[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 105 (Tuesday, June 23, 2026)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3036-S3039]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          TRUMP ADMINISTRATION

  Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, colleagues, over the last year and a half, 
our President Donald Trump has turned the White House into a 24-7 
corruption operation. This is a national crisis, and we should start 
acting like it.
  The President's goal is to engage in so much corruption, so much 
self-enrichment--to hand out so many favors to his friends, his family, 
and his political allies--that it just becomes the pitter-patter of 
rain. It is normal. It is constant. It is never-ending.
  Trump's bet is that if there is a new story of corruption, of self-
dealing every few days, that the press will stop covering it or the 
public will just stop paying attention. To an extent he is, tragically, 
succeeding.
  But he is also betting that the public will just come to the 
conclusion that this is normal because all of our politics are this 
corrupt, that every Senator, that every previous President is this 
corrupt. That is not true.
  While I disagree with my Senate Republican colleagues' decision to 
largely remain silent in the face of this misconduct, it is true that 
not a single Senator on either side of the aisle engages in the 
behavior that our President does.
  Senators--Republicans and Democrats--do not trade our votes for cash 
or for political contributions. We don't run side hustles like crypto 
companies. Senators don't give contracts to their kids just because we 
can.
  And no President in the history of this country has done what Donald 
Trump has done. No President has done 5 percent of the self-dealing 
that Donald Trump has done in the last year and a half.
  This moment is exceptional. It is a one-of-one moment. And if it 
becomes normal--if people stop being outraged at what he is doing to 
enrich himself--then I fear there is no going back. The White House 
will just become a place to get rich.
  So I think it is time to pull back and see the full picture, to not 
view this as just one isolated scandal after another--every single one 
popping up each week or every few days--but to understand the full 
scope of this illegality.
  Last year, I came to the floor to document the first 100 days of 
Donald Trump's mind-blowing corruption. Since then, especially in 2026, 
the pace of his misconduct has quickened dramatically.
  And so I am here on the floor today--and I am going to spend more 
than a few minutes doing this--laying out what has happened since I 
gave that last speech. This is the story of 500 days of corruption.
  And I am going to start on April 7, 2025. This is when the current 
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche issues a memo ordering the 
termination of several Biden-era DOJ investigations into crypto 
companies.

