corruption

'We'll all be investigated and indicted': Trump official fears the worst

Trump officials say they are confident their behavior and deeds will bring down a firestorm of indictments and investigations after Democrats take the House (and possibly the Senate) in November — and later the White House.

“Everybody’s afraid that the next administration — if we don’t win, we’re all going to be investigated and indicted,” said Deputy AG Todd Blanche at Friday’s CPAC event in Texas. “Think about that.”

Republicans in charge of the White House and Congress are desperate to ramp up enthusiasm as MAGA voters splinter off and fall away in the months leading up to the November midterm elections. But in selling fear to juice participation, social media critics say Blanche may have let on to a guilty conscience.

“They should stop committing crimes then,” piped one commenter on X.

Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee are already calling out Blanche — who was Trump’s personal criminal defense attorney during his hush money conviction — of “stunning interference” in the investigation of convicted sex-trafficker and Trump long-time personal friend Jeffrey Epstein.

“Given Blanche’s close personal ties to Donald Trump, this reeks of a continued coverup to protect key names in the Trump administration,” said U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR).

Critics say other things smell wrong about Blanche’s personal work under Trump. A ProPublica investigation revealed Blanche owned at least $159,000 worth of crypto-related assets when he "shut down' an investigation into crypto companies, dealers and exchanges launched during President Joe Biden’s term.

Blanche also personally opted to visit and quiz incarcerated sex-trafficker and Epstein confidante Ghislaine Maxwell in what one former prosecutor called a ploy to “whitewash” Trump’s involvement with Epstein’s far-reaching teen abuse racket.

"Ghislaine Maxwell paints this absurd universe where she has done nothing wrong, where all the witnesses against her were lying, where the jurors who convicted her were wrong, where the various judges who upheld their conviction were wrong," said former prosecutor Elie Honig. "And, by the way, nobody else did anything wrong. In fact, Michael, she barely even implicates Jeffrey Epstein. … [S]he went in there and basically offered a complete whitewash.”

But Blanche expressed outrage that anybody would dare to scrutinize Trump and his staff.

“This is America and the existing administration is afraid that they’re going to get indicted,” Blanch said, while also ignoring examples of Trump’s own personal lawfare as he appears to wield the “independent” Department of Justice to wage war against his perceived enemies. This include the U.S. Department of Justice unsuccessfully attempting to secure indictments against six sitting Democratic lawmakers who urged members of the military to follow the law and not obey illegal orders.

"Political lawfare waged by either side undermines America’s criminal justice system, which is the gold standard of the world,” said prominent Republican U.S. Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) of the failed indictments. “Thankfully in this instance, a jury saw the attempted indictments for what they really were. Political lawfare is not normal, not acceptable, and needs to stop.”

Trump's prosecutors also appear to be facing a backlash against U.S. juries with jurors refusing a felony indictment of a protester who threw a sandwich at a Customers and Border Protection officer. Two federal grand juries in Virginia rejected Trump’s attempts to prosecute New York attorney general Letitia James -- who had successfully prosecuted Trump for hiding information -- and another refused to indict Trump critic and former FBI director James Comey.

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Republican unrepentant after giving her son $24,000 in donor money: report

Michigan Advance reports a state GOP lawmaker used donor money to pay her 24-year-old son more than $24,000 in consulting fees over the last two years, after he was charged with domestic violence in September.

The expenditures by the campaign committee of state Rep. Jamie Thompson, R-Brownstown Township, were uncovered through an ongoing Detroit News investigation of legislators' campaign spending, according to Michigan Advance.

“That amount totals around 15 percent of the campaign’s expenditures in that period, and includes over $5,000 since her son was charged with domestic violence in Wayne County last September,” Michigan Advance reported.

Thompson, the incumbent, defended the payments to her son, however.

“I needed my family’s support as I fought to bring people together and be a voice for workers and their families in our area,” Thompson said in a statement to Michigan Advance. “I needed their legwork as we talked with people in Monroe and Wayne Counties about what matters to them.”

While unethical, there is no law in Michigan currently barring lawmakers from enriching their children with campaign money. And Thompson was unrepentant about the payments.

“My son works in politics, and he has helped me through this process,” said Thompson, without addressing the criminal charges facing her son, Jackson Thompson. “Moving forward, I will continue to have my family’s back and the backs of so many other families who are dealing with high costs, government overreach, challenges in accessing health care, and more.”

