A Democracy Drive Thread
Firing the watchdogs, pausing the bribery law, dropping cases against donors, taking a $400M jet, and parking oil money offshore — dismantling the guardrails and selling the favor.
Separate from the family’s branded products and crypto ventures runs a broader pattern: weakening the institutions meant to police corruption, and steering official decisions toward those who pay. This thread tracks that pattern in chronological order, with sources — the watchdogs removed, the enforcement dropped for donors, the foreign gifts accepted, and public money routed in ways ethics experts called unprecedented.
September 17, 2013
On the ground
Trump’s foundation gives $25,000 to a political committee backing Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, days after her office said it was reviewing the New York fraud case against Trump University. Florida never took action against Trump University. Trump later paid a $2,500 fine because charities are barred from making political contributions.
November 16, 2018
On the ground
The Adelsons were the largest donors to Republican outside groups in the 2018 cycle. Miriam Adelson is a physician who has worked on addiction treatment.
November 7, 2019
On the ground
The foundation was dissolved under court supervision in 2018. Trump admitted to the misuse as part of the settlement.
November 6, 2024
On the ground
GEO gave $1 million to Trump’s super PAC, and its PAC was the first to max out donations to his campaign. GEO and CoreCivic each gave $500,000 to his 2025 inaugural committee — double their 2017 gifts.
January 20, 2025
On the ground
Critics called it the opposite of “drain the swamp,” the slogan Trump ran on in 2016.
January 24, 2025
Days into the term, Trump fired at least 17 inspectors general en masse — without the 30 days’ notice and cause the law requires — and removed Hampton Dellinger, head of the Office of Special Counsel (which protects whistleblowers), and the director of the Office of Government Ethics. Dellinger sued, then dropped the fight after the courts let the firing stand.
January 28, 2025
On the ground
Patel received 25,946 restricted shares in Truth Social’s parent company on January 28. He had told the Senate he would not accept the compensation, and said the board awarded it without his participation.
February 10, 2025
Trump signed an executive order directing the Justice Department to pause enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act — the statute barring bribery of foreign officials — for 180 days while it rewrote the guidelines, calling existing enforcement an impediment to U.S. interests.
March 2, 2025
On the ground
The Biden-era rule required millions of businesses to report their beneficial owners. Treasury said it would impose no penalties now or in the future and would narrow the rule to foreign companies.
April 11, 2025
On the ground
Miller reported $100,000–$250,000 in Palantir shares held in an account for one of his children; at least 11 other White House officials also held the stock. The White House said Miller recused from matters affecting it.
April 16, 2025
On the ground
After nearly two years without contributions, his dormant Senate campaign received $165,000 in two months. Long had worked for one of the firms after leaving Congress. Senate Democrats called it “a highly unusual and almost immediate windfall.”
April 18, 2025
On the ground
David Eisner wrote to senior IRS staff on March 6 that Lindell, a “friend of the president,” worried he had been “inappropriately targeted” with a second audit. Tax experts called political appointees intervening in audits highly unusual. Lindell said it was a dispute over a COVID-era tax credit.
April 20, 2025
On the ground
Records showed three round trips to Nashville on a DOJ Gulfstream. Patel is required to fly on government aircraft for secure communications, but the trips were personal. In November 2025, after news coverage of Patel flying the jet to State College, Pa., to watch his girlfriend sing the anthem, the FBI forced out Steven Palmer, head of the Critical Incident Response Group, which oversees the bureau’s aviation units; Palmer was the third head of that unit removed under Patel. A whistleblower later told Sen. Dick Durbin that because Patel had one of the FBI’s two available jets in south Florida and had ordered the other held, the bureau’s evidence response team had to drive through a snowstorm overnight to reach the December 2025 Brown University mass shooting.
April 21, 2025
On the ground
Meta was in the middle of a federal antitrust trial at the time.
April 22, 2025
Corporations that had collectively given some $50 million to Trump’s record $239 million inaugural fund saw federal enforcement cases dropped or paused — among them Bank of America, Capital One, Coinbase, and JPMorgan. In one example, the SEC cut a sought $1.95 billion penalty against Ripple, an inauguration donor, to $125 million.
May 5, 2025
On the ground
He is barred from running again, and it is unclear how the PAC will spend the money. A second dinner followed for top $TRUMP coin holders.
May 13, 2025
Qatar agreed to give the U.S. a Boeing 747-8, valued around $400 million, to serve as Air Force One and later pass to Trump’s presidential library. The Pentagon called it an “unconditional” gift; converting it was projected to cost up to $400 million, and critics flagged an unexplained $934 million transfer from a classified missile-defense program toward the work. Ethics and legal experts said accepting it likely violated the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause.
June 13, 2025
On the ground
Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth, OpenAI product chief Kevin Weil and former OpenAI research chief Bob McGrew joined the “Executive Innovation Corps” as part-time senior advisers.
July 14, 2025
On the ground
Google, Anthropic and OpenAI received similar awards. Jewish House members demanded answers about the xAI deal.
