As the GOP's platform-less ode to the Donald Trump who never was commences, the real Donald Trump is lurking just behind the convention scenes in the backdrop of corruption emerging in daily headlines over the past week.
Naturally, it's not just one former aide or a singular suspicious activity that has surfaced in news reports; rather it's widespread corruption within the Trump enterprise perpetrated by multiple close allies of Trump himself and touching everything from his 2016 campaign to his administration to his personal and professional finances.
The revelations kicked off a week ago with the release of a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russian interference in 2016 that found Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort was in close contact with a Russian intelligence officer throughout the 2016 election. "Taken as a whole, Manafort's high level access and willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services," the committee wrote, "represented a grave counterintelligence threat." In other words, Manafort was effectively either a Russian mole or a plant and the FBI would have been crazy not to monitor the campaign.
A couple days later, U.S. authorities boarded a 150-foot yacht to arrest former senior campaign aide Steve Bannon in a scheme that allegedly defrauded donors to the We Build the Wall foundation. It's just one more illustration of Trump always surrounding himself with opportunistic grifters. But Bannon's arrest, while perhaps not directly related to Trump, could mark the new beginning of a lot of legal problems for Trump and his entire criminal enterprise if Bannon decides to cooperate with investigators. As former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade noted, Bannon potentially holds the key to unlocking so much of the corruption surrounding Trump, including Jared Kushner's effort to establish a back-channel to the Kremlin and Erik Prince's related 2017 meeting with a Putin ally in the Seychelles islands; Don Jr.'s meeting with a Kremlin-connected lawyer in June 2016 that included both Kushner and Manafort; and the suspect veracity of Trump's written testimony in the Mueller probe. And of course, Bannon's arrest served as the perfect reminder of all Trump’s other criminal associates, including Manafort, Michael Cohen, Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, and George Papadopoulos.
On Friday and Monday, Americans were also treated to back-to-back testimony in the Senate and House from the Trump-installed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. While DeJoy's actions haven't risen to the level of criminality (yet), the process of his appointment to the supposedly apolitical seat has emerged as rife with undue influence by Trump and his Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.
Meanwhile, the Manhattan District Attorney moved a step closer to obtaining nearly a decade's worth of Trump's financial records last week in what appears to be a wide-ranging criminal probe of potential financial fraud by both Trump and his family business, Trump Org. Last week, a federal judge dismissed Trump's second attempt to block New York prosecutors from subpoenaing his tax returns and other records. An appeals court is set to hear oral arguments in the case on September 1, and Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance has agreed to wait on enforcing the subpoena until the court rules on Trump's request for a stay pending appeal.
But Vance isn't the only New York official scrutinizing the finances of both Trump and Trump Org. On Monday, news surfaced that New York Attorney General Letitia James sued Trump Org last week in an effort to compel Trump's family business to comply with seven subpoenas at the heart of a financial probe. James' office is investigating whether Trump and his family business committed financial fraud by inflating the value of several properties for banking and insurance purposes.
So as Trump and his Republican allies bombard the American people with disinformation about Trump’s record in office, Trump’s signature corruption has surrounded every aspect of the convention.
