A major theme of President Trump’s critics is that he is corrupt. As a couple of examples, here is Elizabeth Warren on July 26 calling Trump “the most corrupt president of the United States any time in American history”; and here is a piece from the Guardian on August 11 calling Trump’s second term “the most openly corrupt” presidency ever. There are hundreds more where those came from.
But is there anything to this? As long time readers here are aware, my view is that politics is inherently corrupt. In this way, politics differs from business, because in business it is completely legitimate to seek to maximize one’s own profit. By contrast, in politics, the officeholder has a duty to exercise policy in the public good, and not for his own benefit or for the benefit of his friends and supporters. But government policy affects everybody, and it is inevitable that some policies will benefit the officeholder and his friends, or will disadvantage the officeholder’s adversaries. Did the officeholder implement some particular policies entirely for the public good, or in whole or part to enrich himself and his friends? It is impossible to know. And in the real world, every political officeholder will implement policies that can be justified as being in the public good, but in reality also benefit the officeholder himself, or his friends and supporters, disproportionately. Is it corrupt? How would you know?
The Supreme Court has struggled mightily trying to distinguish criminal political corruption from the corruption inherent in the exercise of political power that cannot be criminalized. See my tag “Phony Prosecutions.” Perhaps the leading case is McDonnell v. United States (from 2016), where the Court held that a criminal bribery case against a political officeholder requires an official action taken in return for some “quid pro quo” going to the politician. Thus, the fact that an officeholder or his friends may personally benefit from some policy cannot make out a criminal case, unless the politician has been given a bribe specifically to adopt that policy.
In today’s Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan takes up the question of political corruption as to President Trump. The headline and sub-headline are “The Art of the Self-Deal: Thoughts on how Trump-era corruption is affecting Americans as a people.” Clearly, Noonan has concluded that there is a lot of corruption in Trump’s presidency, and that that it is a big problem. But has she made out a case? My observation is that her case is remarkably weak.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member