Gold Bitcoins are seen in the window of a Bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchange office on Nov. 8, 2024, in Istanbul, Turkey. (Chris McGrath/TNS)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Carl P. Leubsdorf is a former Washington bureau chief of The Dallas Morning News.
Every 50 years, it’s become traditional for the United States to celebrate the survival of its democracy for another half century, just as many Americans did last week.
Unfortunately, every 50 years or so has also seen its national government become enmeshed in political scandal. It’s happening again, and the current ones may prove to be the worst.
In the 1870s, during the Ulysses Grant administration’s Credit Mobilier scandal, several top officials were accused of taking bribes from the Union Pacific Railroad and the Credit Mobilier finance company for rulings that helped build the first transcontinental railroad. They included Vice President Schuyler Colfax and several congressmen but, though their reputations were tarnished, no charges were ever filed.
In the 1920s, during Warren Harding’s administration, Interior Secretary Albert Fall secretly leased government-owned petroleum reserves in Teapot Dome, Wyo., and Elk Hills, Calif., to private oil executives for thousands of dollars in bribes. Fall, convicted of taking bribes, became the first Cabinet member imprisoned for acts in office.
More recently, in the 1970s, the Watergate scandal toppled Richard Nixon’s presidency after disclosures he directed the FBI and the CIA to cover up White House involvement in his campaign’s break-in of the Democratic Party’s Watergate Office Building headquarters and the subsequent payoffs to the burglars.
Unlike Credit Mobilier and Teapot Dome, the president was directly implicated and was forced to resign in the face of certain impeachment and conviction. Several other top officials, including three Cabinet members, were among 48 people convicted of crimes.
Since the current administration began, President Donald Trump and his family members have made vast sums of money, some resulting from his administration’s actions, though it’s unclear if any crimes were committed.
Some top officials were appointed only after making large contributions to Trump campaign groups. And the companies of big contributors — many solicited for large amounts after the election — gained high-level administration access and favorable rulings.
As Trump likes to say when describing various aspects of his administration: “Nobody’s ever seen anything like it.”
His recently released 927-page 2025 financial disclosure showed Trump earned $2.2 billion last year, compared with $600 million in 2024. His investment advisers made more than 21,000 securities trades from eight separate accounts, acquiring large holdings in about 1,600 companies including many directly involved in administration deals, ABC News reported. At the very least, the extent of the dealings is unprecedented
On the day the White House unveiled its “AI Action Plan,” ABC said, they purchased between $1-5 million each in six companies — Amazon, Apple, Broadcom, Meta, Microsoft and Nvidia — whose AI work was directly impacted by the policy seeking to reduce federal regulation of the AI industry.
Other Trump stock deals paralleled his public statements during his on-again, off-again imposition of import tariffs last April.
Stock prices slumped sharply after Trump unveiled the tariffs. About a week later, he posted on Truth Social, “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT.” Later the same day, he announced he would pause the tariffs, sending stock prices soaring up.
A day earlier, CNBC reported, Trump’s advisers bought stock in 327 separate companies, enabling them to benefit when his tariff pause sent the market surging upward.
Trump has said he is not involved in stock trading by his trustees. “You know why I’m profiting?” he said. “Because the stock market’s going up, everybody’s profiting.”
The stock market is not the only place he cashed in.
According to The New York Times, his financial disclosure showed that Trump and his sons Don Jr. and Eric made huge profits at the expense of their investors via their cryptocurrency firm, World Liberty Financial, and through Trump Media.
Of his $2.2 billion in income, some $1.4 billion came from his profits from cryptocurrency dealings, like sales to the president’s enthusiasts of the $TRUMP coins, whose value plummeted after their sales from nearly $75 per coin before his inauguration to about $1.70.
His World Liberty earnings included $263 million from secretly selling a share to the United Arab Emirates. World Liberty Financial was formed on the eve of Trump’s 2024 re-election by Don Jr., Eric and the son of Middle East negotiator Steve Witkoff.
The Times said Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who is conducting negotiations on Gaza and Iran with Witkoff, was trying to raise $5 billion for his investment firm from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar.
MS NOW reported that Eric and Don Trump Jr. have investments in 10 companies that received $3.7 billion in Pentagon contracts. In one instance, according to ProPublica, presidential adviser Peter Navarro intervened to ensure a $620 million Pentagon loan to a small North Carolina firm in which Don Jr. is an investor.
Other administration figures are also benefiting financially from government activities.
According to the Times, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick negotiated a deal with Kazakhstan giving an American company, Kaz Resources, access to rare tungsten supplies in the former Soviet republic. It said Lutnick’s and Trump’s sons are involved in the project, which received $1.6 billion in federal financing.
The president and vice president are exempt from conflict-of-interest rules that limit other executive branch officials. But in his first term, Trump and his family sought to avoid any potentially questionable business deals.
Asked by The Times why he has acted differently this time, Trump replied, “Because I found out that nobody cared.”
But if the Democrats regain the House in November, he may find there’s a lot of interest.
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