we use is the abuse of entrusted power for private gain.
Simone Leeper: That succinct description will come in handy. A government official has power entrusted to them by the public. Corruption is when they leverage that position to benefit themselves personally.
Jodi Vittori: And it's been around in the United States for well over a century as well. It's not a new definition that's being used.
Simone Leeper: But corruption is and always has been a moving target. Opportunists are crafty. And when the government spends money, people go to lengths to try to get a piece.
Jodi Vittori: In the Civil War, every bottom- feeder for procurement came out to provide uniforms and shoes and stuff, and there were huge corruption scandals, and there was a 1, 600- page congressional report and major reforms. When patronage got too bad in the modern system, then you get the Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883 and its follow- ons to clean up the civil service, which is incredibly important to having a democratic government.
Simone Leeper: So in the 1800s, Congress stepped in to make sure government contracts and government jobs were being assigned ethically. Nearly a century later, Congress had to respond to another scandal, Watergate.
Jodi Vittori: We get a lot of campaign finance reforms out of that because of the money in politics, the slush funds for the Nixon campaign, and so forth. We also get the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act out of that. It was the first law in the world to make it illegal to bribe somebody else's politicians, somebody else's leaders.
Simone Leeper: The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act was a huge development at the time. Before the FCPA, U. S. companies could write off foreign bribes as a business expense. Starting in 1977, the U. S. not only took those bribes off the table, it pressured other countries to pass similar laws so that companies in Europe and elsewhere didn't have a competitive advantage over American companies.
Jodi Vittori: This is where we get things like the OECD Anti- Bribery Convention that made it illegal around the world to bribe other people's politicians. And eventually, we'll get the UN Convention against Corruption.
Simone Leeper: In short, if you, as an American, perceived your country as strong against corruption, it's not merely patriotic bias. The United States genuinely has been a leader on the world stage for generations. Transparency International, a good governance organization, polls people around the world each year about corruption, asking how corrupt they think their country is. For years, Americans' responses routinely put their country among the 20 best in the world on matters of corruption.
Jodi Vittori: The U. S. at the forefront of these issues, however, really starts to stumble and degrade starting about 2010. At the same time, we get Citizens United. A lot of these rules and legislation get hung up in courts or the rules are very much watered down during this time. And so, you have this sort of gradual decline, kind of like the Hemingway quote from The Sun Also Rises where the guys ask, " How did you go bankrupt?" And he says, " Gradually and then quickly." In many ways, this is what happens in the United States.
Simone Leeper: By the 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index, Americans had become more pessimistic about corruption. We're now down to 28th in the world, and slipping, compared with other countries.
Jodi Vittori: I think this is what the American people are kind of seeing. They don't necessarily know that corruption is defined as the abuse of a trusted authority for private gain, but they get a feeling that something's not right. They can see how their quality of life now, particularly in more rural areas, looks very different than what it did even 20 or 30 years ago.
The jobs aren't as good. The roads are full of potholes. The schools aren't as good. You're lucky to have a rural hospital. You can feel those things without having a fancy PhD and a fancy definition, and I think this is what the American people are often responding to. You start to see this degradation in anti- corruption institutions, anti- corruption norms. You see the United States's score falling in the Corruption Perceptions Index over this time. And then starting January 20th of this year, it just falls off a cliff.
Simone Leeper: This gradual- then- sudden erosion is why anti- corruption experts like Jodi got so concerned when they saw the Trump administration's mass firing of 17 inspectors general from key government agencies. Those are the very people who scrutinize billions of dollars' worth of contracts and ask, " Who benefits from this spending?" In the past, we've relied on Congress and the courts to step up to check the executive branch, but as we'll learn, they also have their flaws right now.
Jodi Vittori: In Trump’s first campaign, if you remember, one of his major campaign arguments was drain the swamp, which is ultimately an anti- corruption campaign platform.
