Politics
Opinion: The Supreme Court just showed us that Trump is not incompetent. He's a master of corruption
I have badly underestimated Donald Trump. Thursday was the day that his justices — it turns out that they are indeed his justices on the Supreme Court, just as he claimed — got it through my thick head: Trump is not just competent but masterful. He is not just capable, he is supreme.
Because Trump is clumsy at his alleged crimes, surrounding himself with flagrant thugs, telling obvious lies, leaving prolific trails of damning evidence, offering ridiculous defenses for indefensible conduct, I had long concluded that he is incompetent at crookery along with his other manifest failings. That’s true as far as it goes. But for all his mad greed and compulsive lawlessness, for all his sleaze and stupidity, crime is ultimately not Trump’s game. Trump is nothing like a master criminal. But he is a master of something far more sinister and complex: corruption.
Crime is a largely private endeavor. Corruption is public. It seeps into the muscle and sinew of democratic society and institutions; it devours from within. The Supreme Court, drunk on arrogated power, cut loose from rudimentary ethics, has been eaten alive by it. But the court is just one plot of a vast terrain that Trump has conquered — not with crime, but corruption.
Crime is when you launch a violent attempt to overthrow the republic. Corruption is when you convince an entire political party to pretend they didn’t watch it live on television, or cower from it inside the Capitol while dozens of police officers were being bludgeoned by the mob.
Crime is when you make off with top-secret documents. Corruption is when a MAGA judge can’t find time to schedule your trial, or process the mountainous evidence of your guilt.
Crime is when a U.S. resident is murdered and dismembered by Saudi hit men. Corruption is when the all but acknowledged killer invests $2 billion in your talentless son-in-law’s fund, which other investors shun.
Crime is when you fake business expenses to cover up a payoff to an adult film actress who wants to cash in on your campaign for president. Corruption is when the head of the nation’s greasiest tabloid, a perpetual fount of lies and nonsense, expresses concern that your deeds are too sleazy for him.
Crime is when your lawyers tell the Senate not to convict you in an impeachment trial because you can be charged in court. Corruption is when your lawyers inform the Supreme Court that you are immune from criminal courts and only the Senate can judge you — but, alas, the senators have missed their window.
Trump has already succeeded at corrupting much of what’s corruptible. Government. Elections. Foreign policy. Democracy. Religion. Above all, people, and mostly men. Truckloads, boatloads, tiki-torch-parade-loads, courtloads of weak men all standing in the shadow that Trump casts.
The Republican Party has been corrupted absolutely. House Republicans have combined McCarthyism with Larry, Moe and Curlyism to twist Congress to comically corrupt ends — all to serve the greater degeneracy of Trump. In the Senate, the young hyenas, Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), study Trump’s demagogy and lick their chops, hoping for a turn at democracy’s carcass.
The establishment has utterly caved. Former Atty. Gen. William Barr’s endorsement of Trump this week, after having called Trump unfit, a psychologically damaged incompetent who cares only about himself, was barely newsworthy. What is Barr but another in the long line of weak men, one more debased Republican offering fealty to the grease king? Trump thanked Barr by humiliating him again.
But it was the Republican Supreme Court — mostly men again — that put the shiv a little deeper in democracy’s back this week. Originalists or textualists, all sounded more or less Trumpist as they seriously entertained Trump’s argument that his assaults on the constitutional order are protected by the Constitution itself. There is no way to make honest sense of such a liar’s mash. But Larry, Moe and Curly aren’t just chairing committees in Congress. They wear robes and furrowed brows now, too. And they seem eager to pretend that crimes are just constitutional exercises of power, and that one ex-president is a king.
Richard Nixon, a self-made, and self-corrupted, man who studied geopolitics and government assiduously, never achieved such a broad subjugation of American values and institutions. Trump, the ignorant, n’er-do-well heir to his father’s crooked fortune, has achieved so much more. Trump hasn’t just captured the trenches of conservative America, he has taken the commanding heights. He owns all of it, from the most racist backwater saloon to the Federalist Society clubhouse. They are his corrupted subjects. He is their corrupt and demented king. If he can somehow get through the next few perilous months, he may yet render corruption sacred, and the republic irredeemable.
Francis Wilkinson is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. @fdwilkinson
The military judge in the U.S.S. Cole bombing case on Monday reset the start of jury selection to Oct. 19, more than 26 years after the suicide bombing in a port in the Middle East killed 17 U.S. sailors and wounded dozens of others.
Col. Matthew Fitzgerald, an Army judge, said that government agencies were unlikely to process classified evidence in time for what was to be a June 1 start date for the national security trial at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
A Saudi citizen, Abd-al Rahim al-Nashiri is accused of orchestrating the attack on the U.S. Navy destroyer off Aden, Yemen, on Oct. 12, 2000 as an acolyte of Osama bin Laden. The death penalty case has been shadowed by the Central Intelligence Agency’s use of torture on the defendant.
