It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the daily news if you care about the scandals of the Trump administration. There’s so much happening, so many news stories about corruption. Who can keep count?
Heather Cox Richardson today gives us an account of current corruption scandals. Any one of us could add scandals that she didn’t have room for, like conflicts of interest and profiteering. My example, Presidential pardons. Is it mere coincidence that wealthy donors get pardoned quickly? Is it coincidence that they are relieved of their obligation to repay the people they defrauded?
One thing is sure. The Trump administration is a stark illustration of kakistocracy, corruption, and greed.
Heather Cox Richardson writes:
There is an old saying about rats and sinking ships. There’s also an old saying about how a democratic system taken over by a single party quickly becomes corrupt because the ruling party lacks oversight. Then, as corruption becomes the party’s driving force, the only people willing to work for it are either corrupt themselves or so unqualified they support the corrupt leadership to gain power, knowing that in a merit-based system it would be entirely out of their reach.
OK, that second old saying is shared mostly among political scientists, but it’s accurate, and it’s right up there with the rats and the ships to describe what’s happening in Trump’s orbit now.
The saga of Kimberly Guilfoyle, who was recently forced to resign from her post as U.S. Ambassador to Greece, continues to expand. Guilfoyle left her post after news broke that she had tried to get a donor, Eric Deters, to pay down her credit card debt. She and her lawyers countered the story by claiming Deters was withholding money she had earned, and said the text messages he shared with news outlets were false.
Guilfoyle dated Don Jr. from 2018 to 2024 and was engaged to him the last four years of that time. Now there are rumors that during her time inside the family as a trusted loyalist, she kept a “burn book” about the family.
While that may or may not be true, the fact that there’s such a threat out there reflects the cracking loyalties of Trump insiders. More to the point might be the video released today by Deters himself, saying that he had launched a lawsuit against Guilfoyle for defamation and that he would depose her and Don Jr. and demand subpoenas to clear his name. He also vowed to play a 16-minute phone conversation tomorrow that he claims has information which “might just bring down the entire Trump administration, an administration which I have supported from Day One.”
Note that the story of Guilfoyle’s alleged shakedown is breaking now, although it happened more than a year ago.
Also in the category of old stories coming to the surface is one reported yesterday by Marc Caputo of Axios. He wrote that Trump’s former lawyer Alina Habba is saying that another one of Trump’s advisors, Ric Grenell, did not deposit her billionaire husband’s $5.6 million donation to the Kennedy Center. According to Habba, Grenell asked that the donation be routed through a $17.6 million payment for a business deal, an accusation Grenell called “absurd.”
Trump appointed Grenell to be U.S. ambassador to Germany and then acting director of national intelligence during his first term. After retaking office, he named Grenell as a special envoy to Venezuela before putting him in charge of the Kennedy Center.
A fight that has been going on for more than a year in the administration broke into the open this morning in a Politico story by Daniel Lippman. He explained that Trump named Italian Paolo Zampolli, a former modeling agent who introduced Trump to First Lady Melania Trump at a party in New York City, as a special envoy at the State Department with a portfolio of cultural diplomacy. But Zampolli apparently ignored that assignment and struck out on his own on a wide range of issues, infuriating Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau.
“My number-one boss is the president of America,” Zampolli told James Fontanella-Khan of the Financial Times in April. “I get my instructions from the White House, Commerce and the Department of War…anything to advance the America First agenda.” More than 16 administration officials have been included in the angry email chains Zampolli and Landau have exchanged, which at one point led to communications about the fight with a top-level foreign official.
At one point Zampolli accused Landau of leaking to reporters what appeared to be the story that Zampolli had tried to get custody of his son by asking Immigrations and Customs Enforcement to deport Amanda Ungaro, the boy’s mother. That story created its own scandal when Ungaro, a former model, threatened to expose information about the president and first lady. Landau responded to Zampolli’s accusation, which he sent to more than a dozen other officials, saying: “Your threats and accusations are getting more and more bizarre, defamatory, and inappropriate for broad dissemination on email.”
An administration official told Lippman that the State Department was “generally squeaky clean and professional and above it all.” In contrast, these exchanges were “cartoonish and embarrassing.”
By this afternoon, Lippman had a follow-up story: Zampolli had been fired.
It is not just the current associates of the president who are problematic. Today, news broke that two women have named former Republican representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL), along with his friend former Seminole County tax collector Joel Greenberg and others, in a civil lawsuit, alleging that from 2017 through January 2019, “Gaetz and Greenberg coordinated recruitment, payments, drugs, and travel to obtain commercial sexual acts….”