  Now, here is the problem. The then-Deputy Attorney General is a major 
investor in crypto companies, and he works for a President who is a 
major player in the crypto industry. But the DOJ just drops these 
investigations, signals that the Department of Justice is no longer 
going to hold crypto companies accountable. But Blanche owns major 
investments in crypto stocks. The President is one of the biggest 
players in the industry.
  Blanche doesn't actually stop there. He eliminates the entire 
enforcement team at DOJ dedicated to rooting out crypto-related fraud 
and money laundering schemes. This is a crypto investor, who works for 
a President who owns crypto companies, shutting down the unit at DOJ 
that holds this industry accountable.
  Let's move to 3 weeks later on April 30. Later in the month, a 
curious announcement from the Department of Agriculture: They are 
reversing a rule that would require poultry companies to limit 
salmonella bacteria levels in their product. This is essentially a rule 
to make it less likely that people will get salmonella poisoning. It 
sounds like a strange rule to eliminate.
  We come to find out that one of the biggest donors to Donald Trump's 
inauguration was a poultry company called Pilgrim's Pride. They made a 
donation to Trump's inauguration that was bigger than practically any 
other company--bigger than Amazon, Meta, or Exxon--$5 million. And 
after they made the donation, they asked for one thing: the reversal of 
the salmonella rule. And they got it.
  This is pay-for-play. You make a donation to the President or the 
President's political operation, you ask for a favor, and you get it. 
And we will see, as we wind through these 500 days, this happens over 
and over again.
  In May 2025, the pardon racket starts. Every member of the Senate 
should be outraged at this. You all know what is happening. The 
President is pardoning people based on their ability to pay either him 
and his political operation or pay people who are close to the 
President.
  On May 27, Donald Trump pardons a man called Paul Walczak. This is a 
really bad guy. He stole millions of dollars from the nurses and 
healthcare aides at the nursing home he owned, and he used the cash 
that he stole from his employees to buy a $2 million yacht.
  He got convicted. He went to jail for fraud. But his mother paid $1 
million to buy a face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump. And 3 weeks 
after that paid audience, her son was given a full and unconditional 
pardon that went so far as to relieve him of any duty to pay back the 
$4.4 million that he stole from his employees. This is a new pay-for-
pardons scheme that begins in May.
  In June of 2025, it is revealed that top administration officials are 
cashing in on government contracts that benefit their own investment 
portfolio. Stephen Miller is more than just the architect of the 
administration's hard-line immigration policies. He has a personal 
financial stake in them.
  For instance, Miller owns up to $250,000 in Palantir stock. And just 
a month before Miller's holdings became public, ICE announced that it 
was awarding a $30 million contract to--you guessed it--Palantir to 
provide real-time surveillance information to ICE officers.
  And you will be shocked to hear this: There was no competitive 
bidding process for that contract. And you will hear this over and over 
again. Competitive bidding basically doesn't exist.
  If the President or somebody close to the President wants a contract 
directed to a friend or to a company in which they invest, Miller--
overseeing ICE--ICE gives a no-bid contract to Palantir. The investors 
in Palantir, which include Stephen Miller, get rich.
  Let's move to September of 2025. In September, we start to learn the 
danger of Donald Trump's crypto corruption. I covered this in the first 
100 days of corruption. This is maybe the most corrupt thing that Trump 
is doing.
  He and his family own a crypto company that issues several 
cryptocoins. There is no disclosure on who is buying those coins. The 
President promotes them. He invites people to official events, who 
purchase the coins.
  On September 18, though, we come to find out that Trump made $57 
million selling crypto tokens to entities associated with the regimes 
in North Korea, Iran, and Russia: extraordinary investments being made 
by entities that are tied in with North Korea, Iran, and Russia into 
Trump's crypto companies.

[[Page S3037]]

  It begs the question: As we are currently debating an Iran deal that 
basically exists on Iran's terms, why was there a flood of money from 
Iranian regime-backed entities into the Trump crypto companies? Why 
were they putting that investment in? What did they expect to get from 
the President?
  We have never, ever before had this exist. We have never had a 
backdoor mechanism by which foreign governments could just shovel money 
into the pocket of the President. It exists because of Trump's meme 
coin and his stablecoin.
  On September 23--this is a week later--it is now pretty obvious that 
it is--there is a pay-to-play regime in charge of the White House. A 
week later, on September 23, Donald Trump closes the books on a 
criminal investigation into one of his key advisors, Tom Homan. This is 
his border czar.
  The FBI had caught Tom Homan redhanded, engaging in naked corruption. 
Undercover agents had handed him $50,000 in cash in a bag, and he 
agreed to give them government contracts. This was on video. This is 
the border czar getting a bag of cash in exchange for contracts on 
video, but the administration on September 20 just makes the 
investigation go away because that kind of bribery--that kind of naked 
graft--is okay in this White House.
  We are moving on to October 2025 right now. Two weeks after Homan is 
left off--maybe the most nakedly corrupt partner--there is not a single 
Senator that could defend this. Changpeng Zhao built an entire business 
based on allowing terrorists, drug traffickers, and sex predators to 
use his cryptocurrency to evade the law. He went to jail for this, but 
he also helped Trump launch his crypto business.

