Former top White House ethics official Richard Painter detailed the exact law that Attorney General Barr is breaking by holding his party at Trump’s hotel.
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Richard Painter names the law that Barr broke with his illegal payment to Donald Trump. #AMJoy pic.twitter.com/OkAsNt9Xuq
— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) August 31, 2019
Painter spoke about Barr holding a $30,000 private party at Trump’s hotel, “There is a government ethics prohibition, a rule, that prohibits any government employee from giving a gift to his superior worth more than $10. You cannot take your boss out to lunch unless the lunch costs less than $10. That’s the law for all federal employees. This is a $30,000 party, and you can bet the profits the Trump Organization is going to make off of it is a lot more than $10. This is corruption and the idea that the top law enforcement official in the United States government, the Attorney General of the United States, wanting to break the law by handing a huge gift to his boss, the president, is outrageous. This is on top of the solicitation of emoluments, profits from foreign governments, from the G7, open solicitation of illegal unconstitutional payments from foreign governments and of course the president telling the people he’ll pardon them if they commit crimes. This president needs to be impeached now. The House of Representatives needs to get going. He’s the most corrupt president in American history.”
Corruption is the normal course of business in the Trump administration. The public reaction to the attorney general making illegal payments to the president in any previous administration would have been outrage. It would be a scandal that dominates the headlines for days and weeks, but in some ways, the public so conditioned to Trump corruption that it is baked into the news cycle.
The corruption in the Trump administration is not right. It’s not normal, but in a week where this was the third or fourth least outrageous thing that this president did, it is understandable how it got overlooked.
The next administration will need to course-correct and restore government integrity. The best way to do so is to prosecution every Trump administration official who has broken the law during his presidency.
The best way to make sure that this never happens again is to make an example out of every Trump criminal.
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Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
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