In 2024, the House Ethics Committee reported that Gaetz “regularly” paid women, as well as a 17-year-old girl, for sex, and bought and used illicit drugs while a member of Congress. Those accusations helped to sink Trump’s nomination of Gaetz for U.S. attorney general in 2025.
Gaetz’s response was hardly a denial: “I look forward to taking the plaintiffs’ depositions because much of the conduct alleged against me is false,” he wrote. “The lawsuit relies almost exclusively on a Congressional Committee Report that didn’t allow me to confront my accusers. Now I will finally have that chance.”
One has to wonder why anyone would want to be part of such a mess, but Trump’s new White House press secretary provides an answer: in a normal administration she would never make it through the door. Trump has described Katie Zacharia as an “attorney,” and she has identified herself as a “general counsel” and seemed to claim she worked as an attorney in China.
But after Judd Legum of Popular Information noted there was no sign she had ever passed the bar exam or been admitted to a state bar, Philip Wegmann and Alexandra Bruell of the Wall Street Journal reported today that, in fact, she failed the California bar exam when she took it. That, itself, is not unusual—the California bar exam is notoriously difficult—but it does mean she is not qualified to call herself an attorney.
Democracy Defenders Fund, a nonpartisan team defending democracy led by attorney Norm Eisen, has asked the State Bar of California and California Attorney General Rob Bonta to investigate whether Zacharia practiced law without a license in California, where doing so is a crime.
Tonight, on his show, Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity seemed to undercut Zacharia, asking her why she had chosen to describe herself as an attorney when she could just have said she “went to Pepperdine Law School and then took a different career path.” Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo noted that Hannity’s stance likely reflected that Trump is turning on her.
Rhein Amacher, the man who started a right-wing media frenzy when he claimed to have proof that Democratic Texas Senate candidate James Talarico had sought mental health treatment in Ohio, backed away from that claim today…sort of. Amid suggestions that he might well have run afoul of HIPAA penalties for trying to obtain health information duplicitously, he posted that “this entire situation has been blown completely out of proportion,” and wrote, “As far as I’m concerned, this matter is closed.” Later, in response to a post saying he had lied, he added: “Never lied, I just doubled down on wrong information.”
A blockbuster story by Jonathan O’Connell, Sarah Blaskey, and Aaron Schaffer of the Washington Post today explained that the administration has been able to keep donations for Trump’s ballroom largely secret by using a nonprofit to collect the donations and then channeling that money “into a White House account the president directly controls.”
The reporters gained access to a list of the 57 donors who have committed to giving $100,000 or more to the project. They found that “the vast majority of the funds raised came from companies and wealthy individuals with interests before the federal government.” Large technology companies Nvidia and Apple committed $25 million each. Microsoft, Palantir, and Lockheed Martin pledged $10 million each.
Individuals on the list who are associated with Trump include Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s son Brandon, chair of investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald, who contributed stock worth more than $2.5 million, and the U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands, Republican donor Joseph Popolo Jr., and his wife, who gave $1 million. Missing from the list is Trump himself, who claimed he would be helping to pay for the project.
Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark was right when she called the ballroom being constructed where the East Wing of the White House used to be “a monument to corruption” built by “a corrupt American president.”
On Tuesday, Charles Gorrivan, Lydia Beyoud, and Nicola M. White of Bloomberg reported that on March 23, a few traders placed billions of dollars of contracts predicting that the price of oil would fall just 15 minutes before Trump posted on his social media platform that he had changed his mind about striking Iranian power plants. The deals were worth billions, and analysts from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) flagged the traders and the deals and sent a referral to the Division of Enforcement to decide whether to open an investigation into insider trading. But in a virtually unheard-of move, the administration asked the CFTC to withdraw the referral.
The journalists note both that there have been many trades apparently tied to Trump’s announcements and that between a 20% cut to CFTC staff during Trump’s second term and the agency chair’s vow to curb “over-zealous regulation,” enforcement actions have dropped dramatically from the numbers during the Biden administration.
Steven Portnoy and Katherine Faulders of ABC News reported today that the White House is claiming that all Trump’s conversations about plans to renovate the Kennedy Center are covered by executive privilege and therefore can be kept secret. This is a dramatic expansion of the concept of executive privilege, which enables the president to shield conversations with key advisors from public scrutiny, extending it to consider virtually all conversations private.
Apparently in anticipation of Democratic investigations, Attorney General Todd Blanche issued a memo as soon as he took office, claiming presidents can shield “presidential communications with private advisers so long as the communications relate to official presidential decisionmaking.”