  So who cares about financing terrorists and sex criminals? Trump 
gives this guy a full pardon on October 7. It is as naked--this is a 
guy who built a company that allowed terrorists and sex predators to 
engage in private financing. He went to jail. He got out of jail 
because he agreed to help get Trump rich.
  We are still in October. Later that month, the bulldozers arrive to 
destroy the East Wing of the White House--it is still amazing to think 
that actually happened--and the ballroom corruption racket begins. The 
word goes out: If you want something from Donald Trump, donate to his 
ballroom. It is all he cares about. We know that. Donald Trump talks 
about his ballroom all the time. As of this month, more than half of 
the publicly identified donors to the ballroom project have, since they 
made their donations, won new or expanded Federal contracts totaling 
more than $50 billion. More than half of the people who donated to the 
ballroom have, since they donated--and this just all kicked off on 
October 15. It has only been like 8 months. Half of the people who 
donated to the ballroom have gotten new or expanded contracts worth $50 
billion.
  Moving into November of 2025, it is not just Trump's corporate donors 
who are getting rich now. Part of the White House's daily operation is 
to find creative ways to funnel taxpayer money to Trump's kids. This 
one is wild. The Trump administration in early November announces a 
really unusual deal: The government--the Pentagon--is taking a $50 
million stake in a single rare earth minerals company called Vulcan 
Elements and giving them a $620 million taxpayer-funded loan. That is 
big money. The Pentagon doesn't really do deals like this, but they do 
when Donald Trump, Jr., is one of the company's key investors.
  We come to find out that civil servants in the Pentagon did not want 
to do this deal. They only did it because the White House told them to 
do the deal.
  One official said:

       The call came from the White House. We have to get this 
     done.

  Before the deal, Vulcan was worth $200 million. Donald Trump, Jr., 
made an investment. His father got the Pentagon to give them the 
contract and buy the stake in the company, and the valuation jumped 
overnight from $200 million to $2 billion. Donald Trump, Jr., 10x'd his 
profits. I mean, how does anybody in this body justify that?
  You have probably not even heard that story. It barely cracked the 
news. In normal times, that scandal alone of the President's son making 
an investment in a company and the Federal Government then making a 
massive investment subsequently--the Pentagon didn't want to do it and 
only did it because the President told them to do it after his son made 
the investment, and the value of the President's son's investment went 
up by 10 times. That scandal alone would take down a Presidency. This 
one barely gets noticed.
  Three days later, news breaks that Trump has ordered all the markets 
in U.S. Coast Guard bases and facilities to stock his personally 
branded wine and cider--directly profiting from his control over the 
military. He tells the Coast Guard: Sell my products.
  That is it. That is not a complicated one. That is just like 
ordinary, ho-hum corruption. Nobody even knows that happened or that it 
exists because this all feels normal now.
  We are not out of November yet, fellas. Two weeks later--you feel 
this, right? The pace now has quickened--Trump releases the head of a 
nursing home empire, Joseph Schwartz, from prison. This guy, who is 
similar to the other guy, scammed his patients, his employees, and the 
IRS out of tens of millions of dollars. He was a tax cheat. People died 
in his facilities due to his negligence. He was stealing money from his 
nursing homes. But he paid $1 million to Trump-connected lobbyists, and 
Trump pardoned this fraudster after serving 3 months. There was no 
claim that he was innocent. There was no claim that the trial was 
rigged. No. This guy was convicted of massive fraud--he hurt people--
and he got out of jail because he paid the right lobbyists who were 
connected to Trump.
  This is how it all works. It is not just Trump getting rich. It is 
not just Trump's sons getting rich. It is about everybody connected to 
the President getting rich--this pardon-for-cash scheme.
  All right. We are into December now. Two weeks later, out of the 
blue, the Trump administration revokes a Biden-era rule--this is back 
to nursing homes--to ensure that nursing homes have sufficient staffing 
to meet the basic standards of care. We have a lot of evidence that 
understaffed nursing homes have higher mortality rates. But this rule 
is now rescinded, and guess what we find out. We find out that nursing 
home executives got together and paid to have a private lunch with 
Donald Trump--because, remember, you can pay millions of dollars to 
Trump-affiliated political entities, and you will get a private 
audience with him. At lunch, they asked him to revoke this rule, and he 
immediately ordered it done--no public discussion, no consideration of 
the merits. The nursing home executives paid the price to get a lunch, 
they asked for the rule to be rescinded, and the rule got rescinded--no 
process. They had the lunch. They paid the money. They asked for the 
rule to be rescinded. Trump called up, and the rule was rescinded.
  We are now in 2026. On February 10, Trump announces--this one is 
wild--that he is blocking the opening of a bridge that is ready to open 
connecting Detroit to Canada. It is ready to open. This is a bridge 
that is going to help people on both sides of the border. Guess what we 
find out. The owner of an existing bridge, whose profits would be 
harmed by the competitor bridge, donated $1 million to get a meeting, 
this time with Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick. Within days this 
time--within hours--of the meeting with the Commerce Secretary--hours--
the owners of the existing bridge get what they wanted. Trump announced 
that he would block the opening of the bridge. One million dollars, a 
meeting, and donors get what they want within hours.
  The next month, we start to see that Trump's inner circle knows that 
they can get in on the action. Very few people are closer to President 
Trump than Corey Lewandowski. He was at the time the special adviser to 
the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and Lewandowski 
was basically like: There are no rules anymore. I can do whatever I 
want.
  So he literally starts to engage in mob-style extortion threats to 
contractors. He demands direct payments from companies that want DHS 
contracts for his protection.
  If you pay me money, I will protect your contracts.
  There is plenty of evidence here from the companies themselves that 
tell the

