New war brewing in Congress over 59 multi-million dollar business deals

Democrats regained control of both the House and the Senate in Tuesday’s historic midterm elections, a comeback fueled largely by voter anger over high prices and the war on Iran. But surveys also found that corruption was a major concern, with 76% of voters telling a Harris poll that elected officials care more about enriching themselves than improving the economy for ordinary people. A separate Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 63% of Americans considered it inappropriate for Trump and his family to profit from cryptocurrency, while 69% said his private business interests influence his decisions as president.

“If this election was about corruption and cost, then this next Congress needs to be focused on accountability and affordability,” says Donald Sherman, the president and CEO of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW.

“Congress needs to do oversight not just on the administration’s corruption, not just on the president’s profiteering, but also on corporate America, what they have gotten out of engaging in the president’s pay-to-play environment, how corporate America and the outside influence of money in our political system has undermined the public voice in our policy discussions.”

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: In a sweeping rebuke to Trump and his MAGA movement, Democrats won control of both the House and the Senate in Tuesday’s historic midterm elections. One issue that emerged as a major concern for voters was corruption. A recent Harris poll for The Guardian found that 76% of voters said elected officials care more about enriching themselves than improving the economy for ordinary people. A separate Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 63% of Americans considered it inappropriate for Trump and his family to profit from cryptocurrency, while 69% said his private business interests influence his decisions as president.

This is Donald Sherman, president and CEO of CREW, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, testifying in Congress earlier this year about just one example of alleged corruption by President Trump. We’ll speak to Donald Sherman right after.

DONALD SHERMAN: Days before President Trump’s second inauguration, an investment vehicle backed by the United Arab Emirates national security adviser bought a 49% stake in Trump’s crypto venture, World Liberty Financial, for $500 million. Months later, the Trump administration handed over America’s most sensitive AI chips technology to the UAE, despite national security concerns. This type of corrupt profiteering from influence seekers is unprecedented, dangerous and, in some cases, against the law.

AMY GOODMAN: Tuesday’s midterm elections brought a tidal wave of victories for candidates who challenge corruption in politics and also the influence of corporate and special interest money in elections. This is despite record amounts of spending this cycle of nearly $12 billion, according to the group Open Secrets. The New York Times reports that top donor Elon Musk, a trillionaire, spent almost half a billion dollars, $474 million, in an unsuccessful attempt to help Republicans keep control of Congress. And that doesn’t include the dark money he might have spent. Texas Senator-elect James Talarico addressed this in his victory speech.

SEN.-ELECT JAMES TALARICO: We went up against more than $300 million, more than any Senate campaign in American history. We went up against all the negative ads, smear campaigns, foreign bots and AI deepfakes that money can buy. Those attacks were the final howls of a dying establishment.

AMY GOODMAN: With Democrats now preparing to take control of the House and the Senate in these next two years of the Trump administration, what can and should Congress do to address corruption and address it going forward?

For more, we are joined in our New York studio by Donald Sherman, president and CEO of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW. The group filed lawsuits, ethics complaints, public records requests challenging what it describes as corruption and conflicts of interest in the Trump administration.

Donald Sherman, welcome back to Democracy Now! Why don’t you — I mean, it is amazing that corruption in a number of the exit polls was number one, above affordability, above the war, above the immigrant crackdown. Corruption. Can you talk about what it means? And you have laid out in your testimony before Congress, and what CREW has been doing in filing lawsuits, the examples and how it can be taken on.

DONALD SHERMAN: Thanks for having me.

And I think what the poll suggests is what Americans have been experiencing, which is, whether it is costs or the war or the other everyday issues animating conversations at kitchen tables across this country, corruption underlies all of those issues. And that’s what sort of doesn’t — that’s what the polls don’t sort of connect, which is that it’s corruption and costs. It’s corruption that leads to the costs that Americans are experiencing, that has animated so many people to make their voices heard.

You look at the administration’s policy with respect to tariffs, where from day to day, week to week, everyday consumers, farmers, grocers don’t have any sense of how tariffs are going to impact the costs that they are experiencing, but they do know that the president’s business impacts how he approaches tariffs. When the president wanted to — his business wanted to pursue trademarks in Vietnam, all of a sudden, a couple of weeks before, the tariffs on Vietnamese products gets lowered. We saw how the Trump Organization engaged with countries like Argentina and Mexico, invoking tariffs as part of the leverage that they use in order to extract concessions from those governments.

And so, I think what we have seen is, time and time again, whether it’s the millions that the president has made from his oil and gas stock trading because of the illegal war that he is pursuing in Iran, whether it’s seeing how the president’s stock portfolio has increased substantially because of the immigration policy that led to investments in GEO Group and other private prisons, the president’s corruption is directly intertwined with cost concerns, with immigration policy, with the war in Iran. So it should be a surprise to no one that corruption is at the top of the list, because the reality is, is that the president’s corruption, and government corruption writ large, underlies all of the other problems that are animating Americans’ concerns about their government and about their daily lives.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, we can talk about some of the other examples, and, of course, the examples are legion, but because the midterms just finished — I mean, this was perhaps one of the most staggering, even by Trump standards. He promised earlier to send checks for $5,000 to every U.S. adult if Republicans retained control of both the House and the Senate. Has anything like this ever happened?

