Three weeks into Donald Trump’s second term, the Republican White House has invested a considerable amount of time and energy focusing on corruption, but not in a good way. For example, the president has extended support to politicians convicted and accused of corruption. He also fired a group of inspectors general who were responsible for rooting out corruption.
Trump’s budget director is gutting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is an agency that has taken on corruption affecting consumers. Trump’s Justice Department has disbanded the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force and pared back enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, opening the door to possible corruption. Trump continues to profit off a cryptocurrency meme coin, raising concerns about corruption. Though it was a little on the nose, the president even tried to fire the head of the federal agency dedicated to protecting whistleblowers.
With this in mind, perhaps no one should be too surprised that the White House is pausing enforcement of some international anti-bribery laws. USA Today reported:
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday evening pausing enforcement of a federal law that makes it a crime for U.S. businesses to bribe foreign officials, saying that the law puts companies at a disadvantage on the global stage. Trump ordered newly confirmed Attorney General Pam Bondi to immediately stop actions taken under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, or FCPA, including prosecutions of American individuals and companies who the Justice Department has charged with bribing foreign government officials in attempts to gain business in other countries.
The Republican added that the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act “sounds good on paper, but in practicality, it’s a disaster.” He added, “It sounds so good, but it’s so bad.”
Alas, this is not a new position for the president. In fact, longtime viewers of “The Rachel Maddow Show” might remember that in 2012 — three years before Trump’s trip down the golden escalator — the future president said, in reference to FCPA, “Now, every other country goes into these places, and they do what they have to do. It’s a horrible law and it should be changed. I mean, we’re like the policeman for the world. It’s ridiculous.”
His position did not change in his first term. In their book “A Very Stable Genius,” The Washington Post’s Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig reported that Trump clashed with then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in early 2017 because the new president wanted to get rid of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
“It’s just so unfair that American companies aren’t allowed to pay bribes to get business overseas,” Trump reportedly said at the time. (The reporting in the book was not independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News.) The same book added that Trump directed Stephen Miller to draft an executive action to repeal the law. Executive actions cannot simply repeal federal laws, though the president apparently didn’t care. Eight years later, it’s apparently still important to the president that American businesses be allowed to make foreign bribes, clearing the way for additional overseas corruption. The underlying law still exists, of course, but under Trump’s new directive, enforcement of the law is on hold. It’s difficult to say what else the president might do to advance the cause of corruption, but if the last three weeks are any indication, we won’t have to wait too long to learn of the next steps.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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