Harv's Corner 05/25/2026

Harv's Corner

"What a setup. The public support system gets choked off, the U.S. Treasury gets looted, and the cost of basic necessities like gas and groceries continues to soar. Meanwhile, the President, in addition to everything else he is doing, makes millions by grifting the stock market. How much longer are we going to stay asleep to this?"

All The President’s Thefts
Trump reinforces the fact that he is the most corrupt president in American history
Dan Rather and Team Steady
May 18

Credit: Getty Images

Donald Trump’s grift of the American people is no secret. Actually, there is absolutely nothing secret about it.

He is looting the country in plain sight,
with nary a concern that he will be called out for it.  Why should he worry when he holds such sway over enough Republican members of Congress to give him a free pass? It’s not even a Get Out of Jail Free card. It’s a Do Whatever You Want While We Look the Other Way card.

The news on Monday of his latest swindle may take a moment to sink in. But it details one of Trump’s most audacious steals yet, and that is obviously saying a lot.
Among the many schemes to benefit himself, this ranks among the most harebrained, and calls renewed attention to the fact that he is the most corrupt American president ever.

You may remember that Trump sued the Internal Revenue Service, an agency he controls, for $10 billion. The suit alleged that the IRS failed to take sufficient steps to prevent a contractor from downloading Trump’s tax records and releasing them to the media.

Because of the disclosure, the suit claims, Trump and his family have suffered “reputational and financial harm,” as well as “public embarrassment.” Apparently, they got over it.

Early Monday morning, Trump’s lawyers surprised Judge Kathleen M. Williams of Florida’s Southern District by telling her the president was dropping the case.

Some thought he was doing so because of intense pushback on what may be the most galling lawsuit ever, or because of an outright con to create a fund of taxpayer money to compensate those who claim they were victims of President Biden’s justice department.

Not two hours later, the Trump Department of Justice announced the creation of that exact fund, worth
$1.776 billion. Get it? 1776?

Nothing like forking over nearly 2 billion taxpayer dollars to help us celebrate our nation’s 250th birthday.
Happy birthday, America! Now, open your wallets. The money is nothing more than a slush fund to pay Trump’s allies and acolytes, including the 1,600 people convicted of participating in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, or anyone else deemed to have a qualifying complaint against Biden, and “to provide a systematic process to hear and redress claims of others who suffered weaponization and lawfare.”
So, those who attacked the Capitol can now be paid for doing so.

Here’s the administration’s rationale:
“The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this department’s intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again,” said Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, with no apparent irony.

The fund, part of an interconnected web of corruption, will be overseen by a five-person commission appointed by the attorney general, which will have broad authority to funnel taxpayer dollars to Trump's friends. The commission will have virtually no oversight, except that Trump can remove members.

We may never fully know who receives payments or how much they get.
Trump’s personal lawyers effectively performed an end run around the American justice system. By dropping the suit, they keep Judge Williams from dismissing the case outright, which she was reportedly considering, or approving (or not approving) a formal settlement.

In their filing, the lawyers said the dismissal meant that “no judicial analysis is appropriate” for the suit. In other words, no oversight.
Minutes after the fund announcement, 93 Democratic lawmakers filed court papers accusing the Department of Justice of colluding with Trump.

“Never in the history of the United States has a sitting president sought a monetary settlement from the government he leads — let alone sought many billions of dollars in taxpayer funds,” the lawmakers wrote in court documents.
The filing is moot now that the suit has been dropped. In an interview on ABC’s “This Week,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) called the fund “unconstitutional.” “This, of course, is a political grievance fund that Donald Trump can use to pay off his friends. If these people have a valid cause of action, they should bring it to court as every other American does, use the system of due process, and prove it by clear and convincing evidence or a preponderance of the evidence. But the idea that Donald Trump can just pass it out like a pardon is absurd,” Raskin said.

As is so often the case, this is not Trump’s only egregious transgression of the past few days.

On Friday, the president disclosed a flurry of personal stock trades made during the first quarter of 2026.
His legally required financial filings revealed a whopping 3,700 trades totaling between $220 and $750 million. That’s more than 40 trades a day during the first three months of the year. “This is an insane amount of trades,” Matthew Tuttle, chief executive officer of Tuttle Capital Management, told Bloomberg News. Tuttle said it looks more like the trading history of a hedge fund that buys and shorts stocks rather than a personal account.

The 2012 STOCK Act requires the president and members of Congress to disclose all commodity transactions.
Because every other president who held securities since 2012 has put them in a blind trust, Trump is the first to trigger the requirement.

The reason presidents, other than Trump, put their holdings in a blind trust is that many public companies do business with the federal government. Most public officials, other than Trump, want to avoid conflicts of interest. Trump seems to embrace them, regularly mixing presidential duties with personal business. Trump bought and sold stocks in dozens of companies he directly did business with as president, including Nvidia, Microsoft, Oracle, eBay, Uber, Meta, and Amazon. Just last week, the Boeing CEO joined Trump on his trip to China, where President Xi Jinping agreed to buy 200 Boeing jets. His filings show Trump traded Boeing stock during the first quarter. The disclosure forms showed six trades involving Intel, while the administration was working on an agreement to acquire a 10% stake in the company for $9 billion. Trump bought and sold Netflix, Paramount, Skydance, and Warner Bros. Discovery stock as his Federal Communications Commission considered the two media giants' proposed purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery.

Once upon a time, a president would get in trouble for insider trading. Trump’s capacity to misuse his office for personal gain is astounding, and it is blatantly wrong. But it is not without consequences. The New York Times released a new poll Monday that shows the president is vastly unpopular and losing support, even from his base. His approval rating has shrunk to a second-term low of 37%, with 59% disapproval. Almost two-thirds of respondents believe he was wrong to attack Iran. And that number jumps to 75% among crucial independents. He is down on all metrics including his handling of the economy and the cost of living. This is not the kind of poll Republicans want to see less than six months before the midterms. And Trump’s continued grifting doesn’t figure to help their cause, no matter how often they redraw the maps.