DONALD SHERMAN: I’m not aware of anything like that ever happening. It’s obviously corrupt. But here’s the important thing: The president, time and time again, has demonstrated that he is not credible, right? And that is also directly connected with his corruption.

When the president goes on TV and says, “Well, the American people aren’t going to spend a dime for this ballroom or for my arch,” he’s doing two things. One, all of a sudden, a couple weeks later, he comes hat in hand to Congress asking for taxpayer money. But also, he’s burying the lede, which is that he’s shaking down corporate America in order to get money for his vanity projects, which communicates to the American public a couple of things. One, he’s not putting their priorities first. Two, that everybody knows there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Corporate America is not funneling money into the president’s pet projects out of the goodness of their heart. They are getting something for those donations at the expense of everyday Americans.

AMY GOODMAN: Wasn’t it significant that in the post-election news conference, where did President Trump hold that? I mean, he held his final big rally speech in front of the Reflecting Pool, and then he held his Wednesday morning speech, after the — what fellow Republican, Governor DeSantis, called an extinction-level election — he held it in front of the White House ballroom that he’s building, and was signing the beams that are going into it.

DONALD SHERMAN: So, I think one of the other lessons that we are taking from the voters is that they have eyes, they have ears. They can see that the president has not prioritized their concerns. This is someone — and a couple of numbers. This is someone, in President Trump, who created 59 businesses — 59 businesses — since winning the White House in 2024. This is someone who made $117 million in foreign business deals since returning to the White House. You led with the $500 million that the UAE sovereign wealth fund donated, or invested, in the president’s crypto enterprise. Time and time again, whether it’s the golf trips that he takes, that also funnel millions of taxpayer dollars into his business, this is someone that has prioritized making money for himself, enriching himself, as opposed to the needs of the American people. And he’s doing it at their expense.

The one other big issue in this election was the war in Iran. And you have a president who picked his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and gave him this quasi-diplomatic role. Meanwhile, Kushner is running his own company that has received $2 billion from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. If the war in Iran is such a significant priority, why would you put someone in such a prominent role, without going through Senate confirmation, without filing a financial disclosure statement, that has a lucrative side hustle where he has received investments from foreign governments? The American people can easily understand not just the scope and scale of the president’s corruption, but why the president and how the president’s corruption is harming them on a daily basis.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, I mean, according to the law, the president and the vice president are exempt from criminal liability. Is that right? And if so, what can the new Congress do, House and Senate, now that Democrats are in the majority?

DONALD SHERMAN: Well, first of all, the president is not exempt from criminal liability. The president — the Supreme Court has expanded the exemption for the president. And so, to the extent that there are official — there’s official conduct that is criminal, that’s where the liability — that’s where the liability shield exists. It doesn’t necessarily cover private actions, for example.

But I will say, if this election was about corruption and cost, then this next Congress needs to be focused on accountability and affordability. Those two things are directly linked. They’ve been directly linked by the president’s misconduct. They have been directly linked by the voters. And Congress needs to do oversight not just on the administration’s corruption, not just on the president’s profiteering, but also on corporate America, what they have gotten out of engaging in the president’s pay-to-play environment, how corporate America and the outside influence of money in our political system has undermined the public voice in our policy discussions, not just in our elections, but in the day-to-day work of policymaking.

And I think the member-elect, Representative Kiros, made a excellent point. Congress needs to focus not just on corruption of the Trump administration, but they need to get their own house in order. They need to ban members from owning and trading individual stocks. They need to look at more aggressive and expansive reforms of Congress, including potentially banning members from — former members from serving as lobbyists, extending the Freedom of Information Act to Congress, setting — the Senate setting up an independent ethics office. There’s a lot of work that Congress needs to do to ensure accountability, not just for the abuses of the Trump administration, not just for the abuses of corporate America and their outside influence on our policy, but also on the ways that Congress, as an institution, has undermined public trust.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, how would one distinguish — that’s a very important point — between Trump’s official and unofficial business? Because it’s difficult to see where that distinction would be drawn.

AMY GOODMAN: And what role does Congress play? I mean, they’ve got two years right now.

DONALD SHERMAN: They have two years. So, for example, you know, tariffs are official conduct, right? But the president’s potential role, any role that the president may have played in the Trump Organization’s use of tariffs as a leverage point as it engaged in negotiations with foreign governments, could be conduct that Congress — one, is definitely conduct that Congress should look at, but could be an example of private conduct that might implicate — you know, that would fall outside of the exceptions that the Supreme Court has established.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And also that he’s made $2.7 billion in the two years since he’s been president.

DONALD SHERMAN: That’s exactly right. I mean, you know, private conduct could be the president — whether the president has paid his taxes. Right? There is a whole host of private conduct and private misconduct that we have seen from this president that should be investigated by Congress and could fall outside of the scope of the Trump v. United States decision. And so, you know, I think that Congress needs to look at all of it.

AMY GOODMAN: We have 30 seconds.

DONALD SHERMAN: They have been given a mandate to address corruption and costs. And again, they need to do that by ensuring accountability and focus on affordability.