TRUMP ADMINISTRATION

On 2026-06-23, Senator Christopher Murphy (D-CT) delivered a floor speech titled "TRUMP ADMINISTRATION" in the Senate.

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION

Congressional Record, Volume 172 Issue 105 (Tuesday, June 23, 2026) [Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 105 (Tuesday, June 23, 2026)] [Senate] [Pages S3036-S3039] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] TRUMP ADMINISTRATION Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, colleagues, over the last year and a half, our President Donald Trump has turned the White House into a 24-7 corruption operation. This is a national crisis, and we should start acting like it. The President's goal is to engage in so much corruption, so much self-enrichment--to hand out so many favors to his friends, his family, and his political allies--that it just becomes the pitter-patter of rain. It is normal. It is constant. It is never-ending. Trump's bet is that if there is a new story of corruption, of self- dealing every few days, that the press will stop covering it or the public will just stop paying attention. To an extent he is, tragically, succeeding. But he is also betting that the public will just come to the conclusion that this is normal because all of our politics are this corrupt, that every Senator, that every previous President is this corrupt. That is not true. While I disagree with my Senate Republican colleagues' decision to largely remain silent in the face of this misconduct, it is true that not a single Senator on either side of the aisle engages in the behavior that our President does. Senators--Republicans and Democrats--do not trade our votes for cash or for political contributions. We don't run side hustles like crypto companies. Senators don't give contracts to their kids just because we can. And no President in the history of this country has done what Donald Trump has done. No President has done 5 percent of the self-dealing that Donald Trump has done in the last year and a half. This moment is exceptional. It is a one-of-one moment. And if it becomes normal--if people stop being outraged at what he is doing to enrich himself--then I fear there is no going back. The White House will just become a place to get rich. So I think it is time to pull back and see the full picture, to not view this as just one isolated scandal after another--every single one popping up each week or every few days--but to understand the full scope of this illegality. Last year, I came to the floor to document the first 100 days of Donald Trump's mind-blowing corruption. Since then, especially in 2026, the pace of his misconduct has quickened dramatically. And so I am here on the floor today--and I am going to spend more than a few minutes doing this--laying out what has happened since I gave that last speech. This is the story of 500 days of corruption. And I am going to start on April 7, 2025. This is when the current Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche issues a memo ordering the termination of several Biden-era DOJ investigations into crypto companies. Now, here is the problem. The then-Deputy Attorney General is a major investor in crypto companies, and he works for a President who is a major player in the crypto industry. But the DOJ just drops these investigations, signals that the Department of Justice is no longer going to hold crypto companies accountable. But Blanche owns major investments in crypto stocks. The President is one of the biggest players in the industry. Blanche doesn't actually stop there. He eliminates the entire enforcement team at DOJ dedicated to rooting out crypto-related fraud and money laundering schemes. This is a crypto investor, who works for a President who owns crypto companies, shutting down the unit at DOJ that holds this industry accountable. Let's move to 3 weeks later on April 30. Later in the month, a curious announcement from the Department of Agriculture: They are reversing a rule that would require poultry companies to limit salmonella bacteria levels in their product. This is essentially a rule to make it less likely that people will get salmonella poisoning. It sounds like a strange rule to eliminate. We come to find out that one of the biggest donors to Donald Trump's inauguration was a poultry company called Pilgrim's Pride. They made a donation to Trump's inauguration that was bigger than practically any other company--bigger than Amazon, Meta, or Exxon--$5 million. And after they made the donation, they asked for one thing: the reversal of the salmonella rule. And they got it. This is pay-for-play. You make a donation to the President or the President's political operation, you ask for a favor, and you get it. And we will see, as we wind through these 500 days, this happens over and over again. In May 2025, the pardon racket starts. Every member of the Senate should be outraged at this. You all know what is happening. The President is pardoning people based on their ability to pay either him and his political operation or pay people who are close