Michigan Advance reports that Jackson Thompson’s trial is set for April, and he has not yet been convicted on any of his charges, which also includes a felony charge of “interfering with electronic communications” in addition to domestic violence. The paper also notes that Jamie Thompson herself introduced a resolution last month to raise awareness for teen dating violence.

Thompson’s opponent, Democrat Janise O’Neal Robinson, slammed Thompson’s “offensive” abuse of donor money, according to Michigan Advance.

“This is a gross misuse of funds and a clear display of misplaced priorities,” Robinson said. “We need a representative in Lansing who is focused on lowering costs for Michigan families, not one focused on subsidizing a family member accused of violent crime.”

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Steve Schmidt warns new Congress will investigate Trump's 'every despicable act'

Former Republican strategist Steve Schmidt swore the American people will eventually come face to face with the colossal depths of President Donald Trump’s corruption and the fraud of his administration’s top lieutenants

Schmidt was a guest on Jim Acosta’s Friday “Jim Acosta Show” podcast when the conversation veered from the Supreme Court’s Friday decision to yank Trump’s illegal exploitation of an emergency order to impose tariffs at his whim.

“Seems to me a part of this is … that the Supreme Court, under John Roberts, released this Frankenstein, and now they don’t know how to reign him in. They’ve tried to cut him off at the pass [on some things] but John Roberts is responsible for this mess,” Acosta said.

“The Roberts court has destabilized our American society through partisan rulings,” said Schmidt, who’d worked on the GOP campaigns of President George W. Bush, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the 2008 presidential campaign of Sen, John McCain. “We have a corrupt Supreme Court with [Judge Samuel] Alito’s misconduct, Clarence Thomas’s misconduct, flying around with all these billionaire extremist doners from here to there and everywhere.”

“The court has lost its reputation for a reason,” continued Schmidt, “and now we have Trump’s visage looming down at the American people from the Department of Justice, which is a corrupt institution that can’t be trusted, filled with corrupt prosecutor who abuse their oath, abuse the Constitution, and abuse the American people in the name of power.”

“Every single detail of every despicable act is going to be known. Just not later today,” Schmidt told Acosta.

Schmidt also referenced the exorbitant jet plane that U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem uses to travel around the country. NBC News reported a brochure highlighted the plane’s “exceptional interior design by renowned New York designer Peter Marino,” complete with a sumptuous bed.

Acosta described the plane as resembling Austin Powers’ “shag jet.”

“It’s the Air F—— One,” Schmidt spat in agreement, while also demanding to know why Noem had “thousands of dollars in cash in her purse when it was stolen from a Washington restaurant.”

“Explain to me how Noem — who lives on a government salary and who’s husband is in crop insurance — is wearing a $50k Rolex while posing in front of prisoners in an El Salvadoran concentration camp,” Schmidt said. “We’re gonna find out the details of every financial transgression and every corrupt act from every one of these people. All of them.”

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All of Trump's white-collar prosecutions share a single damning detail: legal expert

Former federal prosecutor Brendan Ballou warns that President Donald Trump’s lucrative business of handing out pardons in exchange for donations is stripping away the federal justice department’s ability to hold wealthy lawbreakers accountable.

“This is now a boom business,” Ballou told CNN anchor Jake Tapper. “You know, there are at least 18 people and companies that donated money to the Trump inaugural campaign, then then had their government investigations dropped or their civil litigations dropped or in extraordinary cases their criminal cases dropped entirely. This is something that has never happened before.”

Ballou reported that Trump is profiting mightily from his pardon gifts for wealthy criminals. The New York Times estimated that Trump made more than $1.4 billion since he was elected to his second term, in part from felons and wrongdoers seeking his clemency.

But Trump’s subordinates have also benefited from the president’s rollback of white-collar prosecutions. Trump’s own border czar, Tom Homan, for instance, accepted $50,000 in cash in a paper bag from undercover F.B.I. agents in 2024 in exchange for promising government favors if Trump returned to office. Since returning to office, Ballou pointed out that Trump has also gutted the office that would have investigated Homan, with just five attorneys reportedly remain, even as Homan now draws a taxpayer-funded check.

The Trump DOJ is still prosecuting some white-collar-style crimes, to be sure, said Ballou, but the targets all share an infuriating characteristic.

“I think it's important for viewers to understand the administration is still prosecuting and investigating people for these same kinds of crimes,” Ballou told Tapper, “but those people have exactly one thing in common, which is they haven't donated to the Trump campaign

Crypto mogul Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty to money laundering before Trump granted him a pardon in October, said Tapper, despite criminals using Zhao’s crypto platform to fund terrorist financing, narcotics and child sex abuse.

“There's also the story of Ross Ulbricht. He's the founder of the dark web marketplace Silk Road, found guilty on a variety of charges including money laundering, drug trafficking, and hacking in 2015. Silk road has been linked to at least six drug overdose deaths,” reported Tapper. “Trump's pardon of Ulbricht eliminated his two life sentences, and the $184 million he owed in restitution and fines and it made good on a campaign promise Trump had made to the libertarian party and the cryptocurrency industry.”

Trevor Milton is another Trump pardon beneficiary who was convicted on in 2022 on charges of securities and wire fraud, but Ballou pointed out that Trump — while personally reaping the reward of Milton’s generosity — left Milton’s victim hanging.

“Prosecutors allege that [Milton] had $660 million that needed to be repaid to the investors he scammed. Now, when Donald Trump pardoned him, all those restitution obligations went away. Those investors never get to recover anything,” Ballou said.

- YouTube youtu.be

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Trump's self-enrichment violates this core 5-word principle: ex-White House attorney

Estimates of President Donald Trump's net worth vary, but according to Fortune, it was $7.3 billion in late 2025 — a major increase from $3.9 billion in 2024. Bloomberg News, on January 20, estimated the Trump family's net worth to be around $6.8 billion.

Trump, Time reports, has found a variety of ways to add to his wealth since returning to the White House, from Trump Media & Technology Group to cryptocurrencies and Trump-branded merchandise.

In a biting op-ed published by MS NOW on February 16, Ian Bassin — executive director of Protect Democracy and former associate White House counsel under former President Barack Obama — argues that Trump is doing everything he can to monetize his presidency and is denigrating the White House in the process.

"'Be allergic to free stuff' — that's the line I used to deliver in every ethics training I gave to White House staff when I was associate White House counsel under President Barack Obama," Bassin explains. "It captured, in plain English, a core principle of public service: You are there to serve the public, not your own interests, and even small gifts corrode judgment and squander the public trust. It feels resonant this Presidents Day to understand that the opposite has become the norm, despite what our founders envisioned."

Bassin continues, "The Wall Street Journal recently reported on a $500 million transaction between an Emirati royal and President Donald Trump's cryptocurrency firm, World Liberty Financial, that had sent $187 million to entities tied to the Trump family just four days before his 2025 inauguration. Amazingly, this has all but fallen out of the news."

Trump's actions, according to Bassin, not only raise ethics concerns, but also, "national security" concerns.

"When I told staff to be allergic to free stuff," Bassin recalls, "I said not to accept so much as a can of soda from anyone with business before the White House. Yet here's a report of something orders of magnitude more significant, and as a nation, we barely paid it any mind. That's a dangerous mistake. What the Journal report describes threatens not just the public trust or public decision-making, but also, our national security ... As we advised White House staff: Even the appearance of something untoward squanders the public trust."

Bassin adds: "Now, some federal ethics rules and statutes apply to the president while some regulations apply only to staff. Some past presidents, including the one I worked for, insisted on voluntarily adhering to the highest standards whether they legally applied to them or not."

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Trump’s ignites an 'incompetence-corruption singularity': NYT editorial

A New York Times panel reports that President Donald Trump’s unique fondness for yes-men making him a kind of Geiger counter for identifying miscreants.

“You know, one of the things I think the second Trump term is showing is that Trump is performing a function of ‘the great illuminator’ of the true core of people,” said Times Columnist David French. French cited as example U.S. AG Pam Bondi’s recent attempt to dodge lawmakers’ questions about why she halted a federal investigation into associates of convicted sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

“The most telling moment [in her testimony] was when she tried to stop questioning about Epstein, which was ostensibly the subject of the testimony, by saying the Dow was at 50,000 … which is about as relevant as saying, ‘Why are we talking about Epstein when the Knicks won last night?’” said French. “ … [H]e really is putting in front of Pam Bondi: ‘Hey, Pam, here is your job in one corner. And here in the other corner is reason, logic, morality, and decency. You have to give up all of those things. But if you do, you can continue to be the attorney general of the United States.’ And this is the test he’s putting in front of basically everyone in Republican politics right now.”

