What is this corruption you speak of?

What is this corruption you speak of?

by digby

Since President Trump won last year’s election, his company — the Trump Organization — has experienced an increase in one particular line of business: hosting fundraisers and receptions for Republican lawmakers.

These events have mostly happened at Trump International Hotel in downtown Washington, which opened last year. The luxe hotel has a large ballroom, two smaller banquet rooms and a BLT Prime steakhouse. It was designed to attract campaign fundraisers, even if Trump had not won the White House.

He did. And Trump made the controversial decision to maintain ownership of his businesses as president, even as he handed day-to-day control to his adult sons.

That arrangement has made 2017 a fascinating experiment: How would the fundraising circuit change now that legislators had the option of spending their campaign dollars with an incumbent president?

Between Election Day 2016 and the end of September of this year, federal political committees reported paying at least $1.27 million to Trump entities, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

Not a dollar has come from any Democrats.

Among congressional Republicans, 40 have spent campaign or leadership PAC money at Trump properties, including the D.C. hotel and other hotels and golf clubs throughout the country. The Trump Organization declined to comment.

The president’s business has not upended the established fundraising business in Washington: GOP legislators, for instance, have still spent more campaign and PAC money at the Charlie Palmer steakhouse on Capitol Hill than at all the Trump properties in 2017.

Look who is number one:

President Trump

$534,864 spent at Trump-branded properties since Jan. 1, 2017
Among Republican politicians, Donald Trump’s best customer this year — by far — has been Donald Trump.

President Trump, who began fundraising for his 2020 reelection on Inauguration Day, has spent heavily at Trump Organization properties through his campaign and two affiliated committees since Jan. 1. His campaign has paid $482,371 for rent at Trump Tower in New York. It paid $22,700 for stays at the Trump hotel in D.C. It spent $2,596 on “office supplies” from Trump Ice, a bottled-water company.

In addition, the Republican National Committee spent $176,738 at Trump properties this year, including $122,000 to host a fundraiser headlined by the president at the Trump hotel in Washington in June.

He is not spending his own money on rent and these fundraisers at his properties. He's spending donor money at his properties. And he pockets all the profits.

I know it's cheap to say this at this point but I really would invite everyone reading this to spend 30 seconds contemplating the shrieking and rending of garments if any other president had done this. It is unimaginable that a sitting president could do such a thing.

It's a testament to how thoroughly dangerous and corrupt he is that whatever legal attention has been brought to bear on him thus far has been concentrated on his apparent willingness to accept the help of the Russian government in his presidential campaign and possible collusion and blackmail. Those charges are so serious that we've accepted this open graft as a misdemeanor.

This is what makes me so crazy about these Republicans deciding to "investigate" Clinton over the Clinton Foundation and that stupid uranium deal, claiming that she was on the take. My God. All of that has been investigated and here is zero evidence that any of it has merit. And yet they have already succeeded in making the Clinton Foundation into a nefarious, corrupt organization and the "uranium" scandal into treason.

Meanwhile, Trump is corruptly pocketing cash as president right before our eyes. Sweet scam.

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