Judges at the U.S. naval station in Cuba have set and then abandoned about 10 earlier trial start dates. Pretrial litigation has gone on so long, since Mr. Nashiri was charged in 2011, that three previous judges and all of the initial defense and prosecution lawyers retired from the case or left it for personal or professional reasons.
Mr. Nashiri was captured in Dubai in October 2002. First, he spent about 1,390 days in the custody of the C.I.A., which subjected him to waterboarding, forced nudity, extreme isolation, rectal and other forms of abuse, primarily in secret prisons in Afghanistan and Thailand, according to agency and Senate reports.
The Secretive World of Guantánamo Bay
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U.S.S. Cole: The Army judge in the bombing case ordered the prosecution to do its “due diligence” in providing defense lawyers with any evidence the U.S. government might have “regarding Iran’s role” in the attack off Yemen 25 years ago. President Trump has said Iran was “probably involved.”
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Torture Ruling: A government lawyer appealed to a Pentagon review court to overturn a torture ruling in the Sept. 11 case that disqualified the use of the confessions of a man accused of conspiring in the hijacking plot that killed nearly 3,000 people.
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Cuban Deportees: The long, circuitous journey of dozens of Cuban men who were designated for deportation from the United States last year but instead taken to a prison at the U.S. base at Guantánamo Bay ended when they were repatriated to Cuba.
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Guantánamo Prison Enters 25th Year: The prison has outlasted the war in Afghanistan, has employed tens of thousands of temporary troops and holds six men charged but not yet tried in death penalty cases.
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A Curious Collaboration: An unlikely collection of portraits has given the public its only glimpse inside the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay.
The Cole bombing, by two Al Qaeda recruits who blew themselves up on a small, explosives- laden skiff, was a precursor of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and Mr. Nashiri’s case is on track to become the first capital trial at Guantánamo Bay.
A judge in each case has ruled against the use of a defendant’s confessions because they were contaminated by their years in the C.I.A.’s brutal detention and interrogation program — out of reach of the courts, defense lawyers and International Red Cross.
The defendants were moved to Guantánamo in September 2006 and interrogated by federal agents to build cases against them without warnings against self-incrimination and the right to consult a lawyer.
The Cole trial is expected to last at least six months, and would start on Oct. 19 with the military shuttling 50 U.S. officers at a time there from a pool of 350 men and women to establish a jury of 12 with six alternate members. Guantánamo is so small, a 45-square-mile base with about 4,500 residents and limited guest quarters, that it would be logistically difficult to bring the entire pool down.
Last week, prosecutors in the Sept. 11 case asked a military judge to set deadlines for starting the four-man conspiracy trial in May 2027. Prosecutors had earlier proposed Jan. 11, 2027, but concluded it was not practical even before arguing for it to Lt. Col. Michael Schrama, their presiding judge.
Colonel Schrama said Monday that he would look at setting a trial schedule after he rules on some key pretrial evidentiary motions, probably over the summer, involving Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is accused of being the mastermind of the plot, and two other defendants.
Both cases have dragged on so long in part because no court case in U.S. history has dealt with the volume of classified information involved in this case, which is guarding secret government activities and surveillance that started with the war against terrorism.
Some Navy shipmates who survived the Cole attack and the relatives of victims of both the Cole and Sept. 11 attacks have died waiting for the trials to begin. Family members have been traveling to the base since the arraignment in 2011 to watch pretrial proceedings.
Politics
Stacey Abrams hit with subpoena in alleged campaign finance violations saga: ‘No one is above the law’
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FIRST ON FOX: The Georgia Senate is ramping up its investigation into alleged campaign finance violations tied to Stacey Abrams’ voter outreach group, with a top lawmaker vowing to “follow the facts wherever they lead” as subpoenas have been issued to Abrams and other key figures.
The Senate Special Committee on Investigations announced Monday that Abrams, along with New Georgia Project leaders Lauren Groh-Wargo and Nsé Ufot, must appear before lawmakers at the State Capitol at 10 a.m. on Friday.
“This committee has a responsibility to follow the facts wherever they lead,” said Republican state Sen. Greg Dolezal, the committee’s vice chairman. “Georgia law requires transparency and accountability in our elections.”
The subpoenas stem from findings by the Georgia State Ethics Commission that the New Georgia Project and its affiliated Action Fund violated campaign finance laws during the 2018 election cycle.
STACEY ABRAMS-FOUNDED VOTER ACTIVIST GROUP HIT WITH MASS LAYOFFS AFTER RECORD-BREAKING ETHICS FINE
Stacey Abrams, Democratic candidate for governor of Georgia, speaks to reporters at Georgia State University in Atlanta on Nov. 7, 2022. (Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images)
The groups admitted to 16 violations earlier this year and agreed to pay a $300,000 fine, the largest campaign finance penalty in Georgia history.