Times Opinion Columnist Jamelle Bouie agreed, saying Trump has “selected for people whose sense of morality … is somewhat deficient.”

“Pam Bondi, [who is] not known for running a clean A.G. office in Florida, right? She’s not known for being a super scrupulous person. So, she’s primed to do exactly what Trump wants her to do,” Bouie said, adding that this effectively weeded out more scrupulous people in the administration and created a kind of distilling process for sleaze.

“The practical purpose is that when you’re asking the attorney general to do things like prosecute members of Congress, or asking the attorney general to do things like investigate the partners of people killed by your government — as was the case after Renee Good was killed — what will happen is that the good faith, highly competent, patriotic prosecutors that work for you will quit. They don’t want to do that. They want to do the thing that they signed up to do, which was enforce the law and try to bring some measure of justice to people who have been victims.”

But competence is inversely proportional to corruption, warned Bouie, so the resulting “hollowing out” of the DOJ has also left it “unable to do its actual job.”

“Well, you do wind up with this cycle where … people who have a moral core or who have a respect for our kind of government and the Constitution [leave]. And then the Trump administration continues its hiring of people who, let’s just say, have a certain ethical flexibility, and whose guiding star is the political whims of an autocratic leader, as opposed to any kind of actual values,” said Times opinion writer Michelle Cottle.

“And those people are often bottom of the barrel,” Bouie said.

“I mean, the incompetence that we’re dealing with here, it’s not just corruption — it’s corruption plus staggering levels of incompetence. And when you combined them all, you reach almost the incompetence-corruption singularity, with the effort to indict the six Democratic members of Congress,” said French. “I mean, that was impeachable stuff. That is absolutely impeachable stuff. It’s not just a direct attack on a competing branch of government. It’s also a direct attack on free speech, just basic free speech. I mean, this is about as core of speech as you can imagine.”

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'Stole God's money': GOP corruption may upend swing state's Republican primary

The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that retirees who fell victim to a far-reaching Republican Party-affiliated Ponzi scheme are poised to redirect the trajectory of the GOP primary in Georgia.

“At 93, retiree [Jay McMaster] spent a lifetime building a nest egg — starting as a boy shining shoes for 35 cents an hour at Woolworth’s, then saving carefully through decades of work in the food service industry,” reported AJC. “When his sister’s health began to fail, McMaster wanted to help cover her care. He invested a total of $1.3 million with First Liberty Building & Loan after hearing about the politically connected, Newman-based lender on conservative radio.”

But all that’s gone now, said AJC, wiped out in what federal regulators say was a $140 million Ponzi scheme. Now McMaster is sharing his story to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s (R) ongoing probe into the aftermath.

Raffensperger, who is in a crowded Republican race for governor, is leaning into his office’s probe into First Liberty and pushing ferociously against a Republican-majority legislative effort to strip his office of the authority to investigate the scheme.

Raffensperger’s staunch anti-corruption message — and his commitment as the sole Republican gubernatorial contender willing to address the scheme — could result in Georgia's next governor being the only Republican willing to stand against President Donald Trump after Trump pressured Georgia officials to reverse the state’s election results in 2020.

“I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state,” Trump demanded of Raffensperger while ongoing tallies showed state voters soundly jettisoning Trump in the ballot count.

Raffensperger refused to give Trump his undeserved victory in 2020, and even retained an audio recording of Trump’s plea to give to investigators. For that betrayal, Trump endorsed Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones over Raffensperger in the Republican gubernatorial primary. Jones served as a fake elector in 2020 and has labored to undermine Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' election interference investigation Trump and several co-conspirators with a criminal conspiracy to steal Georgia's 2020 election.

Georgia Republicans are loathe to denounce the Ponzi scheme connected to Republican financier and First Liberty founder Brant Frost IV — or even address the topic. But Raffensperger is vocal about his willingness to investigate Republicans behind the scheme. And he is joined by the scheme’s many victims, who are vouching for him on the campaign trail.

