La loi de Murphy énonce que s’il y a une probabilité que quelque chose échoue, alors ça échouera. Cette loi est connue est également appelée la loi de la tartine beurrée. Appliquée à la corruption, cette loi pourrait s’énoncer de manière extrêmement simple : si la corruption est envisageable, alors elle arrivera ou plus spécifiquement « Donald Trump est à la Maison-Blanche depuis 500 jours, ce sont 500 jours de corruption ».
Pourquoi le fait-il ? Parce qu’il le peut, « un président fait ce qu’il veut avait-il déclaré en substance. Et comme la Cour Suprême l’a exonéré de toutes poursuites et que le Congrès, sous majorité républicaine à la botte MAGA ne fait rien, il ne se passe rien.
« La gouvernement est censé vous servir, explique Chris Murphy, en fait c’est un gouvernement qui se sert ».
Ci-dessous une transcription de l’intervention du sénateur Chris Murphy
(…) And no president in the history of this country has done what Donald Trump has done. No president has done 5% of the self-deing that Donald Trump has done in the last year and a half. This moment is exceptional. (…)Last year, I came to the floor to document the first 100 days of Donald Trump’s mind-blowing corruption.
Since then, especially in 2026, the pace of his misconduct has quickened dramatically. And so, I am here on the floor today, and I’m going to spend more than a few minutes doing this, laying out what has happened since I gave that last speech. This is the story of 500 days of corruption.
And I’m going to start on April 7th, 2025.
This is when the current acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, issues a memo ordering the termination of several Biden era DOJ investigations into crypto companies. Now, here’s the problem.
The then deputy attorney general is a major investor in crypto companies and he works for a president who is a major player in the crypto industry. But DOJ just drops these investigations signals that the Department of Justice is no longer going to hold crypto companies accountable. But Blanch owns major investments in crypto stocks.
The president is one of the biggest players in the industry. Blanche doesn’t actually stop there. He eliminates the entire enforcement team at DOJ dedicated to rooting out crypto-reated fraud and money laundering schemes.
This is a crypto investor who works for a president who own cry who owns crypto companies shutting down the unit at DOJ that holds this industry accountable.
Let’s move to three weeks later on April 30th. Later in the month, a curious announcement from the Department of Agriculture.
They are reversing a rule that would require poultry companies to limit salmonillaa bacteria levels in their products. This is essentially a rule to make it less likely that people will get salmonillaa poisoning. Sounds like a strange rule to eliminate.
We come to find out that one of the biggest donors to Donald Trump’s inauguration was a poultry company called Pilgrim’s Pride. They made a donation to Trump’s inauguration that was bigger than practically any other company, bigger than Amazon, Meta, or Exxon. $5 million.
And after they made the donation, they asked for one thing, the reversal of this Salmonella rule. and they got it. This is payforplay.
You make a donation to the president or the president’s political operation. You ask for a favor and you get it. And we will see as we wind through these 500 days, this happens over and over again.
In May 2005, the pardon racket starts. Every member of the Senate should be outraged at this. You all know what is happening. The president is pardoning people based on their ability to pay either him and his political operation or pay people who are close to the president.
On May 27th, Donald Trump pardons a man called Paul Walzac. This is a really bad guy.
He stole millions of dollars from the nurses and healthc care aids at the nursing home he owned. and he used the cash that he stole from his employees to buy a $2 million yacht. He got convicted. He went to jail for fraud. But his mother paid $1 million to buy a face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump. And three weeks after that paid audience, her son was given a full and unconditional pardon that went so far as to relieve him of any duty to pay back the $4.4 million that he stole from his employees.
This is a new pay for pardons scheme that begins in May. In June of 2025, it’s revealed that top administration officials are cashing in on government contracts that benefit their own investment portfolio. Steven Miller is more than just the architect of the administration’s hardline immigration policies.
He has a personal financial stake in them. For instance, Miller owns up to $250,000 in Palantir stock. And just a month before Miller’s holdings became public, ICE announced that it was awarding a $30 million contract to, you guessed it, Palantir to provide realtime surveillance information to ICE officers.
And you’ll be shocked to hear this, there was no competitive bidding process for that contract. And you’ll hear this over and over again. Competitive bidding basically doesn’t exist.
If the president or somebody close to the president wants a contract directed to a friend or to a company in which they invest, Miller overseeing ICE, ICE gives a no bid contract to Palunteer. The investors in Palunteer which include Steven Miller get rich.
Let’s move to September of 2025.
In September, we start to learn the danger of Donald Trump’s cryptocurrency. I covered this in the first 100 days of corruption. This is maybe the most corrupt thing that Trump is doing. He and his family own a crypto company that issues several crypto coins. There’s no disclosure on who is buying those coins. The president promotes them.
