Why Trump Actually Does Want To Make Overt Corporate Bribery Legal

Earlier today, we looked at how Trump is changing housing laws to normalize his own-- and his family's-- endemic racism. But that isn't the only law he's changing to justify his own ugly behavior patterns. Writing Sunday for HuffPo, Mary Papenfuss warned that Trump wants to change the laws that make foreign bribery illegal. Trump literally wants to change the statute making it illegal for American corporations to bribe foreign officials! Larry Kudlow admitted the regime is looking into changing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Kudlow, a notorious coke addict who works for Trump: "I would just say: We are aware of it, we are looking at it, and we’ve heard complaints from some of our companies. I don’t want to say anything definitive policy-wise, but we are looking at it."

The new blockbuster by Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, A Very Stable Genius, quotes Señor Trumpanzee whining to former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, "It’s just so unfair that American companies aren’t allowed to pay bribes to get business overseas. We’re going to change that."

The book is a scathing portrayal of Trump as an ill-informed, reckless, explosive bully. The passage published by The Post involves an attempt by military leaders and Tillerson to provide an extended briefing for the president early in his administration to educate him about such issues as American history, alliances and even the location of nations. Trump, who repeatedly barked during the briefing that other countries have to start paying up for American defense help, suddenly blasted the officials as a “bunch of dopes and babies,” the authors reported. It was after that meeting that Tillerson called the president a “fucking moron,” according to the book, which was reported at the time.

The book comes out tomorrow. I bet it goes to #1 on the New York Times best seller list-- but not the same way Trumpanzee, Jr.'s book wound up on the best seller list.

Cornered by Nancy Ohanian

During the 2016 campaign, I visited Azerbaijan and went to the scandal-ridden Trump Tower in Baku, which was in a strange and inaccessible part of town and which never fully opened and was then completely shut down when the CIA explained-- in no uncertain terms-- to candidate Trump that the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act prohibited many things, including the hotel's money-laundering arrangements with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, whose head, Qasem Soleimani, Trump had assassinated a little over 2 weeks ago.

Trump has wanted to repeal the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act-- which he was calling "a horrible law" years before he ran for office-- since the day he wormed his way into the White House. One of Trump's first appointments was a egregiously crooked Wall Street defense attorney and Foreign Corrupt Practices Act opponent, Jay Clayton, to head the Securities and Exchange Commission, which, among other things Claytron should be nowhere near, enforces the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Putting Clayton in charge of policing Wall Street was one of the most classic fox-guarding-the-hen-house moves Trump has made. When the Democrats tried filibustering his nomination, every Republican plus 10 conservative and generally pro-corruption Democrats voted to shut it down. The Democraps who guaranteed Clayton's confirmation were:

• Michael Bennet (CO), consistently the single least popular of all the Democratic candidates for president this year
• Tom Carper (DE), the Senate's current version of Status Quo Joe
• Maggie Hassan (NH), a hopelessly out of her depth hack
• Heidi Heitkamp (ND), who was defeated for reelection the following year
• Joe Manchin (WV), who was the most pro-Trump Democrat in the Senate until Kyrsten Sinema was elected in 2018
• Claire McCaskill (MO), who was defeated for reelection the following year and was then immediately hired by Comcast TV to help degrade progressives and progressive ideas
• Bill Nelson (FL), who was defeated for reelection the following year
• Jeanne Shaheen (NH), see Hassan, Maggie
• John Tester (MT), worried about reelection
• John Warner (VA), a natural Republican with an incongruous "D" next to his name

Anyway, do you remember Adam Davidson's powerful exposé in March of 2017, Trump's Worst Deal, all about his crooked deal in Baku? To understand why Trump hates the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act as much as he does, just read Davidson's New Yorker piece, which really is wonderful. Trump's partners in the money launderings scheme with Soleimani was Azerbaijan's premier mafia family: "The Azerbaijanis behind the project were close relatives of Ziya Mammadov, the Transportation Minister and one of the country’s wealthiest and most powerful oligarchs. According to the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index, Azerbaijan is among the most corrupt nations in the world. Its President, Ilham Aliyev, the son of the former President Heydar Aliyev, recently appointed his wife to be Vice-President. Ziya Mammadov became the Transportation Minister in 2002, around the time that the regime began receiving enormous profits from government-owned oil reserves in the Caspian Sea. At the time of the hotel deal, Mammadov, a career government official, had a salary of about twelve thousand dollars, but he was a billionaire... But the Mammadov family, in addition to its reputation for corruption, has a troubling connection that any proper risk assessment should have unearthed: for years, it has been financially entangled with an Iranian family tied to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the ideologically driven military force. In 2008, the year that the tower was announced, Ziya Mammadov, in his role as Transportation Minister, awarded a series of multimillion-dollar contracts to Azarpassillo, an Iranian construction company. Keyumars Darvishi, its chairman, fought in the Iran-Iraq War. After the war, he became the head of Raman, an Iranian construction firm that is controlled by the Revolutionary Guard. The U.S. government has regularly accused the Guard of criminal activity, including drug trafficking, sponsoring terrorism abroad, and money laundering. Reuters recently reported that the Trump Administration was poised to officially condemn the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization."