EXCLUSIVE: An Inside Look at the Trump Administration’s “Official Playbook of Grift and Fraud Planned for the 2025 Inauguration”

Part I: If history and recent moves by Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee, Inc. are a guide, the most obscene ten-week period of political profiteering in the nation’s history is already underway.

Photo posted to Twitter shows words projected upon the Trump International Hotel in Washington by artist Robin Bell in April of 2017, to call attention to already rampant reports of influence peddling and corruption by President Trump’s then-three-month-old administration.

“President Donald J. Trump, the 45th and 47th President of the United States, today announced the formation of Trump Vance Inaugural Committee, Inc.,” read a press release emitted from Mar-a-Lago last Thursday, which thanked “millions of hardworking Americans across the nation” for casting the decisive votes in favor of the GOP nominee in the November 5 election. 

To pay tribute to Trump’s “magnificent” electoral triumph and honor the ordinary Jack-and-Jill-Lunchbuckets who made it all possible, the newly unveiled Committee would host an inaugural celebration dedicated to “the American People and our nation,” the press release declared in a statement attributed to Trump himself. The festivities, he added, would “be the kick-off to my administration, which will deliver on bold promises to Make America Great Again...and achieve the most incredible future for our people.” 

Those were certainly noble sentiments, though entirely unbelievable based on everything knowable about Trump from June 14, 1946, when he was born to a Queens slumlord and Scottish-American socialite – and hence congenitally predisposed towards the two traits he became best known for as an adult, larceny and sloth, respectively – up to the present moment on November 18, 2024. The most relevant historical precedent for the current purposes is what occurred during Trump’s first inauguration in 2017.

That year, after promising a “workmanlike” affair, his Inaugural Committee spent approximately $37,000 per minute between the time the official schedule opened on January 19 when Trump laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns, and its close on January 21 National Prayer Service about $37,000 per minute, as was later calculated during “Trump, Inc.,” a brilliantly-reported podcast produced by ProPublica and New York Public Radio station WNYC, with research assistance from the Center for Responsive Politics. No other president has come close to racking up such an incredible pace of inauguration-related waste, fraud, and abuse, and it’s a record that would undoubtedly have endured in the manner of Joe Dimaggio’s 56-game hitting streak of 1941 had Trump not won another shot at the piñata by defeating Kamala Harris earlier this month. 

Since then, and in one instance even earlier, the president-elect’s closest, most trusted associates have created a trio of important new political and financial organizations, the Trump-Vance Committee being the last. If all goes as planned, the three entities will be foundational cornerstones of a cash pipeline   that seamlessly sluices vast piles of money donated by über rich contributors to pay for the 2025 inauguration – ostensibly because of their profound love of democracy but, as is evident to anyone who graduated with a degree from an elementary school, in reality with the express purpose of buying favors from the new administration – directly into the financial slop trough that feeds Trump, his family, and his cronies, including the pipeline’s architects.

A Washington lawyer and campaign finance expert I interviewed drew an analogy between the present moment and the situation in April of 2017, three months after that year’s inauguration. By then, news accounts were already rampant with stories of the new administration selling access to corporate contributors and foreign regimes, prompting artist Robin Bell to project the words “Pay Trump Bribes Here” onto the facade of the since rebranded Trump International Hotel in Washington.

Now that’s exactly the message the president-elect is advertising himself, and very much by design, with his team’s ongoing assembly of the inauguration-related cash pipeline, in the opinion of the source, who spoke off the record. Trump’s 2017 coronation is going to look “low rent after this year’s bash,” he predicted in while providing a succinct summary of the scenario he sees unfolding.

The Supreme Court is Republican-owned, the GOP controls the House and Senate, and Trump won the White House so there’s no chance he’ll be going to prison anytime soon. He can’t run again so now his main interest in life is sucking up as much money as possible before he dies. The bureaucratic preparations he’s making for the inauguration are the equivalent of a gigantic flashing neon sign that says “I can be bought and the best way to get my attention is to give me a lot of money.”

President Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, and their families at the January 21, 2017 National Prayer Service that marked the official close of that year’s inauguration schedule. During the roughly 48 hours that the festivities lasted, Trump’s inaugural committee raised $37,000 per minute. Screenshot from C-Span’s broadcast of the ceremony.

The roughly 10 weeks that transpire between the nation’s quadrennial presidential election and the winning candidate setting up shop at the White House is invariably a peak period of political graft, because wealthy donors know it’s an excellent opportunity to get in on the ground floor of the new administration by making particularly gaudy cash dispensations. Nevertheless, Trump’s achievement in 2021 was truly historic, as seen when comparing his haul that year with the numbers put up by other presidents since a law was passed nearly a quarter-century ago that requires inaugural committees to report their donors to the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

George W. Bush’s inaugural organizations in 2001 and 2005 each raised about $40 million. The FEC doesn’t set any limit on how much money contributors can give to presidential inaugural committees, but for the 2001 bash — the first inauguration mostly paid for with private money — Bush limited contributions to $100,000, which was raised to $250,000 four years later. “The list of contributors for the three-day celebration is freighted with wealthy Republicans loyal to the president and corporations that have regulatory and legislative interests in Washington like military contractors, energy companies and technology businesses,” the New York Times reported shortly before festivities kicked off at the 2005 inauguration.

Barack Obama forbade his 2009 inaugural team to accept donations from lobbyists and corporate or union PACs, and capped donations at $50,000. That didn’t have any notable impact on fundraising or dampen horse trading and influence peddling activities, but then that wasn’t what the “reforms” were intended to do; their primary aim, which mirrored Obama’s chief priority during his entire two terms in office, was to maintain the bullshit brand as a “hope and change” leader he built when running for office but abandoned for politics-as-usual the moment he won it. Hence, despite Obama’s loudly trumpeted steps to make inauguration fundraising cleaner, his committee garnered $53 million, easily exceeding Bush’s take at his two inaugurations, which was more than enough to cover the costs of a celebration that stretched over five-days and featured 10 private balls for high-rollers.

Obama lifted or loosened most of the fundraising restrictions he put in place for his first inauguration when he was sworn in for a second time in 2013, and his committee expressly solicited $1 million contributions. Though it didn’t receive any single checks for that amount, the move lured back more corporate money with AT&T’s PAC and executives ponying up a combined $4.6 million in 11 separate donations, Microsoft about $2 million in 12 transactions, and Boeing and Chevron each coming in with multiple contributions that added up to just north or $1 million. However, net proceeds for Obama’s 2013 inauguration dropped sharply to $43.2 million.

President Joe Biden’s inauguration in January 2021 took place during the pandemic era and was mostly a series of televised virtual events. Despite that, 1 percenters and corporate and union PACS poured almost $62 million into his inaugural committee, setting a new standard for Democratic presidents.

It helped that Biden’s inaugural committee allowed corporations and unions to contribute up to $1 million and individuals to kick in up to $500,000 — it published the names of donors online, which was a minor improvement over past practices, but not by much as it didn’t disclose the amount they gave along with it — and at least 10 companies hit the maximum figure, including Bank of America, Comcast, Boeing, Pfizer, and Lockheed Martin, as did the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union. A number of ultra-wealthy donors maxed out at the $500,000 cap for individuals as well, among them media mogul Haim Saban, hedge fund manager Kenneth Griffin, healthcare executive Jean-Pierre Conte, and Bill and Melinda Gates each forked over $250,000.

Biden 2021 didn’t establish a new overall record, though, because Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee of 2017 raised $107 million, twice as much as Obama raked in eight years before him and $45 million more than Biden did four years later. That was entirely predictable because Trump made clear from the get-go that his governing approach as president would be rooted in flat out quid pro quo arrangements.

The nation’s newly-elected leader set the tone by putting a number of convicted felons and moral cretins in top positions at the inaugural committee, among others:

• Committee Chairman Tom Barrack, a private equity bottomfeeder and one of Trump’s closest friends, who was later indicted on charges of lobbying his administration for the United Arab Emirates without registering as a foreign agent and making false statements to law enforcement. As often occurs in the case of the country’s richest citizens who have bottomless resources to pay for the best criminal defense attorneys, sometimes fairly but usually not, Barrack was acquitted of the charges. 

• Committee Vice-Chairman Elliott Broidy, who pleaded guilty in 2009 to paying bribes to win investments from the New York State pension fund, and became a two-time loser 11 years later when he pleaded guilty once again, this time “in exchange for millions of dollars” he secretly received “to do the bidding of a foreign government and a foreign national” by lobbying senior Trump administration officials, including the president and the attorney general, to “drop civil forfeiture proceedings and related matters concerning the embezzlement of billions of dollars” from an investment firm owned by the Malaysian government, and to press the administration and Justice Department “to arrange for the removal and return” to China of a dissident living in the US. In between the two guilty pleas, Broidy, who has threatened to sue me three times on frivolous grounds, signed a nondisclosure agreement in late-2017 with Shera Bechard, a former Playboy Playmate, that called for him to pay her $1.6 to maintain a vow of silence about a pregnancy and abortion she had during an affair with a man who may have been Broidy but some believe was Trump, who in this scenario asked his friend and major fundraiser to arrange the payment for him.

