The giant problem of Trump-Pence Administration corruption

Heather Cox Richardson in a Facebook post of 11/09/2020 calls attention to one of the things the Trump Administration is doing in its final weeks:

Today Washington Post diplomacy and national security reporter John Hudson noted that a source told him that the “Trump administration just gave Congress formal notification for a massive arms transfer to the United Arab Emirates: 50 F-35s, 18 MQ-9 Reapers with munitions; a $10 billion munitions package including thousands of Mk 82 dumb bombs, guided bombs, missiles & more….” This deal comes two months after the administration’s Abraham Accord normalizing relations between Israel and the UAE opened the way for arms sales.

This is Hudson's tweet:

Trump administration just gave Congress formal notification for a massive arms transfer to the United Arab Emirates: 50 F-35s, 18 MQ-9 Reapers with munitions; a $10 billion munitions package including thousands of Mk 82 dumb bombs, guided bombs, missiles & more, per source

— John Hudson (@John_Hudson) November 10, 2020

Richardson:

The UAE has wanted the F-35 for years; it is the world’s most advanced fighter jet. They cost about $100 million apiece. The president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has secretly been pushing for the sale of the arms to the UAE in the face of fierce opposition by government agencies and lawmakers.

The administration had announced a much smaller version of this deal at the end of October, in a sale that would amount to about $10 billion, but Congress worried about the weaponry falling into the hands of China or Russia and seemed unlikely to let the sale happen. In 2019, it stopped such a deal. Trump declared a national emergency in order to go around Congress and sell more than $8 billion of weapons to the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. He later fired Steven Linick, the State Department’s inspector general looking into those sales, but when the IG’s report came out nonetheless, it was scathing, suggesting that they put the U.S. at risk of being prosecuted for war crimes.

When you remember that Trump’s strong suit has always been distraction, and that he has always used the presidency as a money-making venture, I wonder if we need to factor those characteristics in when we think about his unprecedented and dangerous refusal to admit he has lost this election. [my emphasis]

She also provides several source citations, including:

Kylie Atwood and Zachary Cohen, Kushner's secret push to sell F-35 jets to UAE causes frustration among US agencies and lawmakers CNN 08/20/2020

Diane Bernabei and Beth Van Schaack, State Dept. Inspector General Report: A Troubling Message on Arms Sales Just Security 08/26/2020

Natasha Turak, Trump reveals plan to sell F-35 fighter jets to UAE — but hurdles remain CNBC 10/30/2020

Ayesha Rascoe and Michele Kelemen, Trump Dumps 3 Agency Leaders In Wake Of Election NPR 11/06/2020

The Biden-Harris Administration is going to have a mountain of work to legally, administratively, and politically cope with the staggering level of corruption in the Trump-Pence government. Greg Sargent (If Biden wins, the post-Trump corruption purge will have to be epic Washington Post 08/05/2020) summarized a report from the establishment-Democratic Center for American Progress (CAP) outlining major considerations involved:

Of course, Trump himself will make this as hard as possible. As the report notes, Richard Nixon “resigned from office in disgrace, providing some measure of accountability for his actions.”

By contrast, Trump will steadily rage about any such efforts at an accounting from private life, his Twitter thumbs as active as ever. And GOP opportunists in the Senate who see advocating for the Lost Cause of Trumpism as their path to glory in 2024 will add to the bellowing.

All of which is a reminder of the vast scale of the garbage field we’ll all be digging out from under, should Biden win.