He invites people to official events who purchase the coin.
On September 18th, though, we come to find out that Trump made $57 million selling crypto tokens to entities associated with the regimes in North Korea, Iran, and Russia. extraordinary investments being made by entities that are tied in with North Korea, Iran, and Russia into Trump’s crypto companies.
It begs the question, as we are currently debating an Iran deal that basically exists on Iran’s terms, why was there a flood of money from Iranian regimebacked entities into the Trump crypto companies? Why were they putting that investment in? What did they expect to get from the president?
[10:21]
We’ve never ever before had this exist. We’ve never had a backdoor mechanism by which foreign governments could just shovel money into the pocket of the president. It exists because of the Trump’s Trump’s memecoin and his stable coin.
On September 23rd, this is a week later. It’s now pretty obvious that it is there’s a pay-to-play regime in charge of the White House. A week later on September 23rd, Donald Trump closes the books on a criminal investigation into one of his key adviserss, Tom Homan.
This is his borders are the FBI had caught Don Tom Homan redhanded engaging in naked corruption. Undercover agents had handed him $50,000 in cash in a bag and he agreed to give them government contracts. This was on video.
This is the borders are getting a bag of cash in exchange for contracts on video. But the administration on September 20th just makes the investigation go away because that kind of bribery, that kind of naked graft is okay in this White House. We’re moving on to October 2025.
Right now, two weeks after Homan is let off, maybe the most nakedly corrupt pardon. There’s not a single senator that could defend this. Changpang Xiao built an entire business based on allowing terrorists, drug traffickers, and sex predators to use his cryptocurrency to evade the law.
He went to jail for this. But he also helped Trump launch his crypto business. So who cares about financing terrorists and sex criminals?
Trump gives this guy a full pardon on October 7th. It’s naked. This is a guy who built a company that allowed terrorists and sex predators to engage in private financing.
He went to jail. He got out of jail because he agreed to help get Trump rich.
We’re still in October.
Later that month, the bulldozers arrived to destroy the east wing of the White House. It’s still amazing to think that that actually happened and the ballroom corruption racket begins. The word goes out, if you want something from Donald Trump, donate to his ballroom.
It’s all he cares about. We know that Donald Trump talks about his ballroom all the time. As of this month, more than half of the publicly identified donors to the ballroom project have since they made their donation won a new or expanded federal contract, totaling more than 50 billion dollars.
More than half of the people who donated to the ballroom have since they donated, and this just all kicked off on October 15th. This has only been like eight months. Half of the people who donated to the ballroom have gotten a new or expanded federal contract worth $50 billion.
Moving on in November of 2025, it’s not just Trump’s corporate donors that are getting rich. Now, part of the White House’s daily operation is to find creative ways to funnel taxpayer money to Trump’s kids. This one’s wild.
The Trump administration in November, early November, announces a really unusual deal. The government, the Pentagon, is taking a $50 million stake in a single rare earth’s minerals company called Vulcan Elements and giving them a $620 million taxpayer funded loan. That is big money.
and and the Pentagon doesn’t really do deals like this, but they do when Donald Trump Jr. is one of the company’s key investors. We come to find out that civil servants in the Pentagon did not want to do this deal.
Only did it because the White House told them to do the deal. One official said, quote, “The call came from the White House. We have to get this done.” Before the deal, Vulcan was worth $200 million.
Donald Trump Jr. made an investment. His father got the Pentagon to give them the contracts and buy the stake in the company and the valuation jumped overnight 200 million to $2 billion. Donald Trump Jr. 10xed his profits. I mean, how’s anybody in this body justify that?
You’ve probably not even heard that story. It barely cracked the news. Like in normal times, that scandal alone, the president’s son making an investment in the company, the federal government then making a massive investment.
Subsequently, the Pentagon didn’t want to do it. Only did it because the president told them to do it after his son made the investment. and the value of the president’s son’s investment went up by 10 times.
That scandal alone would take down a presidency. This one barely gets noticed. Three days later, news breaks that Trump has ordered all the markets in US Coast Guard bases and facilities to stock his personally branded wine and cider directly profiting from his control over the military.
Tells the Coast Guard, “Sell my products.” That’s it. That’s not a complicated one. That’s just like ordinary hoham corruption.
Nobody even knows that that happened that that exists because this all feels normal now.
We are not out of November yet, fellas. Two weeks later, you feel this, right?
