The Kleptocracy Officially Begins As Congress Is In Session

It was nice to see Republicans in the House make sure their very first act in the new Congress was to hang a nice bright sign outside the Capitol saying that the kleptocracy was open for business. Forget repealing Obamacare. That can wait until the GOP first makes sure that its corruption will not be impinged by any spurious investigations.

The House will adopt the rules for the 115th Congress today and one of the new rules that House Republicans voted on last night and will be adopted over Democratic objections today is to gut the Office of Congressional Ethics, the independent agency that investigates Congressional misconduct. Under the new Republican rules, that office will cease to exist as an independent entity or an entity at all. A new Office of Congressional Complaint Review (OCCR) will take its place but importantly not be independent. Instead it will report to the totally partisan and ineffective House Ethics Committee. If that was not bad enough, the new Republican rules effectively muzzle the office from sharing information with the public and restrict paths of investigation. First, the new OCCR will not be allowed to investigate any anonymous complaints. In addition, the OCCR would not be allowed to relay any information to law enforcement officials if it determines that a crime has been committed. And lastly, just to ensure that these potential Congressional crimes remain totally hidden from the public, the OCCR is specifically prohibited from providing any information to the public or employing any person “for a position involving communications with the public”. The opportunity for outright bribery and corruption is now wide open. And, under these new rules, pedophiles like Mark Foley would probably still be in Congress abusing House pages.

While Congress is just hanging out the shingle to be bribed, Donald Trump has already been out there banking hundreds of thousands of dollars by selling access. There was the development projects in India that Trump helped move along in the immediate aftermath of his election and the solicitation of foreign embassies to use his DC hotel. Trump projects are going forward in Indonesia, India, Uruguay, Dubai, and Canada. With the exception of Canada, all of these countries are places where greasing the hands of powerful politicians and building interests are useful in getting things done. The NY Times describes Trump’s ethical morass in Indonesia thusly, “[Trump’s] tangle of relationships includes an Indonesian business partner who aspires to high office; a powerful politician accused of trying to extort billions of dollars from an American mining company; as well as Mr. Trump’s adviser on regulatory issues, Carl C. Icahn, who is a top shareholder in the same mining company.”

Trump also used the occasion of New Year’s Eve to bank nearly half a million dollars for himself through his exclusive party at Mar-a-Lago. With “ticket” prices to the event of between $500 and $600 dollars per person and a guest list that was supposedly around 800 people, the for-profit gala easily brought in over $400,000 for Trump. And that assumes that people limited themselves to the price of the ticket rather than throwing a little something “extra” to help Trump’s worthy cause (himself) along.

Trump spokesperson Hope Hicks laid down the ground rules that Trump will be operating under, saying, “the president cannot and does not have a conflict.” Despite all the bluster and promises about detaching himself from his business, Trump’s position has always been that, as President, he cannot have a conflict of interest. And now that Congress has limited any independent investigations into their own conflicts, we can all happily settle in for corruption on a scale we probably haven’t seen for a century. Trump’s admiration for Putin and his government is already being reflected in our new President and Congress. It will be an oligarchic kleptocracy that I’m sure we will all be proud of.

Update: It looks like GOP may be having second thoughts on this brazen move due to the outrage that has erupted. Heck, even Trump is scoring some cheap points by saying this shouldn’t be their top priority. (Note he didn’t say that it should not be done, just questioned the timing.)

Update 2: Apparently the immense outrage has forced the GOP to back off this move to enable corruption as the proposal has been dropped from the rules to be adopted by the House.