Shera Bechard at the 2010 Glamourcon in Long Beach, California. Photo credit: Glenn Francis, via Wikimedia Commons.

• Committee Treasurer Doug Ammerman, who prosecutors named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a tax shelter fraud in the early-2000s when he was a partner at the accounting firm KPMG. Ammerman was never charged but KPMG later admitted criminal liability and a related Senate investigation turned up emails that indicated Ammerman was aware of the scheme. 

To make sure all parties understood the rules of the game, the Trump I inaugural committee lifted all limits on the size of donations it would accept and in fact offered a full menu of perks, such as private retreats and receptions with members of his administration and GOP lawmakers, to encourage the largest possible donations from special interest groups and wealthy individuals. The only self-imposed limit set by the inaugural committee was a ban on accepting money directly from lobbyists, but that was a complete joke as it allowed lobbyists to raise money from their contacts on Trump’s behalf.

It worked. The late casino mogul and human dreg Sheldon Adelson contributed $5 million and 29 other corporate titans or companies ponied up $1 million or more, including hedge fund directors Robert Mercer of Renaissance Technologies, Paul Singer of Elliott Management, and Steven Cohen of SAC Capital Advisors – which went under in 2016, three years after it paid over $1 billion in fines for insider trading – and natural resources executives like Clifford Forrest of Rosebud Mining and John Hess, the CEO of oil giant Hess Corp. Ten more corporate executives added at least $500,000 apiece.

Trump’s committee was also the first to accept dark money, which added roughly $2 million to its combined take. About half of that was funneled through an anonymous shell company called BH Group, which long afterwards was traced to Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, the far-right activist and financial bagman who built the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority by helping pick or confirm Justice Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Samuel Alito, and advised Trump on the nominations of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, as ProPublica has detailed.

Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee also shattered the record for spending by shelling out $97 million. A staggering $26 million of the total went to an event-planning company owned by First Lady Melania Trump’s then-dear friend Stephanie Winston Wolkoff that opened its doors a month earlier. The committee also paid Trump’s businesses directly for use to host events in deals brokered by Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter.

Tens of millions of dollars in contributions to the inaugural committee were never accounted for and a wide assortment of the president’s cronies and campaign operatives were implicated in sleazy and potentially illegal conduct. Among the most egregious violations were helping Middle Eastern government officials and oligarchs disguise donations – FEC rules flatly prohibit foreign citizens from contributing to presidential inaugural committees – by arranging for their cash to be sent in the name of US-based straw donors.

In 2021, California venture capitalist Imaad Zuberi was sentenced to 12 years in prison related to charges involving an illegal donation of $900,000 to Trump’s inaugural committee, which got him seats at the ceremony and tickets to gala events, and funneling another $1 million, much of it from overseas, to members of congress from both parties via straw donors, including people whose identities he made up and at least one person who was dead. Zuberi, who previously had made large donations to Obama’s inaugural committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, openly acknowledged he gave money in exchange for access and favors, and wrote in an email to a potential client that was obtained by the AP that he helped broker meetings between elected officials and “all scumbag of the world, warlords, kings, queens, presidents for life, military dictators, clan chiefs, tribal chiefs and etc.”

In February of 2022, Washington, DC Attorney General Karl Racine filed a lawsuit against Trump’s Inaugural Committee, the Trump Organization, and the Trump International Hotel, alleging that officials from the three organizations conspired to illegally enrich the former president and his family. The lawsuit specifically charged the Inaugural Committee overpaid the hotel by more than $1 million in charges it knew were “vastly inflated,” including a $300,000 bill for event space to host a private reception for Donald, Jr., Ivanka, and Eric Trump, and that it paid off a $49,000 debt that was owed by the Trump Organization.

Three months later, the defendants agreed to pay the city $750,000 to resolve the charges, though Trump issued a statement at the time that accused Racine of “weaponizing Law Enforcement” to target him. "As crime rates are soaring in our Nation's Capital, it is necessary that the Attorney General focus on those issues rather than a further leg of the greatest Witch-Hunt in political history," the statement quoted him as saying.

If Trump and his present crew of associates at the 2025 inaugural committee are able to exceed the fundraising and spending levels racked up between his November 2016 election and January 2017 inauguration by even a single dollar, it will require extraordinary guile and initiative. However, all signs suggest that Team Trump 2025 intends to give its best efforts to surpass the records established by their predecessors eight years ago, and they’ve already unveiled a number of twists and innovations that would make it unwise to bet against them. 

Coming tomorrow in Part II: The three pillars of Trump Vance Inaugural Committee, Inc.’s strategy to extract maximum cash from corporations and the über rich.