Swamp is filling up in Washington
This is shaping up to be another red-letter week for Draining the Swamp. On Monday, Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, splashed back into the news when members of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team accused him in court papers of witness tampering. Swamp-watchers will recall that Manafort is facing a smorgasbord of charges related to tax, lobbying and money-laundering violations. Prosecutors now say he has been using his free time while awaiting trial to try to contact some former European business associates to coach them into lying about his work on behalf of pro-russia political interests in Ukraine. Manafort’s secret lobbying scheme is alleged to have been impressively elaborate — as, also, efforts to cover it up. But the straightforward phrase that leaps out from this latest court filing comes from a witness telling the FBI that Manafort had tried to “suborn perjury.” Such an effort would qualify as a definite legal no-no.
Meanwhile, Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, has once again burnished his reputation as the Trump administration’s biggest grifter. On Monday, Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee asked the committee’s chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., to subpoena the EPA for documents relating to Pruitt’s “multiple abuses of authority in using agency staff for his own personal purposes.”
Specifically, Democrats want to know more about Pruitt’s reportedly asking his agency scheduler, Millan Hupp, to handle various tasks for him, including finding him a new place to live last summer — a monthslong, labor-intensive process — and trying to help him buy a used mattress from the Trump International Hotel in Washington.
The mattress caper was, at least, more exotic than Pruitt’s usual shopping misadventures — the nearly $10,000 to decorate his office, the dozen customized fountain pens for $1,560, the $43,000 soundproof phone booth. It even could be seen as a positive sign that he has abandoned his spendthrift ways. No matter: By Tuesday, Pruitt’s furnishing needs became old news when
It takes something — or someone — pretty special to cut through the white noise of cynicism that surrounds Washington. Which is precisely what the Trump era is providing: a breathtaking, overly vivid circus of conflicts of interests, abuses of office, ethical lapses and breeches of democratic norms that has captured the public’s attention with its audacity.
it was revealed he had also asked an aide to help his wife, Marlyn, procure a Chickfil-a franchise. Calls were arranged and the application process begun, but Marlyn Pruitt never did open a restaurant.
Now, as delicious as Chick-fil-a may be, using the agency’s staff to run one’s personal errands is, of course, a breach of ethics rules. Which may explain in part why, as The Washington Post reported, Pruitt took it upon himself to contact the CEO of Concordia, a nonprofit organization in New York, to scare up work for his wife. According to its CEO, Matthew Swift, Marlyn Pruitt received a few thousand dollars to help organize Concordia’s annual conference last year.
And so Scott Pruitt continues to dazzle with his inventive capacity for misusing his position.
To be fair, the EPA chief is hardly the only official in Washington who’s been testing ethical boundaries. Just a few days before he announced last week that he would not seek re-election, Rep. Tom Garrett, R-VA., was publicly accused by former aides of turning his staff into “personal servants.”
Likewise, Manafort is not alone in playing fast and loose with lobbying rules. One of the more enlightening aspects of his indictment, in fact, was how it revealed the extent to which the K Street crowd dismisses as a joke the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, which requires Americans lobbying on behalf of foreign entities to disclose who is paying them. Manafort’s experience prompted nervous chatter among his fellow lobbyists as to whether his high-profile case would bring greater scrutiny of, and a crackdown on, FARA abuses more broadly.
More often than not, however, such misbehavior stays in the shadows. Or, when it comes to light, it’s shrugged off as politics as usual. It takes something — or someone — pretty special to cut through the white noise of cynicism that surrounds Washington. Which is precisely what the Trump era is providing: a breathtaking, overly vivid circus of conflicts of interests, abuses of office, ethical lapses and breeches of democratic norms that has captured the public’s attention with its audacity.
Some of this stems from the Russia investigation. In examining how Trump’s inner circle operates, Mueller is uncovering all manner of questionable dealings — some of them illegal, others merely appalling.
That said, the Trump Effect extends beyond the Mueller inquiry and into the shameless, often hapless characters with whom this president surrounds himself. Let’s not forget, among others, Tom Price (private jets), John Mcentee (financial crimes) or Rob Porter (spousal abuse) — and down, down the drain they go.
When candidate Trump vowed to drain the swamp, he most likely didn’t do so with the thought of targeting his own cadre of aides and advisers. But whatever his intentions, the Trump era is proving to be a master class in the many ways to abuse power — and the many ways to get busted for it.