Corruption allegations are already peeking out from the White House, even with a complicit Republican Congress unwilling to hold the nation’s executive branch to the grindstone. This means when the Congress truly becomes an investigative arm of government after November, Americans may have to face much more than just the tip of the ugly iceberg.
Gerard Baker, columnist at The Times and editor at large at The Wall Street Journal, warned on Friday that Americans will not at all like what they’re going to see.
“One or two Democrats are already planning to lead these investigations, and I think some of the stuff that they will investigate will actually look really, really bad,” Baker told Washington editor and The Times columnist Katy Balls, in Friday.
Baker said the nation is already aware of allegations members of President Donald Trump's family using their connections to enrich themselves. Former Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle was recently forced to resign after a Trump donor shared texts alleging Guilfoyle was begging $100k from him in exchange for White House influence. And People familiar with contract services of former Trump attorney Alina Habba claim she was granted a plush private job specifically to help a billionaire get a pardon. Prominent Venezuelan Julio Herrera Velutini sought clemency from President Donald Trump, and he got it not long after his daughter gave Habba her lucrative job. As well as bigger allegations about Trump family members and Steve Witkoff’s family members and deals that they've managed to achieve miraculously wile serving in international diplomatic capacities.
“All of that came out, thankfully, due to journalistic efforts,” said Baker. “It's mostly been reporting by journalists with no assist from Congress, which has power to do so much more if Democrats take control. And they will have all the powers Congress has, complete with all of the staff and all of the legal authorities that they'll have. And I think there's a lot more to come out, I suspect.”
Baker referred to the “iceberg theory of scandals,” which is the stuff that you know the public sees initially is only a fraction of what there is. He warned there will be some extent of eyes “glazing over” at the sheer amount of it as people are already familiar with Trump-style corruption.
But the corruption that could truly stagger the nation are the national security implications that start to come out when a Democratic Congress begins to dig.
“If there's some evidence of some of the stuff that's come out around Kimberly Guilfoyle, if there's evidence that people got favors from the administration, that foreigners got favors from the administration in exchange for money or other things that those people wanted we could start to see some really ugly stuff about what exactly the administration has been doing for the last two years, wittingly or unwittingly in terms of America's foreign policy and National interest,” said Baker.
“I think that's the real danger here, not just for Republicans and for Trump but actually for the country,” Baker warned, as the U.S. public lost all faith in government because of Trump’s corruption.
Balls pointed out that with Trump’s kids and family associations getting their weddings funded by Russian oligarchs, U.S. integrity could be shaken to the ground.