Column By John Young
Not one in 100 Americans can tell you what “Abscam” stands for. Make that one in a thousand.
It meant a lot in 1978 – an FBI sting behind the biggest bribery scandal in congressional history: six U.S. representatives and one senator taking $50,000 payoffs from an agent impersonating an Arab oilman.
That’s a lot of money.
Compare it, however, to what our president has been raking in while in office. It’s kibbles and bits.
Consider The New York Times’ scoop on a $5 million gift toward our great leader’s political and personal ends by a man seeking solely to benefit his own business.
The donations came from Oliver Burckhardt, CEO of a company called Extremity Care, a leader in a small industry that produces skin substitutes for stubborn wounds.
Sounds worthy. However, Burckhardt’s products carry unfathomable prices, which taxpayers subsidize. Extremity Care has been reimbursed by Medicare for $9,916 per square inch on one product it sells. That’s four times the average for comparable products, reports The Times.
The Biden administration ordered a review for the purpose of reducing reimbursements. With the turnover at the top from the 2024 election, Burckhardt knew just what to do.
He went to the Great Grifter.
Five. Million. Dollars. Can’t say no to that kind of dough. The Transactional Man put a hold on the directive that would have impinged on Burckhardt’s bottom line.
The inducement didn’t come in one lump sum. It was spread among the varied dark-money super PACs this president has watered and seeded like Dixie cups on the windowsill. What a crop they’ve produced.
Among the most egregious sums has been the $250 million he raised ostensibly for legal challenges after his defeat in 2020. Investigators for the Jan. 6 Committee found that only a sliver of that money was used for legal bills. Indeed, some of it helped fund events preceding the Capitol riot. The remainder will be spent at the discretion of he who raised it with frantic “Stop the Steal” appeals.
For authorizing indefensible slush funds like this, we salute the Roberts Supreme Court and its reckless deregulation of campaign finance in the 2010 Citizens United decision.
The ruling provided an immense palette of creative impropriety for parties and politicians, particularly for a president who won’t say no to — you know.
Regardless, there are all sorts of ways to win this man’s favor.
The co-owner of TikTok donated millions to the inaugural and, presto, a ban of TikTok — previously supported by the Transactional Man — got put on hold.
Similarly, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg donated $1 million to the inauguration. Let me predict right now that he will have ended the threat of new regulation for social media for that low, low price.
Oh, and there’s cryptocurrency. Our man on the take was highly critical of it until someone convinced him he could cash in with his own stable coin. In no time, he was hosting a “Crypto Summit” at the White House with the biggest figures in crypto and profiting from the sale of his coin in the process. As of June, the president had raked in $57 million from a shady industry he is in a position to regulate.
Maybe the biggest winners from all this influence buying will be executives of the Geo Group, whose business is building detention centers, and whose stock prices rocketed skyward after the 2024 election.
Naturally, recently the Washington Post reported on plans by ICE to double immigration detention space in the year to come. Fa-la-la-la-la.
If war has always been America’s biggest business, detention horrors and gruesome deportations have become our No. 1 growth industry.
Corrupt. Corrupted. Corruptible. This is the man voters returned to the presidency despite his felony record and demonstrable penchant for exploiting his position for enrichment. It’s only gotten worse.
Returning to Abscam and the relative puniness of bygone bribes, one of the greatest lines in the history of federal corruption came from U.S. Rep. John Jenrette, a South Carolina Democrat, and one of those nabbed in Abscam.
When offered the wad that got him arrested, Jenrette didn’t blink at the illegality. He chortled:
“I’ve got larceny in my blood. I’d take it in a goddamn minute.”
The man in the White House only wishes he were so erudite. For him, it’s:
“Just show us the money.”
Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email him at jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.
The opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author.