[[Page S3038]]

story of, when they refused to pay Lewandowski for protection--mob-
style protection--suddenly, their contracts from DHS dried up. A DHS 
employee confirmed that he received direct instructions to not give a 
company that didn't pay Lewandowski any more contracts.

  In April, there was another scheme to help Donald Trump's kids. For 
almost 100 years, it has been illegal to ship handguns through the mail 
because it is a lot easier for violent criminals to illegally access 
guns if they can just get those weapons shipped to their front doors. 
But Donald Trump, Jr., bought a huge stake in a company that was going 
to corner the market on the mail order sale of guns, so Trump's DOJ got 
to work and declared that this 100-year-old law is magically, all of a 
sudden unconstitutional, clearing the way for another company owned by 
or invested in by Donald Trump, Jr., to make big bucks by mailing guns.
  We are still in April. As the war begins in Iran, Trump's inner 
circle finds a new way to cash in. They can place bets on prediction 
markets or on futures markets based on the inside information they have 
about the war. This is illegal war profiteering.
  Hours before Trump announces the first Iran cease-fire, a bunch of 
investors--likely inside the White House--placed approximately $950 
million on bets that oil prices would fall. When later that day Trump 
announced a cease-fire that sent oil prices tumbling by 15 percent, 
those investors got filthy rich. You can literally look at the pace of 
trades that day. There is this avalanche of trades that happens hours 
before Trump announces the cease-fire. That can only be because people 
had inside information. This practice would continue to happen over and 
over and over.
  But why do they think they can get away with this? Why does anybody 
think they can get away with this? So much of this is illegal, right? 
You would say to yourself: Nobody would engage in that kind of naked 
illegal practice. Nobody would award contracts to the kids knowing that 
that doesn't pass legal muster.
  On April 10, you figure out why they think they are going to get away 
with it. On April 10, Donald Trump makes an explicit promise that 
everybody engaged in this corruption will get away with it. Here is his 
quote on April 10 as the pace of this corruption increases:

       I will pardon everyone within 200 feet of the White House.