July 27, 2025
On the ground
The New York Times reported in late July 2025 that the Air Force deemed $934 million appropriated for Sentinel, a program already years behind schedule and far over budget, “excess to need,” freeing it for classified programs including the jet retrofit. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink had told Congress in June the cost “wouldn’t be anywhere near” the reported $1 billion estimate. Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Duckworth, Ed Markey and Adam Schiff and Reps. John Garamendi and Jamie Raskin demanded answers, noting the total price is classified.
August 6, 2025
On the ground
Cook’s gift, unveiled Aug. 6, 2025 with trembling hands, bore Trump’s name and Cook’s signature. The pledge raised Apple’s announced U.S. commitment to $600 billion; the Washington Post had reported most of the earlier $500 billion would cover Apple’s regular cost of doing business. Trump said his planned 100% tariff on semiconductors would not apply to companies that commit to manufacture in the U.S., like Apple.
August 7, 2025
On the ground
The Aug. 7, 2025 order directs regulators to find banks that cut off customers over political or religious views and opens them to fines, consent decrees or Justice Department referrals. Trump had accused JPMorgan and Bank of America of cutting him off after 2021. The Trump Organization had sued Capital One over the closure of hundreds of accounts, and in January 2026 Trump sued JPMorgan and Jamie Dimon for $5 billion. Capital One later said it closed the accounts over money-laundering concerns.
In his own words
The Aug. 7, 2025 post came a day after Reuters reported that Sen. Tom Cotton had written to Intel’s board about Tan’s ties to Chinese firms and a criminal case involving his former company, Cadence Design. Intel shares closed down 3%. Tan met Trump at the White House the following Monday, and two weeks later the government took a roughly 10% stake in Intel.
“The CEO of INTEL is highly CONFLICTED and must resign, immediately. There is no other solution to this problem.”
On the ground
Owner Oliver Burckhardt’s company gave MAGA Inc. $5 million in January, and Trump later posted a flier Burckhardt handed him. The administration delayed the Biden-era rule in April, and Medicare spending on skin substitutes was projected to reach $15.4 billion by the end of 2025.
August 11, 2025
On the ground
The administration had halted sales of the H20 and MI308 chips to China in April 2025 on national-security grounds. Trump said in August that he asked Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang for a 20% cut and Huang haggled him down to 15%. It was unclear what legal authority allowed the unprecedented arrangement or whether it amounted to a tax.
August 20, 2025
On the ground
The August 2025 filings listed corporate bonds from Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Meta, among others, plus bonds from cities, states, counties, school districts and gas districts. Unlike past presidents, Trump has not put his holdings in a blind trust. A later filing showed he also bought Netflix and Warner Bros. bonds while his administration weighed in on their merger.
August 22, 2025
On the ground
Trump said he asked CEO Lip-Bu Tan for the stake at their White House meeting: “He agreed … He walked in wanting to keep his job, and he ended up giving us $10 billion.” Intel said $5.7 billion came from CHIPS Act grants awarded but not yet paid, and $3.2 billion from a Defense Department program, buying 433.3 million shares at $20.47, a 9.9% stake. Earlier that month Trump had demanded Tan resign over his investments in Chinese tech companies.
“He walked in wanting to keep his job, and he ended up giving us $10 billion for the United States.”
September 20, 2025
On the ground
Homan allegedly promised help with immigration contracts once in office. FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy AG Todd Blanche said they found no credible evidence of a crime. Homan first said he did “nothing criminal,” then said he never took the money; the White House said he did nothing wrong. Lawmakers demanded the tapes.
September 25, 2025
On the ground
Oracle, Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi’s MGX would hold about 45%, with ByteDance under 20%. The order gave another 120-day reprieve from the law Congress passed requiring a sale or ban.
September 29, 2025
On the ground
Court documents filed Sept. 29, 2025 earmark $22 million for Trump to contribute to the Trust for the National Mall for construction of the ballroom; $2.5 million goes to other plaintiffs. Google was the last of the big tech companies to settle such suits and admitted no wrongdoing. Trump’s account had already been restored in 2023. Alphabet’s market value had risen about $600 billion since Trump’s re-election.
October 1, 2025
On the ground
The Oct. 1, 2025 order treats any attack on Qatar as a threat to U.S. peace and security. Binding defense commitments are normally made by treaty with Senate approval. The Idaho site will host Qatari F-15s and pilots.
October 20, 2025
As demolition crews razed the East Wing for a new ballroom — its cost climbing from $200 million toward $400 million — the White House released a list of 37 private donors footing the bill. They included Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Google parent Alphabet (contributing after settling a lawsuit Trump had filed), and defense contractor Lockheed Martin, which had received tens of billions in federal awards that year.
