‘Revolving door of corruption’: Trump’s $45,000 cash gifts to aides draw scrutiny
TheGrio...
Ethics experts are raising legal questions after financial disclosures revealed cash payments from the president to White House staffers.
After financial disclosures revealed that President Donald Trump gifted three White House aides $45,000 in cash, critics say the likely ethical and legal breach is emblematic of broader corruption within the Trump administration.
As the New York Times reported on Tuesday, Trump’s holiday cash gift was provided to his executive assistant, Natalie Harp, and two other aides who work in the West Wing, according to financial disclosure forms. Ethics and legal experts raised concerns about the cash payments, noting that federal criminal law prohibits government employees from receiving any bonus or other compensation for their official work from a nongovernment source.
As Kedric L. Payne, general counsel and senior director of ethics at Campaign Legal Center, told the Times, “This matters because this well-established anti-corruption law seeks to prevent even the appearance that a government employee owes greater loyalty to a cash-paying individual than to the public they serve.”
Rodericka Applewhaite, former White House Director of Black Media under the Biden-Harris Administration, tells theGrio that the discovery of Trump’s cash gifts to White House staff is a stark contrast to the ethics rules she adhered to during her time at the White House.
“When I worked in the Biden White House, and this is a true story, I got reprimanded by White House Counsel for allowing a Black radio [outlet] to put their signage outside the EEOB [Eisenhower Executive Office Building] room where they were hosting a broadcast day out of concern that the White House was showing favoritism to an entity,” recalled Applewhaite. “That’s the high caliber of ethics this institution demonstrated just two years ago.”
The former Biden official continued, “Now, President Trump is openly cutting fat checks to select staffers for what we can safely guess is some sort of rendered service.”
The reaction to the White House financial disclosures would be a lot different had it been former Presidents Barack Obama or Joe Biden, argued Applewhaite. Pointing to other likely ethical violations committed by President Trump, she told theGrio the two former Democratic presidents also “didn’t mint their own crypto, issue pardons for donors, or accept $400 million planes from foreign royals.”
Democratic strategist Jamarr Brown says corruption has been a constant feature of the Trump White House.
“When you look under the hood of this administration, you look at Elon Musk, who gave billions of dollars toward Donald Trump being reelected, but look at all the contracts he was able to build after eliminating federal jobs,” Brown told theGrio. “When you think about people who are putting money in their own pockets from contracts from this administration, when you think about the Big Ugly Bill from last year, it wasn’t just solely about cutting healthcare benefits and SNAP benefits for millions of Americans. It was the largest transfer of wealth, where that money went toward corporate tax cuts and other contracts for Donald Trump and his donors.”
Brown, who is also a political fundraiser who has run compliance programs for years, said the Trump administration has been a “revolving door of corruption,” arguing that the $45,000 cash gifts to staffers who are “already making six figures in the White House” is just another example of said corruption.
“We know that this administration does not want to follow the law,” added Brown. “This gift…is just another example of what Donald Trump is willing to do to make himself money and to make his friends richer.”