  So now you understand why people understand they can get away with 
it.
  This is reported on April 27, so we are still in April: Trump wants 
to get all his friends involved in the grift now, so Trump gives a no-
bid, $17 million contract to refurbish two fountains near the White 
House, including the Reflecting Pool. We are living with the 
consequences of this corruption right now as we have a green Reflecting 
Pool. This is a completely unqualified contractor who is already in 
over his head because he is involved in the ballroom, and he gets a new 
$17 million contract.
  Does it really cost $17 million to clean up fountains? The answer 
from the National Park Service itself is no. In fact, the National Park 
Service was planning to bid that contract out for one-fifth of what 
Trump gave it to his friend for, but it was a no-bid contract. It just 
went to Donald Trump's friend. The value was wildly inflated.
  So now Trump's buddy has an extra $14 million--more than the actual 
cost of the project. It is your money. This money doesn't grow on 
trees; this is taxpayer money. It is supposed to cost $3 million; he 
gave the contract for $17 million.
  We are still in April. Big Tobacco has wanted for years to break into 
the $6 billion flavored vape and e-cigarette market, but the FDA, of 
course, has had regulations to say that you can't sort of run back this 
old playbook of the tobacco companies' marketing to kids, so we haven't 
allowed them to market these flavored vape products, these bubble gum-
flavored vape products. I have two teenagers. I know exactly what is 
going on. They were marketing these products to kids, and they weren't 
allowed to do it.
  But the tobacco lobbyists did the thing that we have talked about 
over and over again: They made a $5 million donation, and if you make a 
$5 million donation, you get a lunch with the President or a dinner 
with the President. So they get this lunch with the President, and they 
say to the President, just like the nursing homes executives said: I 
want the vape rule to be rescinded.
  Surrounded by these Big Tobacco representatives, President Trump at 
the moment calls the FDA Commissioner and tells him to rescind the 
regulations.
  He calls up Dr. Oz. Look, all this is happening immediately. He tells 
him to rescind the regulations. The FDA Commissioner resigns in 
protest. He said that, in good conscience, he couldn't do this; he 
couldn't be part of this kind of corruption.
  But on Friday, the FDA announced that it was bypassing all 
traditional rulemaking to adopt the exact policy that the tobacco 
executives asked for the weekend before. Less than a week--less than a 
week--no rulemaking, the FDA Commissioner resigns.
  We are now on to May. Not all of the stories of the corruption in 
this White House require deep journalistic dives into obscure public 
records. Sometimes, you can just log onto YouTube, where you can find 
Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy's family road-trip reality show.
  Who is bankrolling this stunt? Who is paying for the gas, the hotels, 
the cameras; filming his vacation? Not Duffy. It is Toyota. It is 
Boeing. It is United Airlines. It is all the companies that Secretary 
Duffy is responsible for regulating.
  Gas prices are going up, transportation costs are going up, and the 
Secretary of Transportation is riding in snowmobiles in Montana, paid 
for by the companies he regulates.
  Decades ago, that scandal alone--companies you regulate paying for 
your vacations--would have resulted in a Cabinet member resigning in 
disgrace. My Republican colleagues know this. This didn't used to be 
acceptable. But in Trump's White House, everyone has their hand out for 
a payday. It is encouraged.
  And then, finally, in May, we discover another monster corruption 
scheme. The market bets based on inside information have not, in fact, 
been limited to Trump's staff and friends. The entire time that Trump 
has been in office, we discovered, he has not been putting his money 
into a blind trust. He has been personally signing off on thousands and 
thousands of individual trades. No previous President has done this.
  Here is an example of how it works. Early in the year, Trump buys a 
million dollars of Dell stock. A couple days later, from the White 
House podium, he boosts the company--Dell--that he just bought stock 
in. A couple months later, he gives Dell a $10 billion defense contract 
with the Pentagon.
  That happens over and over again. The President buys stock. He 
publicly boosts the company. He gives government work.
  I know all of this feels exhausting--500 days of corruption--but we 
have never ever seen this before. I only listed, like, half of the 
publicly disclosed incidents of corruption, and we just can't pretend 
that this is normal.
  I am giving a half an hour to this because this is a serious, serious 
crisis--the pay-to-play schemes, the pardons for donors, the contracts 
for friends, the favors for Trump's children, the use of inside 
information to make money. This is not a disconnected series of 
scandals. This is a system.
  The government is supposed to serve us. It is supposed to lower 
costs. It is supposed to protect our families, strengthen our schools, 
make life better. But Donald Trump believes that government exists to 
serve him, to make him richer, to protect his friends, to reward his 
donors.
  This is why he doesn't have time for you. He doesn't have time to 
solve real problems because he is making money for himself and his 
friends.
  And he is betting that the corruption will be so constant that we 
stop hearing it; that the outrage will just turn into exhaustion, and 
the exhaustion will just turn into acceptance. We can't let that happen 
because once corruption becomes normal, it becomes permanent.
  The White House is not a business opportunity. The Presidency is not 
a license to steal from the American people. The Government of the 
United States doesn't exist to make Donald Trump rich. It belongs to 
the American

[[Page S3039]]

people. And after 500 days of corruption, Democrats and Republicans in 
this body, along with the American people, should start acting like it.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
  Mr. RISCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 
5 minutes before the previously scheduled recess.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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