Despite all his bluster about being tough on lawbreakers, one prominent conservative argued for The Atlantic that Donald Trump is actually "the most pro-crime" president in American history, so long as you are the right kind of person.
David Frum is a conservative commentator and Trump critic who previously served as a speechwriter for former President George W. Bush. Departing the Republican Party to become an independent in 2024, he frequently voices opposition to Trump's political agenda, including at The Atlantic, where he serves as a senior editor.
In his latest piece from Sunday, Frum broke down the new development that exposed Trump as hugely "pro-crime," as long as the perpetrators have the right connections.
"'Many secrets; no mysteries.' That’s the master code of the Trump administration," Frum wrote. "When it does something strange, there’s never any mystery as to why: Somebody close to the president, or possibly the president and his family themselves, intends to score a dishonest dollar. Exactly who and how may be secret. Exactly why is no mystery."
He added: "So it is with the news that the Department of the Treasury has ended ownership-reporting requirements for U.S. businesses and purged the existing database of ownership information. This seemingly technical-sounding change is a huge gift to financial crooks, who can now store and launder dark money in U.S. financial institutions with less risk of detection. But the gift comes at the direct expense of banks, mutual funds, insurance companies, and other financial institutions, which now have to shoulder the burden of verifying customer data themselves."
This change, Frum explained, has been touted by the U.S. Treasury as a welcome deregulation, "lifting burdensome red tape from business owners." The relief to "honest business owners," Frum countered, is "minimal," while the overall financial sector is now saddled with a new burden. Those most helped by this change are "shady business owners." The move can also be seen as "payback" by Trump against those who attempted to enforce anti-money-laundering laws against his companies. Summing up it as a new gift to "crooks, cheats, and traffickers," Frum also suggested that "Trump seems to recognize that the criminal-American community is his last and most loyal constituency," as his approval among most other Americans continues to collapse.
"The purported 'deregulation' is, however, a great benefit to tax evaders, drug traffickers, money launderers, and other criminals hoping to elude scrutiny of their finances," Frum explained. "If they can locate a weak or careless or greedy financial institution, they can open accounts with imperfect information—and they now stand a much higher chance of getting away with their deception."
He added later: "The Trump administration is the most pro-crime administration in United States history—as long as the crime in question is committed by the president, his family, his donors, or his friends... Across the federal government, enforcement against rich-people crimes has been crippled or abandoned. Inside the Department of Justice, resources have been redistributed away from white-collar-crime enforcement, and Trump has stopped enforcing laws against bribing foreign officials altogether. Pre-Trump, some three dozen lawyers worked on domestic public integrity at DOJ. That figure has been cut to two. The team that policed lawbreaking in the crypto industry has been disbanded."