New Georgia Project shut down and dissolved in 2025 following mounting financial and legal troubles.
The Republican lawmakers explain in the press release that the goal of the probe is to figure out who was involved in the decision-making behind the violations, along with specifics on how the funds were managed and who was aware of the activity.
WHITE HOUSE UNLEASHES ON STACEY ABRAMS IN LATEST CLASH OVER TRUMP’S ELECTION ORDER
“The people of Georgia deserve to know who was involved, what decisions were made and how millions of dollars flowed through organizations that admitted to violating our campaign finance laws,” Dolezal said.
Georgia’s Republican Lt. Gov. Burt Jones said in the release, “No one is above the law in Georgia.”
He added: “When organizations secretly spend millions to influence elections while evading disclosure requirements, it undermines confidence in our democratic process. The Senate will continue pursuing the truth and ensuring accountability, regardless of political party or influence.”
Former Georgia House Rep. Stacey Abrams attends the Fort Valley GOTV Community Fish Fry at the Agricultural Technology Conference Center in Fort Valley, Georgia, on Oct. 13, 2024. (Julia Beverly/Getty Images)
The lawmakers say that additional hearings and witness testimony are expected in the coming weeks.
“Today, the Georgia State Senate delivered a subpoena for me to testify in a partisan, performative hearing designed to intimidate and disarm voting rights advocates across Georgia and the nation,” Abrams wrote in a response to the subpoena posted on X. “Despite the hollow, cynical intent, I will indeed do so on a mutually agreeable date.”
“It is not lost on me that I am being summoned days after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted protections for minority voting power and after I testified against the unconscionable voter suppression process unfolding across several Southern states.”
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Abrams, the two-time Democratic gubernatorial nominee in battleground Georgia, ruled out another run for governor earlier this year, saying that instead she’ll focus on her work fighting what she warns is the nation’s move toward authoritarianism under President Trump.
Abrams, a former Democratic Party leader in the Georgia state legislature and a nationally known voting-rights advocate, narrowly lost to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in the 2018 gubernatorial election. She lost her 2022 rematch with Kemp by nearly eight points.
Fox News Digital’s Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report
Politics
Oversight chair seeks information from OpenAI’s Sam Altman about potential financial conflicts
WASHINGTON — The chair of the House Oversight Committee has sent a letter to OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman requesting information about potential conflicts of interest between Altman’s personal investments and his operation of the company.
The letter, sent Friday, comes amid a high-stakes legal battle currently playing out in an Oakland federal courtroom between onetime partners Altman and Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who in 2015 co-founded the AI company best known for creating ChatGPT.
The company was first established solely as a nonprofit corporation and the letter sent to Altman by Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the chair of the Oversight committee, indicates that the committee is “investigating potential conflicts of interest involving capital from nonprofit corporations invested in startups and other for-profit companies.”
Comer has requested by May 22 a briefing from the company official responsible for oversight of potential conflicts involving company officers and directors, including Altman, as well as all documents related to conflict of interest policies and guidance for those executives.
While OpenAI was created as a nonprofit designed to responsibly harness the power of the emerging artificial intelligence technology, the company created a for-profit subsidiary in 2019 and three years later released ChatGPT, which jumpstarted widespread adoption of the technology.
Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, left OpenAI’s board in 2018, one year before the creation of the for-profit arm. He is arguing that Altman and another co-founder, Greg Brockman, betrayed the original mission of the nonprofit organization, driven by their desire to “cash in” on the technology.
Musk added Microsoft, a significant investor in OpenAI, to the lawsuit in 2024. OpenAI is rumored to be gearing up to go public later this year or early next, and was recently valued at $852 billion.
Musk has said that he invested $38 million in the OpenAI nonprofit, but he does not stand to benefit from a potential OpenAI public offering.
He created a rival company, xAI, in 2023 that was later folded into his company SpaceX.
In the lawsuit, Musk is seeking $150 billion in damages, for Altman to be removed from the company and for the company to be fully returned to its nonprofit status.
Musk’s complaint also alleges that Altman engaged in self-dealing by directing OpenAI to pursue deals with companies in which he also held a personal stake, including nuclear fusion power company Helion.
Comer’s letter cites reporting that Altman’s pursuit of a Helion deal, which is still ongoing, would come at a lofty valuation of the power-company, boosting the company’s worth and the value of Altman’s investment.
Altman was briefly forced to step down from leadership of OpenAI in 2023 in part due to concerns about potential conflicts between his personal investments and his operation of the company, but was soon reinstated.
While the company’s board created an audit committee to investigate the potential conflicts of Altman and other officers, the findings were never disclosed.
Comer has requested that Altman turn over all documents and communication related to that audit committee.
Representatives for OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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