Graft, self-dealing, and illegal money-grubbing have
sloshed through all three branches of government, convincing nearly 90 percent of Americans that corruption is widespread. But
without the dogged investigative journalism from the nonprofit news site
ProPublica, much of this would have gone undetected (e.g., Supreme Court justices’ financial nondisclosure and gifts). In just the last couple
of weeks, ProPublica unveiled two more blockbuster investigations.
Its account of Vladimir Putin-aligned Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev’s payment for Don Jr.’s lavish wedding
reception rocked the White House and even shattered the usual MAGA solidarity
front. Trump’s flunkies first denied anyone in Trump’s regime knew who he was. Now
Trump insists the money was repaid. (Anyone got a receipt?) It’s all too little, too
late.
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA), who will inherit the gavel on
House Oversight if Democrats win the majority, wrote to Chief of Staff Susan
Wiles, citing the details laid out in ProPublica’s report: “Despite only having
met Mr. Trump in September 2025— less than a year before the wedding in
question—[Umar] Kremlev reportedly paid to rent out one of the private islands
used for the wedding that typically costs $100,000 per night, along with other
expensive items, such as a $70,000 fireworks show.”
He continued: The secretive, close relationship between
the son of a sitting U.S. President and a member of Russian dictator Vladimir
Putin’s inner circle raises serious national security and public corruption
concerns. A Russian oligarch reportedly financing parts of a lavish wedding for
the owner of multiple firms holding Department of Defense contracts is all the
more disturbing. Given that Mr. Trump reportedly advises his father, the
President of the United States, on issues of national security and vetting
White House personnel, any possible foreign entanglement deserves close
scrutiny.
Garcia demanded documents and answers, requests that the
White House will undoubtedly ignore. More importantly, he apparently told Wiles
to “preserve all documents, communications, and other materials” relevant to
the potential investigation, putting anyone who might destroy evidence or
interfere with Congress in legal jeopardy.
The facts are disturbing enough that even some
Republicans are upset. Sen. John Curtis (R-UT) wrote to Judiciary Chairman Sen.
Chuck Grassley (R-IA) to demand an inquiry “into potential misuses of presidential family
relationships for financial benefit, preferential treatment, or special access
to certain people.”
Nominally citing Republicans’ years-old complaints about
Hunter Biden, Curtis focused heavily on “the relationships of President Trump’s
eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., with foreign business figures and the acceptance
of significant gifts.” He too relied on ProPublica’s reports about “a lavish
wedding afterparty, on a private island, provided by Russian oligarch Umar
Kremlev, who reportedly traveled to China as part of a delegation accompanying
Vladimir Putin shortly before giving the gift.” Curtis added:
These concerns are compounded by Donald Trump Jr.’s
active promotion of family-backed cryptocurrency ventures, his continued
pursuit of international real estate deals involving direct meetings with
foreign heads of state, and his reported investments in defense contracting.
This pattern extends to his significant financial and advisory ties to
prediction-market platforms that depend on favorable federal regulatory
decisions being considered by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
These reports raise legitimate questions about foreign
access to members of a sitting president’s family and whether such
relationships can create actual or perceived expectations of favorable
treatment. They also may create expectations of a returned favor that would not
be in the best interests of the American people or our allies and could even
create national security vulnerabilities.
Perhaps hoping to give Trump (and Republicans) some
cover, he pleaded, “The country should not have to accept one standard for the
family of a Republican president and another for the family of a Democratic
president. Nor should congressional oversight begin and end when control of the
White House changes hands.”
In other words, Curtis is issuing a warning that things
will go much worse for Trump if Democrats unilaterally run with the ball and
focus exclusively on Don Jr. This White House surely won’t take him up on his
invitation to get ahead of the story, but the dam may be about to break. By
Tuesday, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) had joined Curtis’s call to
investigate.
Then this week, ProPublica dropped another shocking story, this time
concerning an extensive FBI investigation involving Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME),
the perennially “concerned,” phony moderate (who confirmed two justices to the
Supreme Court that destroyed abortion rights).
ProPublica’s report detailed a 2019 meeting between Scott
Reed, head of the Collins Super PAC, and three executives from defense
contractor Navatek — which Collins had helped “land a multimillion-dollar Navy
research contract in Maine.” ProPublica reported that Reed asked them for a
$500,000 donation, although “[g]overnment contractors are banned from making
political contributions,” and any offer of “donations to Collins in exchange
for an official action, or for Collins to accept, would constitute criminal
bribery.” The account explained:
To skirt campaign finance laws and conceal the source of
the funds, Navatek planned to funnel the donation through a shell company. The
CEO wanted assurance that Collins would know where the money came from. Reed
confirmed that she would, the executive said — and that Navatek would get its
government contracts.
After the Corner Bakery meeting, Navatek’s CEO, Martin
Kao, sent an initial $150,000 to the Collins super PAC using the shell company.
Two months later, he told Navatek executives that Collins committed to
getting the company $32 million in naval contracts, according to an internal
company email reviewed by ProPublica.
Kao, who faced charges for illegal campaign contributions (and had
his own credibility issues), spilled his story to the FBI, which “opened up an
entirely new phase of the investigation… [and] sifted through hundreds of
thousands of records seized during Kao’s arrest and found that many were
consistent with his account of widespread influence peddling.” But the FBI
didn’t get very far, since the Trump regime “eviscerated” public corruption
investigations and enlisted law enforcement to go after his enemies.
Collins’s office now “vigorously” denies wrongdoing. Neither she nor anyone on
her staff was ever charged. However, she will face intense pressure to answer
questions about the story.
Her opponent in the Senate race, Troy Jackson, pounced.
“This is corruption of the highest order. Susan Collins delivered millions in
taxpayer dollars for a corrupt donor bankrolling her campaign, and then Donald
Trump helped her cover it up,” he alleged. “No wonder she voted with him 96% of the time
and has rubberstamped his agenda to hurt Maine.”He continued, “Susan Collins doesn’t care that we’re
losing our health care, that ICE is killing people on the streets, and that
we’ve been dragged into a pointless war — as long as her donors get their
contracts and her coffers get filled. We deserve answers about every contract
and every conversation that Collins and her team facilitated on the backs of
taxpayers. The jig is up.”
Without ProPublica’s work, neither of these corruption
stories would have come to light. Its undaunted, unbiased, and unrelenting
effort to expose wrongdoing and shine a bright light on public and private
corruption deserves Americans’ deep gratitude. The outlet is a national
treasure.
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