The pace now is quickening. Trump releases the head of a nursing home empire, Joseph Schwarz, from prison. This guy, similar to the other guy, scammed his patients, his employees, and the IRS out of tens of millions of dollars. He was a tax cheat. People died in his facilities due to his negligence. He was just stealing money from his nursing homes. But he paid a million dollars to Trump connected lobbyists. And Trump pardoned this fraudster after serving three months. There was no claim that he was innocent. There was no claim that the trial was rigged. No. This guy was convicted of massive fraud. He hurt people and he got out of jail because he paid the right lobbyists who were connected to Trump. This is how it all works. It’s not just Trump getting rich.
It’s not just Trump’s son’s getting rich. It’s about everybody connected to the president getting rich. This pardon for cash scheme.
All right, we’re into December now. Two weeks later, out of the blue, the Trump administration revokes a Biden era rule. This is back to nursing homes to ensure that nursing homes have sufficient staffing to meet the basic standards of care. We have a lot of evidence that understaffed nursing homes have higher mortality rates, but this rule is now rescended. And guess what we find out? We find out that nursing home executives got together, paid to have a private lunch with Donald Trump, because remember, you can pay millions of dollars to Trump affiliated political entities and you will get a private audience with them.
At lunch, they asked him to revoke this rule and he immediately ordered it done. No public discussion, no consideration of the merits. The nursing home executives paid the price to get a lunch.
They asked for the rule to be rescended and the rules got rescended. No process. Had the lunch, paid the money, asked for the rule to be rescended.
Trump called up and the rule was was rescended.
We’re now in 2026.
On February 10th, Trump announces that he is, this one’s wild, he is announcing, he announces on February 10th that he is blocking the opening of a bridge that is ready to open, connecting Detroit to Canada. It’s ready to open. This is a bridge that’s going to help people on both sides of the border. And guess what we find out?
The owner of an existing bridge whose profits would be harmed by the competitor bridge donated a million dollars to get a meeting this time with Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnik. And this isn’t within days. This time within hours of the meeting with the Commerce Secretary.
The owners of the existing bridge got what they wanted. Trump announced that he would block the opening of the bridge.
A million dollars, a meeting, and a donor gets what they want within hours. The next month, we start to see that Trump’s inner circle knows that they can get in on the action. Very few people are closer to President Trump than Corey Lewandowski.
And he is at the time the special advisor to the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. And Lewandowski is basically like there are no rules anymore. I can do whatever I want. And so he literally starts to engage in mobstyle extortion threats to contractors. He demands direct payments from companies that want DHS contracts for his protection. If you pay me money, I will protect your contracts.
And there’s plenty of evidence here from the companies themselves who tell the story of when they refuse to pay Luwendowski for protection, mobstyle protection, suddenly their contracts from DHS dry up. A DHS employee confirmed that he received direct instructions to not give a company that didn’t pay Luwendowski any more contracts. In April, another scheme to help Donald Trump’s kids.
For almost a hundred years, it has been illegal to ship handguns through the mail because it’s a lot easier for violent criminals to illegally access guns if they can just get those weapons shipped to their front door. But Donald Trump Jr. bought a huge stake in a company that was going to corner the market on the mail order sale of guns.
And so Trump’s DOJ got to work and declared that this 100year-old law is magically all of a sudden unconstitutional, clearing the way for another company owned or invested in by Donald Trump Jr. to make big bucks by mailing guns.
We’re still in April.
As the war begins in Iran, Trump’s inner circle finds a new way to cash in. They can place bets on prediction markets or in futures markets based on the inside information they have about the war. This is illegal war profitering.
Hours before Trump announces the first Iran ceasefire, a bunch of investors likely inside the White House placed approximately $950 million on bets that oil prices would fall. When later that day, Trump announced the ceasefire that sent oil prices tumbling by 15%, those investors got filthy rich. You can literally look at the pace of trades that day.
There’s this um avalanche of trades that happen hours before Trump announces the ceasefire. That can only be because people had inside information. This practice would continue to happen over and over and over.
But why do they think they can get away with this? Why does anybody think that they can get away with this? So much of this is illegal, right?
You would say to yourself, nobody would engage in that kind of naked illegal practice. Nobody would award contracts to the kids knowing that that doesn’t pass legal muster. On April 10th, you figure out why they think they’re going to get away with it.
[24:12]
On April 10th, Donald Trump makes an explicit promise that everybody engaged in this corruption will get away with it. Here is his quote on April 10th. as the pace of this corruption increases.
Quote, I will pardon everyone within 200 ft of the White House. So now you understand why people think they can get away with it. This is reported on April 22nd, 27th.
[24:50]
So we’re still in April. Trump wants to get all his friends involved in the grift now. So Trump gives a no bid $17 million contract to refurbish two fountains near the White House, including the reflecting pool.
