Sen. Murphy Calls Out Trump Corruption

On the afternoon of March 6, on the floor of the Senate, Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut accused the Trump administration of corruption. Pulling no punches, Murphy stated, “In the first six [weeks] of the Trump presidency, Trump and Elon Musk and their billionaire friends have engaged in a stunning rampage of open public corruption.” He then listed 24 specific instances of corruption.

Murphy’s presentation demonstrated that he knows how to pierce the narrative smog coming from the Trump White House and is prepared to do battle against the administration.

Like a general looking past the pain and confusion of a war of bombs and bullets to focus on the enemy’s strategic gains, he cut through the Trump administration’s efforts to “flood the zone” to shine a light, point by point, on their abuse of the power entrusted to them. Murphy effectively made clear that Trump has violated his oath to uphold and serve the Constitution, the rule of law, and the public good.

In gathering together a timeline summarizing “just some of the most significant instances of blatantly corrupt activity” of Trump’s first six weeks in office, Murphy concluded, “This White House is on its way to being the most corrupt in the history of the country.”

Among the 24 instances included in his timeline, Murphy identified the three most egregious actions:

#1 The launch of Trump’s meme coin on January 17.

A meme coin is a cryptocurrency. Like all cryptocurrencies, transactions are made anonymously. This means that, with Trump owning an 80% stake, anyone can secretly purchase Trump meme coins as a bribe to influence the president. Murphy and other observers were quick to identify the meme coin as a likely avenue for corruption.

#2 The Eric Adams quid pro quo announced on February 10.

According to the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Danielle Sessions, Adams’ attorneys proposed that Adams would support Trump’s enforcement agenda, including the roundup of immigrants, if the Department of Justice dismissed the indictment against him for bribery. Such an action would constitute a quid pro quo that is at odds with the rule of law and two guidance documents for DOJ lawyers.

On February 10, Sessions was directed by acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove to dismiss the indictment. Rather than comply, she chose to resign, stating that her oath of office prevented her from doing so. When Bove sought other senior attorneys involved in the investigation to act on the dismissal, they, too, resigned for the same reason. In all, seven prosecutors resigned before Bove found someone willing to carry out his order.

Observers have likened the resignations to those of the Saturday Night Massacre, when President Nixon sought to curtail the Watergate investigation that ultimately ended his presidency.

#3 Musk pressuring the FAA to replace a vendor with his own company.

On February 26, the Washington Post reported that Elon Musk, the head of Trump’s questionably-named Department of Government Efficiency, was pressuring the Federal Aviation Administration to cancel a 2023 contract awarded to Verizon for an upgrade to its communications system, the center of the FAA’s air traffic control system. Disregarding issues of conflict of interest, Musk further pressured officials to replace Verizon with his own Starlink, a subsidiary of SpaceX..

Murphy seemed incredulous, saying, “Just extraordinary that this is happening in plain view of everybody…. We’ve never seen this ever before in American history.”

The final item on Murphy’s list – a report from Wired that business leaders were being invited to purchase one-on-one meetings with the president for $5 million – didn’t make the top three but left him flabbergasted nonetheless and clearly distressed. “This isn’t ok,” he said.

Added together, Murphy said these are efforts by Trump and friends “to steal from the American people to enrich themselves.”

Murphy’s presentation comes as an important response to what has mostly been a one-sided narrative war that has engulfed this country for much of the last 40 years. Launched at a time when political norms still seemed to hold and today’s extremism was mostly unimagined, the divisive narrative spun by extremists in the GOP, with enhancements from Russia, paved the way for the rise of Trump. The GOP’s aggressiveness has only become more intense since Trump’s “Stop the Steal” in 2020. (“Narrative warfare” is a term that evolved from a concept the national security community referred to as “information war”. The difference, as security strategist Ajit Maan has written, is that information is just data, whereas narrative constructs a story from the data to give it meaning.)

The extremists, now led by Trump, might speak in ways that resonate with those Americans who have justifiably grown frustrated with and angered by the government’s inability to get things done. But, as laid out by Murphy, the people of this Trump presidency primarily serve themselves and their very wealthy backers.