A new Fox News poll released today showed that voters’ top concern is “corruption in government,” with 88% worried about it compared to 12% who are not. Corruption tops even “inflation and high prices,” which comes in at 85%, and “gas prices,” which concern 83% of voters.
In a conversation with Rob Finnerty of Newsmax, aired tonight, Trump suggested he would pardon everyone in the administration, including himself, to make sure none of the people around him have to “go through years of nonsense, hire lawyers and everything else, all for nothing.”
It is no wonder that Republicans eager to stop Trump are backing Democratic candidates for the midterms. Today 58 Republicans and Independents in New Hampshire declared their support for the Democratic Senate candidate, Representative Chris Pappas, over Republican candidate John Sununu. Those supporters include Don Bolduc, who was Trump’s pick for the Senate in 2022 but who lost to Democrat Maggie Hassan by 9 points after he embraced Trump’s claim to have won the 2020 election.
One of the Republicans supporting Pappas told Kevin Landrigan of the New Hampshire Union Leader: “Donald Trump has turned the Republican Party into something I no longer recognize.”
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Notes:
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/10/15/matt-gaetz-lawsuit-trafficking-florida-01120754
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/eric-deters-files-defamation-lawsuit-against-kimberly-guilfoyle/
https://newrepublic.com/post/216609/kimberly-guilfoyle-hiding-secret-burn-book-trump-family
https://www.axios.com/2026/10/14/trump-kennedy-center-donation-maga-feud
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/10/15/email-fight-state-department-trump-administration-01119676
https://www.ft.com/content/2a7f4575-8c94-4258-9ff4-6b6c74815d07?syn-25a6b1a6=1
The Epstein Files by Julie K. Brown
Ex-Diplomat who threatened to expose secrets about Melania Trump is talking to Congress
Amanda Ungaro, the Brazilian model and former U.N. ambassador who roiled First Lady Melania Trump in April by threatening to expose unspecified information she has on President Trump and the First Lady, is apparently talking to the House Oversight Committee…
a month ago · 1765 likes · 34 comments · Julie k Brown
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/10/15/paolo-zampolli-fired-state-department-trump-01121739
https://www.axios.com/2026/08/11/trump-doj-executive-privilege-democratic-probes
https://www.axios.com/2026/10/15/chris-pappas-don-bolduc-new-hampshire-senate-endorsement
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Bluesky:
meidastouch.com/post/3mxwls5nljc2h
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joshtpm.bsky.social/post/3mxxgcuehwk23
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I thought there might a few trifecta-controlled Republican states that are still independent of Donald Trump. I was wrong.
“There are no U.S. states with a Republican-controlled government (trifecta) that operate independently of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement.”
State government trifectas – Ballotpedia
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Stalin purged his opposition by blood and cold imprisonment. MAGA purges by threat of political marginalization. The result is the same, just more palatable.
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The only reason Trump isn’t doing what Stalin did and Putin does is because he doesn’t have that much power yet to get away with it. If he did, the daily executions would be off the charts.
I think Trump would eliminate everyone who doesn’t worship him and do what he tells them to do. He’d also steal everything his victims were worth before he put them out of their misery after they were homeless with nothing, eating out of trash cans. In fact, he might let them live to extend the suffering.
Trump everyday sadist history shows he enjoys making people suffer who do not give him what he wants or dares to tell the truth about him in public. Trump lives for revenge.
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If the Dems manage to take both Houses, I hope they make anticorruption legislation a top priority. Let Trump own the vetoes.
Ban congressional stock trading
Require presidents and vice presidents to divest conflicting financial interests
Mandate presidential and vice-presidential tax return disclosure
Strengthen enforcement of the Foreign Emoluments Clause
Protect the independence of federal inspectors general
Strengthen federal whistleblower protections
Tighten lobbying disclosure requirements and revolving-door restrictions
Increase transparency in campaign financing and political spending
Strengthen federal contracting oversight and conflict-of-interest rules
Expand presidential accountability through stronger records, disclosure, and oversight requirements
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All of these are excellent suggestions.
But isn’t the real issue that not only do Republican politicians NO LONGER CARE about following laws, they have appointed some of the most corrupt and sycophantic judges to make up reasons why they don’t have to follow the law.
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The only way to deal with that is to win elections, appoint judges, and enact legislation.
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All of these are excellent suggestions.
But isn’t the real issue that Republican politicians NO LONGER CARE about following laws, a problem made worse because Trump has appointed some of the most corrupt and sycophantic federal judges to make up reasons why they don’t have to follow the law. And make prosecutors face delays and jump through hoops in the hopes of prosecuting them many years in the future.