We’re living with the consequences of this corruption right now as we have a green reflecting pool. This is a completely unqualified contractor who is already in over his head because he’s involved in the ballroom and he gets a new $17 million contract. Does it really cost $17 million to clean up fountains?
The answer from the National Park Service itself is no. In fact, the National Park Service was planning to bid that contract out for 15th what Trump gave it to his friend for. But it was a no- bid contract. It just went to Donald Trump’s friend. The value was wildly inflated. And so now Trump’s buddy has an extra $14 million more than the actual cost of the project. It’s your money. The money doesn’t grow on trees. This is taxpayer money. Supposed to cost $3 million. He gave the contract for $17 million.
We’re still in April.
Big Tobacco has wanted for years to break into the $6 billion flavored vape and ecigarette market, but the FDA of course has had regulations to say that you can’t sort of run back this old playbook of the tobacco companies marketing to kids. So, we haven’t allowed them to market these flavored vape products, these bubble gum flavored vape pro products. I have two teenagers.
I know exactly what’s going on. They are marketing these products to kids and they weren’t allowed to do it. But the tobacco lobbyists did the thing that we’ve talked about over and over again.
They made a $5 million donation and if you make a $5 million donation, you get a lunch with the president or a dinner with the president. So they get this lunch with the president and they say to the president just like the nursing homes executive said, “I want the vape rule to be rescended.” surrounded by these big tobacco representatives. President Trump like at the moment calls the FDA commissioner and tells them to resend the regulations.
He calls up Dr. Oz. Look, all this is happening immediately.
Tells him to resend the regulations. The FDA commissioner resigns in protest. He said he in good conscience he couldn’t do this. He couldn’t be part of this kind of corruption. But on Friday, the FDA announced that it was bypassing all traditional rulemaking to exop to adopt the exact policy that the tobacco executives asked for the weekend before. Less than a week. Less than a week. No rulemaking. FDA commissioner resigns.
We’re now on to May.
Not all the stories of the corruption in this White House require deep journalistic dives into obscure public records. Sometimes you can just log on to YouTube where you can find the Secretary of Transportation, Shawn Duffy’s family roadtrip reality show.
Who is bankrolling this stunt? Who’s paying for the gas, the hotels, the cameras, filming his vacation? Not Duffy. It’s Toyota. It’s Boeing. It’s United Airlines.
It’s all the companies that Secretary Duffy are respon is responsible for regulating. Gas prices are going up. Transportation costs are going up.
And the Secretary of Transportation is riding in snowmobiles in Montana paid for by the companies he regulates. Decades ago, that scandal alone companies you regulate paying for your vacations would have resulted in a cabinet member resigning in disgrace. My Republican colleagues know this.
This didn’t used to be acceptable, but in Trump’s White House, everyone has their hand out for a payday. It’s encouraged. And then finally, in May, we discover another monster corruption scheme.
The market bets based on inside information have not in fact been limited to Trump’s staff and friends. The entire time that Trump has been in office, we discover he has not been putting his money into a blind trust. He has been personally signing off on thousands and thousands of individual trades.
No previous president has done this. Here’s an example of how it works.
Early in the year, Trump buys a million dollars of Dell stock.
A couple days later, from the White House podium, he boosts the company Dell that he just bought stock in. A couple months later, he gives Dell a $10 billion defense contract with the Pentagon. That happens over and over again. The president buys stock. He publicly boosts the company. He gives government work.
I know all this feels exhausting. 500 days of corruption, but we’ve never ever seen this before. I only listed like half of the publicly disclosed incidents of corruption and we just can’t pretend that this is normal.
I’m giving a half an hour to this because this is a serious serious crisis. the pay-to-play schemes, the pardons for donors, the contracts for friends, the favors for Trump’s children, the use of inside information to make money. This is not a disconnected series of scandals.
This is a system. Government is supposed to serve us. It is supposed to lower costs.
It’s supposed to protect our families, strengthen our schools, make life better for people. But Donald Trump believes that government exists to serve him, to make him richer, to protect his friends, to reward his donors. This is why he doesn’t have time for you.
He doesn’t have time to solve real problems because he’s making money for himself and his friends. And he’s betting that the corruption will be so constant that we stop hearing it. that the outrage will just turn into exhaustion and the exhaustion will just turn into acceptance.
We can’t let that happen because once corruption becomes normal, it becomes permanent. The White House is not a business opportunity. The presidency is not a license to steal from the American people.
The government of the United States doesn’t exist to make Donald Trump rich. It belongs to the American people. And after 500 days of corruption, Democrats and Republicans in this body along with the American people should start acting like it.
And you’re the fork.