Trump Looting Of US Treasury Officially Reaching ‘Vault In Die Hard’ Levels Of Thieving

It seems like just a few days ago that we wrote about an effort by certain senators to grift millions of dollars out of the Treasury as “compensation” for Special Counsel Jack Smith looking (rightfully, we should emphasize) at their phone records as part of his investigation into Trump’s January 6 attempted coup.

That’s because it was just a few days ago that we wrote about this. In the Trump era, the amount of grift, chicanery, legerdemain, jiggery-pokery, crookedness, and flat-out hanky-panky being used by Trump allies to suck all of America’s money out of our Treasury like a Galactus-sized Roomba is so vast and so constant that we cannot keep up. Oh, we wrote about one scheme on Monday? Well, now it is Saturday, a dozen new schemes by Trump insiders to clean out America’s bank accounts have emerged, and there will be several more by the time we finish typing this sentence.

Here is a big one, courtesy of ProPublica, which is doing some of the best journalism of the Trump era. It involves Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, a Republican consultant who worked on her last campaign for South Dakota governor, and a $220 million taxpayer-funded ad campaign from DHS that skipped the federal government’s normal competitive bidding process because the agency deemed it part of the “national emergency” at the southern border.

Oh, did we mention that the Republican consultant, Ben Yoho, is married to fascist Chatty Cathy doll Tricia McLaughlin, who serves as Noem’s chief spokesperson at DHS? Well, consider it mentioned.

Do all involved know how shady it is? We think so. Here is how ProPublica described a recent shoot for an ad that featured Noem riding a horse around Mount Rushmore while threatening any undocumented people in the country with a big ol’ heap of American justice:

The company running the Mount Rushmore shoot, called the Strategy Group, does not appear on public documents about the contract. The main recipient listed on the contracts is a mysterious Delaware company, which was created days before the deal was finalized.

Yes, an LLC registered in Delaware days before it was awarded the deal is the official recipient of $143 million of that big $220 million contract. DHS claims they have no say over any subcontractors the contract holder might hire. And the office funding the contracts for this and other ads is the DHS Office of Public Affairs, which is run by McLaughlin.

So in this scenario, we are expected to believe that a subcontractor whose CEO just happens to be married to the head of the DHS office handing out the money got a piece of this hundred-million-plus-dollar contract. Since contractors aren’t required to reveal subcontractors, the mysterious Delaware company essentially masks where this money is going, giving McLaughlin some plausible deniability.

Is it possible that this is really a coincidence? Sure! The world of GOP political consulting firms that can produce TV commercials is only but so big. It’s inevitable that people swimming in this pool are intertwined in all sorts of unforeseen ways.

But is the lack of transparency shady as hell? Oh yes:

“It’s corrupt, is the word,” said Charles Tiefer, a leading authority on federal contract law. […] “Hiding your friends as subcontractors is like playing hide the salami with the taxpayer,” Tiefer added.

For her part, McLaughlin vigorously denied she had anything to do with the contract and claimed she had recused herself from any dealings with it. But here’s the thing about Tricia McLaughlin: She lies a lot. She lies at as impressive a clip as anyone else in the Trump administration, up to and including our moist, special-brained boy himself.

Elsewhere just on Friday, news emerged that Michael Flynn, the one-time National Security Advisor turned Q-Anon loon turned 2020 election denier, has decided that the federal government should pay him $50 million for his troubles. And the Trump government is reportedly giving it some serious consideration.

Bloomberg reports that the Department of Justice has been engaged for several months in settlement talks to resolve Flynn’s lawsuit over his allegedly wrongful prosecution. An earlier lawsuit was dismissed last year because the people who staffed the government under Joe Biden were not complete fucking idiots.

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Then Trump won the election, Flynn refiled the lawsuit, and suddenly DOJ has changed its mind. The only question is probably how much money the taxpayers are going to be on the hook for, the entire $50 million or some other insane amount of money.

The DOJ is also negotiating with Stefan Passantino, who had sued the House January 6 Select Committee for harming his reputation. Buddy, you worked in the first Trump administration as (allegedly) an ethics lawyer, you worked to get the state of Georgia to throw out its election results in 2020, and Cassidy Hutchinson fired you because all your advice would have gotten her charged with perjury. Any reputational damage is entirely of your own doing.

Of course, neither Fynn nor Passantino has the nerve to ask for anywhere near the $230 million Trump is demanding the nation pay him as compensation for all the suffering he endured when the Justice Department investigated him for all the crimes he committed. But they still get to wet their beaks a little.

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And this was all just in the last couple of days. We don’t think anyone could add up the amount of dollars being just handed out from the Treasury right to Trump and his cronies. There isn’t enough math.

Remember in Trump’s first term when people thought foreign nations and companies would bribe him by staying at his tacky hotel down the street from the White House? Trump’s not bothering with any pretenses with his corruption this time around. This time he’s just going straight for the government’s coffers. Moreover, he’s letting his loyalists eat as well.

The next president is going to walk into the Treasury and find it resembles a bank vault post-heist. Even the copper wiring might have been ripped out of the walls and flown down to Mar-a-Lago.

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[ProPublica / Bloomberg]

ATM go BRRRRRR