Experts: We underestimated Trump's 'volcano of corruption'

President Donald Trump looks on as he exits Air Force One on his arrival at Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Florida, January 31, 2026. REUTERS/Nathan Howard

President Donald Trump has unleashed a "volcano of corruption" as he seeks to endlessly enrich himself in his second term, and according to a new report from The Atlantic, even dedicated ethics watchdogs are admitting that they were not prepared for how far he would go.

In a piece published Sunday morning, The Atlantic spoke with government ethics watchdogs in Washington, D.C., who said that they "thought they were prepared for Trump’s second term," having "quickly learned which possible misuses of taxpayer funds to focus on, which apparent case of profiteering off the presidency to anchor a report around, and which allegations of nepotism or self-dealing to try to pitch to journalists as worthy of a story," while monitoring the now "quaint" excesses of his first term. All of that preparation, however, has proven insufficient.

"This term, the watchdogs are even more alarmed by what they’re witnessing, and they are racing to keep up," the report explained. "Public Citizen added litigators and researchers, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) hired an expert in cryptocurrency. Last year, the Campaign Legal Center filed its highest number of ethics complaints in a single year and launched a tracker of 'corrupt transactions' to ensure that 'the exhaustion factor' doesn’t get in the way of keeping a careful count of such instances, even if the media no longer closely cover each one, Saurav Ghosh, the group’s director of federal-campaign-finance reform, told me."

“I think the big difference in this term is just how blatant all of it is," Jordan Libowitz, a spokesperson for CREW, told the outlet. "In the first term, there was at least a head nod towards Trump as president being separate from Trump the businessman. Now that’s gone."

The Atlantic noted how meager some of the scandals of Trump's first term now seem in hindsight, including things like Housing Secretary Ben Carson's family purchasing a $31,000 dining set, EPA Head Scott Pruitt spending $43,000 to install a phone boot amd Ivanka Trump endorsing Goya Beans after the company's leadership spoke out in support of her father. Considerable ink was also spilt reporting on his many first-term trips to his own properties and all the taxpayer dollars those trips burned through.

"A year and a half into his second term, Trump has made 270 visits to his properties, marking a 14 percent jump compared with the same point in his first term, according to the CREW tracker (which updates daily)," The Atlantic added. "Trump’s taxpayer tab for golfing trips hit $70 million last fall, HuffPost calculated. If he continues golfing and traveling at the current pace, the analysis showed, this term will run taxpayers $300 million—twice what they paid during his first term. Those costs include protecting the president and his family; the Secret Service spent nearly $100,000 at Trump-owned properties in the first five months of the second term."

It continued later: "But perhaps the most significant category of self-dealing allegations is the one with no first-term analogue. A few days before Trump’s second inauguration, an Emirati royal backed a deal to purchase a 49 percent stake in World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s primary crypto venture, for half a billion dollars. The deal, reportedly signed by Eric Trump, included $187 million up front and at least $31 million set to go toward entities linked to the family of Steve Witkoff, a lead Middle East negotiator for the administration and a co-founder of the crypto firm. A majority of the wealth that Trump has amassed this term, according to financial disclosures, comes from his family’s cryptocurrency businesses."

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