“More than $300,000 in charitable or political contributions have been returned, but that’s a fraction of nearly $1.4 million in campaign donations tied to the Frost family that The Atlanta Journal-Constitution identified,” AJC reported.

The AJC also referenced 77-year-old retired electrical worker Thomas Todd, who invested $750,000 with First Liberty. He was even preparing to write another six-figure check when the company collapsed.

“I pray for them every day — every morning. They need those prayers. But they also need to pay for what they did.” Todd said of the Frost family, adding that his donations would have gone to churches and other religious charities had he not directed them to the Ponzi scheme.

“They didn’t steal from me,” said Todd. “They stole God’s money.”

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Gabbard blocked reports of Trump aide's foreign intel contact: whistleblower

A whistleblower tells the Gurdian that National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard blocked the publication of an intelligence report concerning an “unusual phone call between an individual associated with foreign intelligence and a person close to Donald Trump.”

The details of the communication are not known, but the Wall Street Journal reported it could cause “grave damage to national security" if it becomes public, according to an official. The information also "implicates another federal agency" and reportedly includes "claims of executive privilege that may involve the White House."

Last spring, the National Security Agency (NSA) intercepted the highly sensitive communication, but when the info reached Gabbard, she ducked the standard procedure of allowing NSA officials to distribute the information further and instead delivered a paper copy of the intelligence directly to the president’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, according to attorney Andrew Bakaj.

“One day after meeting Wiles, Gabbard told the NSA not to publish the intelligence report. Instead, she instructed NSA officials to transmit the highly classified details directly to her office,” reports the Guardian. “Details of this exchange between Gabbard and the NSA were shared directly with the Guardian and have not been previously reported. Nor has Wiles receipt of the intelligence report.”

On April 17, a whistleblower contacted the office of the inspector general alleging that Gabbard had blocked highly classified intelligence from routine dispatch, according to Bakaj, who added that the whistleblower filed a formal complaint about Gabbard’s actions on May 21.

The Guardian said the intelligence report was been “kept under lock and key” for eight months, even after the whistleblower pressed to disclose details of the report to congressional intelligence committees.

“Acting inspector general Tamara A Johnson dismissed the complaint at the end of a 14-day review period, writing in a June 6 letter addressed to the whistleblower that ‘the Inspector General could not determine if the allegations appear credible,’” reports the Guardian. Johnson added also informed the whistleblower that they could only approach Congress after receiving DNI guidance on how to proceed due to the highly sensitive nature of the complaint.

After nearly a year, Gabbard’s office issued its first public acknowledgment of the complaint to lawmakers on Tuesday, the day after the Wall Street Journal broke the news of the classified brief.

“Two attorneys and two former intelligence professionals who reviewed details of the incident and ensuing complaint shared with the Guardian have identified what they believe are a series of procedural anomalies that raise questions about Gabbard’s handling of national intelligence and the whistleblower disclosure,” the Guardian reports.

Two Republican lawmakers have dismissed the report and remain loyal to Gabbard, but Democrats are raising alarms.

“The law is clear: when a whistleblower makes a complaint and wants to get it before Congress the agency has 21 days to relay it,” said Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) who is on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “This whistleblower complaint was issued in May. We didn’t receive it until February.”

Warner said the months-long delay reflected an effort to “bury the complaint.”

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Conservative slams Trump as a 'shakedown artist' over latest 'egocentric' demand

National Review writer Jeffrey Blehar says he’s certain President Donald Trump did indeed demand his name be slammed onto blue state airports in exchange for previously appropriated federal transportation money.

“The president is a proud shakedown artist and is completely shameless about it — just ask Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Machado,” said Blehar. “So, I don’t doubt for a moment that Trump floated this quid pro quo, knowing what I already do about the man’s character and governing philosophy.”

Trump is holding up millions of dollars of federal funding for New York and New Jersey, and has informed Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer that he will release it in exchange for either Dulles International Airport (in Northern Virginia) or Penn Station (in New York City) being renamed after him.

“I’m just amused at how sweepingly egocentric Trump’s demand is,” said Blehar. “He wants one or both of two of the East Coast’s major transportation hubs named after himself, so that every day blue-state elites have to fly or train into and out of a place named after someone they loathe.”

Blehar said he doubted Trump even knew who John Foster Dulles was, and would probably “have preferred” to rename the Reagan National Airport “but even MAGA might spit the bit at the idea of Trump’s name replacing the Gipper’s.

