This week, the Trump Administration has quietly confirmed that it will backtrack on its plans to create a $1.8 billion fund to compensate the president's allies who felt persecuted and mistreated by Democratic administrations. The Department of Justice announced the Political Instrumentalization Fund on May 19, but Trump faced much more resistance than expected from his own congressmen and senators, scandalized, although not openly stated, by a mechanism through which Capitol rioters could receive million-dollar bonuses after being pardoned.
"We will not move forward with the fund, period", admitted Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche in response to questions during a hearing in the House of Representatives. "Never?" asked Representative Grace Meng, a Democrat from New York, thinking this was a strategy to buy time and introduce it later. "Correct," Blanche replied.
The defeat of the Executive is clear and is explained not only by the proximity of the November legislative elections, in which all 435 members of the House of Representatives and a third of the senators are up for election, but also by the accumulation of scandalous operations to benefit and profit the president and his family. Trump initially intended for the Department of Justice to personally indemnify him after a complaint about the leak of his tax returns years ago (a case for which the culprit is in prison). However, he opted for this formula that would benefit his allies in exchange for an agreement with the Tax Agency so that they could never investigate him or his children for tax-related issues related to their past declarations and operations.
In late May, ProPublica revealed that the White House intervened to facilitate a $620 million loan from the Department of Defense to Vulcan Elements, a startup dedicated to the manufacturing of rare earth magnets, components for drones, radars, missiles, and other military systems. What is significant is that just three months before the operation was announced, the venture capital firm 1789 Capital, in which Donald Trump Jr. is involved, acquired a stake in the company. The request to finance Vulcan did not follow the usual channels but was directly promoted by Peter Navarro, one of the main White House advisors. Before Trump Jr. invested, Vulcan was valued at approximately $200 million. After Defense's involvement, some estimates placed its valuation close to $2 billion.
Then there is the issue of the White House Ballroom, Trump's great obsession, the topic he talks about the most and wants to discuss. When he announced the project in 2025, he mentioned a cost of around $200 million. Later, the figure rose to $300 million and then to $400 million, claiming that the building would be much larger and of higher quality than the initial design, but it would be funded through private donations and contributions from large companies. However, there is a proposal presented by Republicans in the Senate to finance what they call security enhancements linked to the East Wing modernization project, costing $1 billion for the taxpayer.
It has also been revealed that the president's fund managers conducted over 3,700 operations in the first quarter of the year, including million-dollar purchases of shares in companies like Nvidia, Dell, and other major tech firms that have benefited from the administration's decisions. "Neither President Trump, nor his family, nor the Trump Organization play any role in the selection, direction, or approval of specific investments," stated a spokesperson for the Trump Organization. Unlike his predecessors, Trump did not divest his assets or transfer them to a blind trust with an independent administrator.
There is much more, not to mention the conflicts of interest of him, his children, his son-in-law, and his negotiators with Gulf countries, starting with the plane gifted by Qatar, the opacity of his cryptocurrency business, or the extensive list of pardons signed by the president for convicted criminals after political donations.
Trump administration officials have been pressuring the office responsible for printing the country's money for months to design a $250 bill featuring the president's portrait, the first appearance of a living person on U.S. currency in over 150 years. An analysis by the National Park Service revealed that the company awarded a no-bid contract to repair the Reflecting Pool at the Lincoln Memorial on the Washington Mall before the festivities for the 250th anniversary of the United States this summer benefits from an inflated margin far above normal, according to federal documents obtained by The New York Times. Trump initially claimed he chose this company because they had built the pool at his golf club in Sterling, Virginia, but later changed his story and stated he did not know them.
The typical profit margin for federal construction contracts like this ranges from 6% to 12%, but Atlantic Industrial Coatings, chosen by Trump to beautify the water, submitted a bid with a 20% margin, representing an increase of at least $850,000 compared to the cost of a more conventional contract. The company will receive $13.1 million, seven times the amount the president said the work would cost.