November 14, 2025
On the ground
Schwartz pleaded guilty to withholding more than $38 million in employees’ payroll taxes between 2017 and 2018 and never paying it to the IRS. Lobbying disclosures show he paid more than $1 million to lobbyists to help secure the November 2025 pardon. Prosecutors said he still had $58 million in assets in others’ names. Arkansas then made him serve nine months for defrauding its Medicaid program, but one of his lobbyists also sought relief there and the parole board released him within three weeks. The White House says the president does not issue pardons at lobbyists’ request. One of his lobbyists was later indicted on extortion charges.
November 15, 2025
On the ground
DHS invoked a border “national emergency” to skip competitive bidding. The Strategy Group, which ran the Mount Rushmore shoot during the shutdown, did not appear on public contract documents; its CEO is married to Noem’s top spokesperson. Axios called it “the most expensive political ad campaign of the year.”
“Break our laws, we’ll punish you.”
December 10, 2025
On the ground
The New York Times found in filings that the White House deputy chief of staff sold the shares on Aug. 14, 2025, when the stock hit $76.58, up from $30.03 the day before the July 10 deal. Under the deal the government bought shares in the company and committed to buy its products. Miller also sold stakes in nearly two dozen companies that August, including Intel and Westinghouse, in which the administration later took equity stakes. Ethics experts said the sales raised questions and should have come sooner. The White House said “there are no conflicts of interest.”
January 15, 2026
The administration sold seized Venezuelan oil and held hundreds of millions of the proceeds — eventually topping $1 billion — in a U.S.-controlled account in Qatar, an arrangement legal experts said had no basis in law for funds a president personally controls. The Financial Times reported $250 million of the oil sales went to Vitol, whose senior trader had donated $6 million to Trump’s 2024 campaign. After scrutiny, officials said the money would move to a Treasury account.
“There is no basis in law for a president to set up an offshore account that he controls so that he can sell assets seized by the American military.”
January 29, 2026
On the ground
The Trice Jewelers catalog showed Robertson wearing several pieces of diamond jewelry, with pieces like an 18-karat white gold diamond necklace priced at $14,200, and identified her title and position at the Energy Department. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington asked the department’s inspector general to investigate, arguing her appearance “implies that her support of this private jeweler was made in her official capacity.” A department spokesperson called it an “oversight that has since been addressed.”
February 19, 2026
On the ground
Trump announced the $10 billion for rebuilding Gaza at the board’s Feb. 19, 2026 meeting and said nine other member countries, mostly in the Middle East and Central Asia, had pledged $7 billion more. He said Secretary of State Marco Rubio had taken over the building and put Trump’s name on it. Members of Congress questioned whether he could legally commit the money, which only Congress can appropriate.
May 18, 2026
On the ground
Trump had sued in January over a contractor’s leak of his tax returns. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the fund would issue “formal apologies and monetary relief” to claimants until December 2028, weeks before Trump leaves office. Five DOJ-appointed members run it, and the president may remove any of them. CBS reported January 6 defendants planned to apply. Ninety-three House Democrats sought to block it; even the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page criticized it.
June 14, 2026
On the ground
The June 14, 2026 event was billed as part of the celebrations of the nation’s 250th anniversary and featured a Blue Angels and Thunderbirds flyover. Trump walked out of the Oval Office ahead of the fighters, who toured the West Wing, and he crowned two champions. Days earlier, a federal judge rejected a lawsuit seeking to stop the event. Afterward, White said there would “never” be another White House fight night.
July 13, 2026
On the ground
In May 2026 the DOJ and IRS settled a Trump lawsuit with a deal that permanently barred audits of the tax returns of Trump, his family and companies, and created a roughly $1.8 billion fund. On July 13, 2026, a federal judge found the suit was not genuinely adversarial and that Trump had “improperly employed this lawsuit” to win himself “access to taxpayer funds and exemption from audits and other investigations.” The administration signaled it intends to keep the deal in place regardless.
October 7, 2026
On the ground
The tally covers cases Trump inherited from the Biden administration: 80 closed investigations (10 of them criminal), 67 enforcement lawsuits dismissed while agencies were actively litigating them (10 of them criminal cases), and 54 "canceled consequences", meaning penalties and settlements already secured before his second term that were then terminated or reversed, among them 14 pardons of corporations and executives and five canceled corporate leniency deals. Banks and finance benefited most (51 corporations), then tech (28) and crypto and fintech (26). Ninety of the 205 companies (44%) had ties to Trump: 53 gave to his inauguration, ballroom or other initiatives, 32 hired Trump-allied lobbyists or lawyers such as Brad Bondi (the attorney general’s brother) and Brian Ballard, and 15 had business deals with Trump. Elon Musk’s companies top the list with eight canceled actions, including an SEC settlement against X cut from $150 million to $1.5 million. Wells Fargo had five and Pfizer, Pam Bondi’s former employer, had three. The count is up from 159 actions against 166 corporations in January 2026.
“Rick Claypool, Public Citizen research director: “Trump’s retreat from law enforcement against corporate crime is a signal to Big Business that if you’re big enough, rich enough, and connected enough with Trump’s inner circle, there are no consequences for breaking the law.””