to the President. On May 27, Donald Trump pardons a man called Paul Walczak. This is a really bad guy. He stole millions of dollars from the nurses and healthcare aides at the nursing home he owned, and he used the cash that he stole from his employees to buy a $2 million yacht. He got convicted. He went to jail for fraud. But his mother paid $1 million to buy a face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump. And 3 weeks after that paid audience, her son was given a full and unconditional pardon that went so far as to relieve him of any duty to pay back the $4.4 million that he stole from his employees. This is a new pay-for- pardons scheme that begins in May. In June of 2025, it is revealed that top administration officials are cashing in on government contracts that benefit their own investment portfolio. Stephen Miller is more than just the architect of the administration's hard-line immigration policies. He has a personal financial stake in them. For instance, Miller owns up to $250,000 in Palantir stock. And just a month before Miller's holdings became public, ICE announced that it was awarding a $30 million contract to--you guessed it--Palantir to provide real-time surveillance information to ICE officers. And you will be shocked to hear this: There was no competitive bidding process for that contract. And you will hear this over and over again. Competitive bidding basically doesn't exist. If the President or somebody close to the President wants a contract directed to a friend or to a company in which they invest, Miller-- overseeing ICE--ICE gives a no-bid contract to Palantir. The investors in Palantir, which include Stephen Miller, get rich. Let's move to September of 2025. In September, we start to learn the danger of Donald Trump's crypto corruption. I covered this in the first 100 days of corruption. This is maybe the most corrupt thing that Trump is doing. He and his family own a crypto company that issues several cryptocoins. There is no disclosure on who is buying those coins. The President promotes them. He invites people to official events, who purchase the coins. On September 18, though, we come to find out that Trump made $57 million selling crypto tokens to entities associated with the regimes in North Korea, Iran, and Russia: extraordinary investments being made by entities that are tied in with North Korea, Iran, and Russia into Trump's crypto companies. [[Page S3037]] It begs the question: As we are currently debating an Iran deal that basically exists on Iran's terms, why was there a flood of money from Iranian regime-backed entities into the Trump crypto companies? Why were they putting that investment in? What did they expect to get from the President? We have never, ever before had this exist. We have never had a backdoor mechanism by which foreign governments could just shovel money into the pocket of the President. It exists because of Trump's meme coin and his stablecoin. On September 23--this is a week later--it is now pretty obvious that it is--there is a pay-to-play regime in charge of the White House. A week later, on September 23, Donald Trump closes the books on a criminal investigation into one of his key advisors, Tom Homan. This is his border czar. The FBI had caught Tom Homan redhanded, engaging in naked corruption. Undercover agents had handed him $50,000 in cash in a bag, and he agreed to give them government contracts. This was on video. This is the border czar getting a bag of cash in exchange for contracts on video, but the administration on September 20 just makes the investigation go away because that kind of bribery--that kind of naked graft--is okay in this White House. We are moving on to October 2025 right now. Two weeks after Homan is left off--maybe the most nakedly corrupt partner--there is not a single Senator that could defend this. Changpeng Zhao built an entire business based on allowing terrorists, drug traffickers, and sex predators to use his cryptocurrency to evade the law. He went to jail for this, but he also helped Trump launch his crypto business. So who cares about financing terrorists and sex criminals? Trump gives this guy a full pardon on October 7. It is as naked--this is a guy who built a company that allowed terrorists and sex predators to engage in private financing. He went to jail. He got out of jail because he agreed to help get Trump rich. We are still in October. Later that month, the bulldozers arrive to destroy the East Wing of the White House--it is still amazing to think that actually happened--and the ballroom corruption racket begins. The word goes out: If you want something from Donald Trump, donate to his ballroom. It is all he cares about. We know that. Donald Trump talks about his ballroom all the time. As of this month, more than half of the publicly identified donors to the ballroom project have, since they made their donations, won new or expanded Federal contracts totaling more than $50 billion. More than half of the people who donated to the ballroom have, since they donated--and this just all kicked off on October 1