IMO, there needs to be accountability for the many Republicans who have spurned the laws and will continue to spurn whatever “new” laws are passed because they know they can.
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Excellent.
The conflict of interest laws must specify no government contracts to companies in which relatives hold an interest.
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If the Democrats take the majority in both Houses, I think government will become a war: legislation vs executive orders, decided mostly by the US Supreme Court’s shadow docket, followed by a repeat that never ends until Trump is forced to move out of the White House.
Even out of office, I the Toxic T will wield power over the Republic Party as a shadow president and any future Republican Presidents, as long as Trump lives, will be his puppets, along with all or most red state trifectas, as long as his remaining MAGA KKK hate-cult base controls the Republican primaries.
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Trump said today that he has dirt on Hillary, Obama, and Biden. If the Dems impeach him a third time, he warned, he will prosecute all three.
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Prominent figures named in his threats and claims span former cabinet officials, prosecutors, investigators (such as James Comey and Peter Strzok), and Democratic leaders.
While some figures on his targets list have faced federal or state inquiries or charges (with several high-profile cases subsequently dismissed or challenged in court), the vast majority of the specific individuals he targeted have not been convicted or imprisoned of the crimes he alleged.
The latest bull will end up the same, a McDonald’s nothing burger.
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Trump has the dirt on them safely locked up with his proof that Obama was not born in the US and was an illegitimate president.
It’s in the same place as his “perfect” health insurance plan to replace Obamacare.
The 5,000 DOGE checks for all Americans are also locked up there.
They are all safe in Al Capone’s vault being guarded by Geraldo Rivera! I think Jimmy Hoffa is there, too!
Knowing that Trump will have to reveal his “dirt” on Obama, Biden and Hillary is definitely an incentive for voters to demand Dems impeach Trump. I am looking forward to seeing this “dirt” when Trump reveals all.
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Trump has the evidence — for his crimes. He does it all the time. Blames others for what he’s done and what he is doing.
Political analysts, historians, and legal experts observe that Donald Trump consistently utilizes rhetorical strategies focused on deflection, scapegoating, and externalizing blame. Throughout his business career and political presidency, critics note a long-standing pattern where he takes personal credit for successes while shifting accountability for failures, legal challenges, or controversial actions onto external entities.
Why Trump blames decisions on others – a psychologist explains
I’m surprised that the Toxic T hasn’t blamed all the women and girls he raped and molested for most of his life, claiming they raped him.
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In short, whatever accusations he makes are actually confessions.
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Trump lies from his “gut”. And after he takes a dump in his gilded toilet-throne, the lies go down the sewer pipe and he forget them, ready to lie again.
Like the fast-food and Diet Coke he loves, Trump’s lies are just another toxic meal.
Commentators and psychologists note that Donald Trump’s high volume of false statements often stems from living in the immediate present moment rather than tracking consistency over time.
Fact-checkers and political analysts note that rather than formally “confessing” to lies, Trump frequently contradicts his own previous statements, numbers, or timelines across different speeches, interviews, or deposition transcripts.
Sory details often change when repeated (such as fabricated anecdotes involving anonymous figures addressing him as “Sir” or misremembering specific endorsements and awards like Michigan’s “Man of the Year”).
Academic analyses, such as those by George Mason University, classify a notable portion of his shifting statements as direct flip-flops or self-contradictions rather than consistent positions.
Trump rarely explicitly acknowledges or retracts a prior false statement as a “lie,” instead choosing to repeat core claims multiple times (with over 300 claims repeated three or more times during his presidency) or frame changing accounts as a new or updated perspective.
A routine fast-food diet combined with drinking dozens of Diet Cokes a day can severely impacts Trump’s memory and long-term brain health. Medical research repeatedly links ultra-processed “junk” foods and heavy artificial sweetener intake to rapid cognitive decline, memory impairment, and an elevated risk of brain disorder.
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Lloyd,
You are generous in attributing his nonstop barrage of lies to his bad diet.
It is convenient for him to lie. He said that Musk and DOGE would cut $2 trillion from the fed were al budget. Did not happen. They killed important programs like USAID. They save only a fraction of what they promised. Yet the government costs went up, not down.
He promised to send every American $5,000 from Misk’s savings. Didn’t happen.
When he was a young man, he lied constantly, exaggerating his wealth even when he was bankrupt.
He lies habitually.
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Well … Trump is what he eats.
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True. But I believe he has been a liar for most of his life.
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According to his niece Mary Trump, her uncle was a bully as a child, raised to become a monster by his father.
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