Simone Leeper: The 2016 campaign feels like a lifetime ago now, but it is worth remembering that Trump launched his political career in part with a promise to clean up self- dealing in Washington, D. C., to go after powerful people who abuse positions of trust for private gain.
Jodi Vittori: And he came in somewhat strong with some ethics requirements, for example, five- year lobbying bans, that looked good at the outset. There was some hope. That degrades pretty quickly.
Simone Leeper: By the middle of Trump's first term, it was clear that drain the swamp is a slogan reserved for his opponents, not for his friends and donors.
Jodi Vittori: Especially as we get to the last couple of years, we have a high degree of conflicts of interest coming in. Everything on the good governance, anti- corruption side, all of those institutions are under strain.
Simone Leeper: I want to bring my colleague Kedric Payne into this discussion.
Kedric Payne: When a government official comes into public service, they are supposed to serve the public interest. So anything that distracts from that interest is a conflict of interest. And typically, you will see that there are conflicts with financial interests or with wealthy special interests.
Simone Leeper: Like me, Kedric is an attorney at Campaign Legal Center. He leads our efforts around government ethics, working to strengthen federal, state, and local ethics laws. Like Jodi, he doesn't see corruption as an abstraction, but as a grave threat to security and democracy.
Kedric Payne: The average person has to care about corruption at the highest level, because sooner or later, this corruption will also trickle down to the state and the local level. If you have a tone set at the top that ethics is not a priority and that public officials can focus on their own personal profit and not public service, the public will lose trust in government, and our entire democracy is chipped away at by this improper conduct.
When it comes to fighting corruption in the government, especially in the executive branch, there are all of these mechanisms that are set up immediately following Watergate, and Trump has directly attacked each one of those enforcement mechanisms. First, he attacked the inspectors general. Trump removed the heads of these offices without cause and without following the law, which requires a 30- day notice to Congress.
Trump also removed the head of the Office of Government Ethics. This is the office in charge for administering the ethics compliance program across the entire executive branch. Without that head in place, you fall into a tone in the government where ethics are not prioritized, and you have the ability for many agency officials to completely ignore the conflict of interest laws.
And then also, Trump removed the head of the Office of Special Counsel. This is the person who is in charge of making sure that political appointees are not engaged in political or campaign activity while working for the taxpayers. It is a very important position that is sometimes overlooked, but it cannot be overstated how important it is to make sure that you don't have officials tied to administration also campaigning for other political officials.
Simone Leeper: The tone Kedric is talking about in which ethics rules are optional, it can have immediate consequences. Under Trump, it means key government positions are staffed by people plucked straight from industries they are supposed to regulate.
Kedric Payne: For example, about 21 former lobbyists are in the administration now. You usually wouldn't see this type of situation, because there are rules in place to make sure that you don't have people leaving the industry and then coming back to work in the federal government that regulates that exact same industry. However, the Trump administration does not have the same ethical standards that we've seen in the past.
Trump has attacked the parts of the government that are designed to fight corruption. The part of the DOJ that is there to fight against corruption at the state and local level, the public integrity unit, has been dismantled, and you also have a policy within the Department of Justice that has deprioritized enforcing laws related to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the Foreign Agent Registration Act. All of that means that corruption that comes from foreign parties as well as domestic activity have been put into a category where there's lack of enforcement.
Simone Leeper: A healthy response to an administration that fires watchdogs and installs corporate lobbyists might come from Congress or from the courts, but remember that Trump got elected at a moment when the country's defenses against corruption were weakening, and a quick glance at the legislative and judicial branches suggests that they too have their share of people using positions of public trust for private gain.
Kedric Payne: When you look in the legislative branch, we see conflicts of interest with members of Congress who own and trade stocks that are directly tied to decisions that they are making as lawmakers who control and have oversight over these various industries.
Simone Leeper: Once again, Kedric Payne.