“And while a man of Trump’s stature surely deserves to have his name added to JFK Airport in New York, he’s already tried to efface President Kennedy once, and that didn’t go so well,” said Blehar.

Mind you, Blehar is not so offended that it is the Dulles airport that Trump is seeking to claim. It is the act itself that drives his rage.

“[A]s a former D.C.-area native, I consider Dulles Airport to be one of the most odious cesspools in America. I would not be caught dead flying into or out of that ill-designed monstrosity,” Blehar said. “… Naming it after Trump feels almost appropriate in that sense, like naming a sewage treatment plant after him.”

“He won’t get what he wants,” Blehar added, “but if he did, it would veer close to karmic justice in my mind.”

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Trump sued over 'corrupt and illegal' gold card 'scheme'

Former ethics czar and Democracy Defenders Fund founder Norm Eisen is after President Donald Trump in court with a new lawsuit to block a pay-to-play scheme.

On Bluesky, Eisen wrote that his group is suing Trump over the so-called "gold card" visa that allows anyone to fast-track citizenship for $1 million.

"This is about the rule of law — the president can't auction U.S. visas to the highest bidder," Eisen complained on the social media site.

The longtime Trump foe spoke to The New York Times about the program's illegality: it bypasses key congressional requirements and prioritizes the wealthy over those with high abilities or intellect.

“Rather than reserving those visas for the world’s best and brightest, the Gold Card program converts those visas into revenue-generating commodities sold to the highest bidder,” the lawsuit claims.

One of those who has taken advantage of the program is Nicki Minaj, a native of the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago, who wants U.S. citizenship. While she's a permanent resident, she came to the U.S. illegally as a child, she said on Instagram in 2018.

“If you look at the statute, you can tell Congress made some pretty deliberate decisions about how they wanted to structure the availability of these visas,” Sarah Wilson, one of the lawyers who brought the lawsuit with Eisen.

The statute puts merit-based visas into either the EB-1 or EB-2 categories.

“None of those categories include ‘give us a million dollars,’” Wilson added.

Read the full report here.

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Trump is ramping up corruption because he thinks nobody cares: report

Since returning to the White House, President Donald Trump has accelerated his use of the presidency to enrich himself in unprecedented new ways compared to his first term. A new analysis from The Nation argues it all comes down to his discovery that "nobody cared."

In a piece from Monday, The Nation's Jeet Heer compared the scale of Trump's kickbacks and corruption during his two terms in office and found stark differences. This is not because the president is greedier, as Heer argued that the escalation has been driven by Trump now having the "imagination and connections" to extract wealth from the White House "on a grand scale."

"It’s now clear that, in the grand scheme of things, Trump’s first-term corruption was penny-ante, involving tens of millions of dollars rather than billions," Heer explained. "It’s not that Trump was less greedy; he simply lacked the imagination and connections to realize how the presidency could really be milked on a grand scale."

He continued: "But his four years out of office allowed him to remake his business empire, moving into realms like social media (with Truth Social) and cryptocurrency (with World Liberty Financial, founded in September 2024 with the Trump family owning 75 percent). During these years, the Trump family also deepened its ties to the wealthy elites of Middle Eastern petro-states such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). These shifts allowed Trump to move from being a relatively small-scale con man to his current position as perhaps the most corrupt elected official in human history."

Heer also highlighted a quote from an interview Trump did last month with the New York Times, in which he, usually "not given to regret," said that he ought to have gotten more for himself business-wise during his first term, and revealed why he now thinks that way.

"I found out that nobody cared. I’m allowed to," Trump told the Times. "You know, George Washington, when he was president… had two desks. He had a business desk and he had a president desk, and he did both. It’s OK to do that."

Heer noted that this alleged anecdote about the first president is one that Trump has been fond of repeating over the years, and that "it won’t shock anyone to find out that it is nonsense." According to a CNN fact-check, while Washington did continue to own and manage land while in office, numerous historians said that the claim about two desks is "baseless."

“It’s an absurd allegation, basically,” Elizabeth Cobbs, a history professor at Texas A&M University and senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, told CNN. “Certainly, every one of the founders had personal property that they maintained while they were in office. Whether they kept their materials in a separate desk or not is irrelevant.”

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