Kedric Payne: It is helpful to understand the long saga of congressional stock trading, and it goes back decades. In the 1970s, it was agreed that the public has a right to know what stocks any public official owns. And annually, they will report when they traded those stocks, but that was just too delayed in providing information to the public.
In 2012, the STOCK Act was passed, and what it required is that if you own stocks, you have to disclose any trades within 45 days of that trade. However, what we are now seeing is the STOCK Act does not truly provide the accountability that is necessary. Even if you violate the STOCK Act by not reporting your stock trade on time, you only face a $ 200 penalty. That is a small, nominal penalty that does not discourage someone from completely hiding from the public whether or not they traded a stock, and then it keeps everyone in the dark as to potential conflicts of interest and potential insider trading.
The appearance that you are trading these stocks because you know something that the public does not know is so large that there has to be a law that bans the ownership of individual stocks. It just seems as though the members of Congress who are trading stocks are doing this because they're so focused on their own profits and their own financial well- being that they're not prioritizing the public interest, or at least that's the appearance of it. As a result, the STOCK Act is not as effective as it should be by merely requiring disclosure, and there's a need for a law that restricts the ownership of such stocks.
Simone Leeper: Members of Congress who may be trading stocks with inside knowledge are one thing. At least you theoretically can vote them out, not so with another branch of government. When reporters found out that U. S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, for 20 years, had been accepting lavish gifts from benefactors, a $ 500,000 trip to Indonesia, an extended cruise to New Zealand, use of a private jet, he didn't face any real sanctions.
Kedric Payne: We are also seeing that there are conflicts of interest within the U. S. Supreme Court. There have been multiple scandals that have come up over the past few years where members of the court have received gifts and other special benefits from wealthy special interests, and those parties that have provided those benefits are either directly or indirectly tied to parties that appear before the court.
With the Justice Thomas situation, you have undeniable evidence that he received gifts, which included the payment of tuition for a relative, and also the purchase of the home in which his mother lives. Yet, there was no enforcement. So the pure takeaway of the Justice Thomas ethics scandal is that there is no enforcement of ethics rules within the court.
First, you would expect that the members of the court would be well aware of the ethics rules and would try to avoid even the appearance of violation of those rules. Second, when you do have a potential violation, you would expect that you could have an investigation, and that the public would be presented with the facts to know whether or not something did go wrong, and what we've seen is that the court does not seem committed to clearing the public record to let the American people know if, in fact, these violations have occurred.
Simone Leeper: So where does all of this leave us? When we're seeing conflicts of interest, ethics violations, and corruption across all three branches of government, what's the outcome?
Kedric Payne: One of the key principles of our democracy is that we have checks and balances that ensure that the different branches of the government are held within the limits of the authority that they should have. The current breakdown of ethics norms challenges that, because not only do you have formal checks and balances, but you have informal checks and balances. The ethics norms are part of those informal checks.
It is expected that a president will follow certain ethics traditions so that they can avoid the political pressure and the public pressure that could distract them from achieving their agenda, but we are currently in a situation where the president has no problem with dealing with the ethics scandals that follow all of his financial interests that are tied up with his official acts, and he is still able to push through his political agenda. When a person is able to do both, to have ethics scandals and to have legislative success, then you have no check, no balance, and you have a deterioration of our democracy.
Simone Leeper: Here's Georgetown Professor Jodi Vittori once again. She is concerned about the possibility that the U.S. could slide into a kleptocracy, which is essentially a government by thieves. The mechanism for this is what's called state capture, when corrupt officials bend the government at large toward their private gain. It sometimes happens to democracies.
Jodi Vittori: In a state capture situation, you need impunity. And so, that impunity, you need to stay in government. So you're going to start playing with the governing system itself to make sure you stay in government, because you don't want to go to jail, and you're going to both enable illegal activity, but take what was illegal activity or should be illegal activity and legalize it for your own benefit and for those of your friends. In a big economy like the United States or China, you can have these massive corruption scandals, but the normal person may not feel it. In a situation of state capture, the corruption has become so large that the average person can't miss it anymore.
Simone Leeper: Grand corruption of this sort may start as an economic crime. But to keep it going, officials also have to make sure they hold power. That means preventing people from voting freely.
Jodi Vittori: You need to make sure that the government works on your behalf. So you can't have completely open and free and fair elections. You can have some level of elections. We see elections in Russia, for example, but you don't want the free and open elections, because you might get voted out of office, especially if you're stealing things blind, and then you go to jail, and you don't want that. You lose your money, et cetera.
So you need to undermine democracy itself. You need to undermine the rule of law to make sure you and your cronies have a level of impunity, either officially, by taking things that were illegal and making them legal, or just not prosecuting criminal activity.
Simone Leeper: Impunity isn't just for front- end protection. Trump, for instance, has been granting federal pardons to his donors. An analysis by ABC News found that of the 60 pardons Trump offered in the first four months of his second term, at least a dozen went to supporters who collectively had donated millions to his reelection efforts. But the erosion of domestic law isn't the only concern when a government tilts towards kleptocracy.
Jodi Vittori: National security also gets to be a really, really big issue. In foreign policy, we talk about the national interest. Most international relations frameworks and theories assume that, on some level, what the state is doing is about the national interest. It's about the good of the citizenry in the country. But in a situation of state capture, the national interest is only a secondary concern, if it's a concern at all. It's all about what do those in power get, and how does it benefit them? Everything is very transactional. So in a society where the national interest is secondary or not important, very rapidly, issues of national security become a problem.
Simone Leeper: This is partly why experts are alarmed at Trump's use of cryptocurrency. He issued a meme coin that people could buy and enrich Trump by driving up the price of the coin. Trump's stake in that crypto venture is now worth billions. The purchases of the meme coin are effectively gifts to President Trump, and they're untraceable. They're a close modern analogy to that treasure chest gift the Founders worried about hundreds of years ago.
Kedric Payne: One example of how Trump appears to be using the presidency for his own personal profit is the gift of the jet from Qatar.
Simone Leeper: Again, Kedric Payne of Campaign Legal Center. He's talking about the luxury Boeing 747 the nation of Qatar gifted to the White House, near the start of Trump's second term. Senator Chuck Schumer called it the largest foreign bribe in modern history.
Kedric Payne: It's a clear example of a foreign country giving a gift to a president, which flies in the face of the Constitution, which prohibits gifts from a foreign country to the president. Now, it may be a situation where the transaction has been cleverly arranged in a way that it's going through different entities and it doesn't seem to be a direct gift. But at the end of the day, the public sees that this is a benefit that the president is getting that has nothing to do with the public interest.
When you have this type of corruption happening in broad daylight on the front page of the paper, and the highest elected official in the nation does not seem to care, you know that you are in a slippery slope. Unlike any other president in modern history, Trump has maintained his ties with his family company, and that family company has engaged in business activity that is directly or indirectly connected to decisions that Trump is making as president.
We see this most frequently in the investments that Trump has in the cryptocurrency industry. He has had different situations where people who have purchased his crypto meme coin have been able to have special access to him. He has also allowed his company to enter deals with people that his administration has released from investigation under the SEC, and it appears as though he is trying to make sure that the crypto industry that he's invested in is also benefiting and prospering.
He has asked that Congress provide him with the legislation that would help stablecoin, which he's invested in, prosper, and all of these different decisions make it look as though Trump is trying to profit from the presidency. We also have examples where the president's company has engaged in real estate deals with various foreign governments and foreign entities at the same time that he oversees handling policy with these governments, and it appears as though he is trying to have these companies think that they need to promote goodwill with him financially in order to get goodwill with the country politically. All of these situations make it appear that Trump is using the presidency for his own personal profit.
Simone Leeper: With Congress and the courts in a permissive mood, it's difficult for Americans to hold a president to a higher standard. But in a democracy, there are always tools to engage.
Kedric Payne: What can be done about this is to have the public put more pressure on the president. In the past, presidents have tried to avoid even the distraction of a scandal involving their financial interests to get in the way of their policy and their agenda.
However, Trump has not had to make that decision between a distraction of a scandal versus pushing through his agenda. If the public puts pressure on their representatives and on their other elected officials, then we can have a situation where the president knows that the political pressure and the public pressure will keep him from profiting off of the presidency.
Simone Leeper: Campaign Legal Center has also been pushing for solutions that would meaningfully prevent this or any other president from using the office for private gain. We've called on Congress to pass laws to ban former lobbyists from holding high government office, and we've called for the appointment of nonpartisan, experienced officials who will enforce ethics and transparency laws. Those officials would include a director of the Office of Government Ethics and inspectors general.
Mark Greenblatt: The thing that keeps me up at night is the politicization of the inspector general community. That, to me, is the thing that every American should be concerned about.
Simone Leeper: Here again is Mark Greenblatt, the former inspector general for the Department of the Interior.
Mark Greenblatt: The concern here under this president, but any president, is the weaponization of those offices such that they can literally grind the agency to a halt, be it through audits on sensitive programs or investigations of political administration officials.
Simone Leeper: We asked the former inspector general why he thought Trump had fired him. He had been a Trump appointee after all. He said the charitable interpretation was that the president had real reservations about his ability to do the job.
Mark Greenblatt: The less charitable interpretation, which many of his critics have raised, is that this is an attempt to undermine the accountability mechanisms throughout the federal government so that he doesn't have obstacles in his way in terms of remaking the federal government, that the IGs would be early speed bumps, if you will. The critics would argue that he is trying to undermine that mechanism to the greatest extent possible. And by firing some of the heavyweights in the inspector general cadre, he's done just that.
Simone Leeper: The American fight against corruption dates back to the very founding of the country. What's a king anyway, but someone who uses a position of power unilaterally for private enrichment? The Founders knew that without protections against corruption, we effectively wouldn't have a democracy. Today, as each branch of our government falls into more permissive ethical standards, as lawmakers trade individual stocks, as Supreme Court justices take all- expenses- paid vacations, they put our very system of democracy at risk.
But the story of America, as we heard today, isn't fixed in the past. It's a process of constant vigilance and response. Amid patronage scandals, amid Watergate, Americans have found ways to address corruption. And in so doing, the United States became a world leader against corruption. That challenge finds us again today, and it starts with an honest reckoning of the issues we face.
Next time on Democracy Decoded, we'll cover executive overreach and how it, like corruption, can lead to a more authoritarian form of government. This season of Democracy Decoded is produced by JAR Audio for Campaign Legal Center. We're a nonpartisan legal organization dedicated to solving the wide range of challenges facing American democracy.
We fight for every American's freedom to vote and participate meaningfully in the democratic process, particularly Americans who have faced political barriers because of race, ethnicity, or economic status. During this pivotal moment for our country, it is critical that Campaign Legal Center has the support it needs to continue to fight on behalf of the American people.
Your tax-deductible donation can directly fund our efforts to do just that. If you would like to support our work, just go to campaignlegal.org and click on the Donate button.
Special thanks to our guests, Mark Greenblatt, Jodi Vittori, and Kedric Payne. I'm your host, Simone Leeper. Thanks so much for listening. If you learned something new today, you can find us on your podcast platform of choice, and hit Subscribe to get updates as we've released new episodes.
Leading the production for Campaign Legal Center are Casey Atkins, multimedia manager; Mannal Haddad, senior manager for strategic communications and marketing; and Madeleine Greenberg, communications associate. This podcast was produced by Sam Eifling and Ebyan Abdigir, and Reaon Ford. Edited and mixed by Luke Batiot.
Democracy Decoded is a member of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts dedicated to engaging in civil discourse, inspiring civic engagement, and exploring the future of our democracy. You can learn more at democracygroup.org.