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Hello Reader,
This week’s Dispatches feature billions created from thin air, dictators purchasing influence, and mass pardons for favors. But the most revealing moment came when a faltering president tried to buy back the voters slipping away.
Donald Trump knows he’s in trouble.
A More Perfect Union
- Jefferson's Worst Nightmare
- "Perverted to the Worst Purposes"
- Trump's "Unfettered" Pardons
- Trump's $300 Billion Voter Payoff
- American Renegade of the Week
Note: I will be hosting family for the next week for my daughter's 5th birthday. The next episode drops one week from today.
Color Key: 🟢 Advances liberty 🔴 Restricts liberty
Three days before inauguration, Donald Trump launched a meme coin. Within hours, $TRUMP became the 19th most valuable cryptocurrency on earth—$13 billion in trading value, created from thin air. The First Family's digital casino had opened for business.
Ten months later, Trump's wealth exploded from $4.3 billion to $7.3 billion, according to Forbes. The Trump Organization's revenue jumped seventeen-fold—from $51 million to $864 million. On September 1st alone, the family netted $5 billion. No president in American history has monetized the Oval Office like this.
The conflicts are brazen. Trump pardoned crypto billionaire Changpeng Zhao—who pleaded guilty to empowering money laundering and terrorist financing through Binance—then watched his crypto empire soar. Chinese mogul Justin Sun invested $30 million in Trump's World Liberty Financial prior to Trump’s allocation of strategic reserves for some cryptocurrencies, including Sun’s. The UAE invested $2 billion using World Liberty's stablecoin to buy Binance stakes. Each investor wanted something. Many got it.
The pattern is simple: regulatory favors flow to crypto donors while Trump's family rakes in billions. The SEC dropped enforcement actions against major exchanges whose leaders attended Trump's White House "Crypto Summit." Companies that enriched the Trumps received policy wins within weeks.
In February, Democrats introduced the MEME Act to bar presidents from issuing financial assets. Nine months later, the bill remains untouched in three Republican-led House committees—no hearings, no vote. The only measure to advance, the GENIUS Act, created a stablecoin framework but exempted presidential families from profit limits that bind Congress—a carve-out written for Trump.
Thomas Jefferson warned that "offices of the greatest abilities are daily perverted to the worst purposes." He couldn't have imagined $Trump’s crypto empire, but he understood the danger: when public servants use their power for profit, the republic itself becomes the merchandise.
Based on excellent reporting by Joe Nocera of the fiercely independent Free Press.
This week, TheBrennan Center for Justicedocumented a staggering web of conflicts—enough to destroy any previous presidency. Although Brennan tilts ever leftward, I found no disputing evidence.
Over 70% of Trump's meme coin sales trace to foreign nationals and entities with government ties. The top 220 buyers were invited to his golf club. The top 25 toured the White House.
The quid pro quos are transparent. Vietnam fast-tracked a $1.5 billion Trump golf complex during tariff negotiations, with officials acknowledging "special attention from President Trump personally." Their tariffs fell sharply. Serbia cleared permits for a half-billion-dollar Trump hotel one week after his election victory—allegedly falsifying documents to demolish a protected cultural site.
The aforementioned Abu Dhabi (UAE) state $2 billion investment could net Trump $80 million annually. Weeks after its announcement, an Emirati crypto fund bought $100 million in $Trump.
Qatar approved a $5.5 billion beach resort through a government-owned company in April. After the regime gifted Trump a $400 million Boeing 747—to transfer to Trump's library after leaving office, he vowed to “protect" the emirate. Last month, Defense Secretary Hegseth announced the U.S. is building a “Qatari Emiri Air Force facility” in Utah.
Trump's Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff negotiated ceasefire deals while his son solicited billions from those same governments for family real estate funds. As Witkoff lobbied for UAE access to restricted American computer chips—despite Chinese military ties—his other son negotiated that $2 billion UAE investment.
The Founders wrote the Foreign Emoluments Clause precisely for this scenario: foreign powers purchasing American policy through presidential enrichment. Benjamin Franklin warned that without such protections, foreign governments would use gifts to "work their way into our councils" and "render them fond of their persons."
Done and done.
"Humanity and good policy conspire to dictate, that the benign prerogative of pardoning should be as little as possible fettered," Alexander Hamilton wrote in 1788, defending the Constitution’s grant of a broad power of pardon to the President.
Hamilton failed to imagine Donald Trump.
This week, Trump pardoned Mets legend Darryl Strawberry, who had pleaded guilty to failing to report $350,000 in income in 1995. Days earlier, he quietly pardoned Robert Harshbarger Jr., husband of loyalist Rep. Diana Harshbarger, who pleaded guilty to substituting unapproved Chinese drugs for FDA-approved medications in dialysis patients—and healthcare fraud. Then came the bombshell: pardons for Rudy Giuliani and nearly 80 others who attempted to overturn the 2020 election—including architects of the fake elector scheme who had plead guilty.
Forbes revealed how nearly all those granted pardons had influenced Trump with financial and/or political favors.
Pardon power was fiercely debated at the Constitutional Convention. George Mason warned presidents might pardon accomplices, eventually destroying the republic. Hamilton prevailed, envisioning pardons would heal rebellions—as Washington did for Whiskey Rebellion leaders in 1795.
Biden’s pardon of son Hunter was bad, but Trump's clemency rampage now dwarfs all precedent. On Inauguration Day, he pardoned roughly 1,500 January 6th defendants—including hundreds who had viciously attacked officers. Recent pardons include lowlifes Julie and Todd Chrisley—whose daughter Savannah spoke at the 2024 RNC—and Paul Walczak, weeks after his mother attended a $1 million Trump fundraiser.
In June, the Democrat-led House Judiciary Committee estimated Trump’s pardons have wiped out $1.3 billion owed to crime victims, while creating pardon-lobbying businesses worth millions.
I always liked Strawberry. Sober over a decade, he's genuinely rebuilt his life. But for the Americans who've yet to drive in 1,000 runs in Trump's home state, justice now feels permanently out of reach.
“A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone,” President Trump proclaimed Monday on Truth Social. After the checks, remaining tariff revenue would "pay down the national debt."
The math exposes the fantasy.
Sending $2,000 to everyone earning under $100,000 would cost roughly $300 billion, according to Tax Foundation estimates. Trump's tariffs are predicted to generate around $300 billion annually.
If my math is accurate, that leaves roughly $0 for debt reduction. The federal government ran a $1.8 trillion deficit last year. Tariff revenue makes a dent in that shortfall but brings the budget nowhere near balance, making debt reduction impossible. And that’s before we consider the damaging impact of tariffs on the economy.
And the stimulus itself risks reigniting inflation—the very problem Trump claims to address. Studies confirm COVID-era stimulus checks fueled the 2022-2023 inflation surge. Despite Trump’s claim that “every price is down,” inflation remains stuck around 3%—driven partly by Trump's own tariffs raising import prices. Injecting another $300 billion would only make it worse once the money starts grabbing the goods.
Even Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recognized the absurdity, suggesting the "dividend" might be "metaphorical". Tax cuts, not actual checks—a less bad idea.
But Trump's timing reveals everything. Republicans just suffered crushing defeats in California, New Jersey, and Virginia. A socialist was just elected mayor of New York mayor by hammering “affordability.” Trump’s support among independents is collapsing.
This isn’t governance—it’s a $300 billion bribe of the American people. Largesse didn’t work for Biden, and it won’t work for him.
American Renegade of the Week: Anonymous
"I'm sick of having to be Maxwell's b*tch."’
—Anonymous
The official at Federal Prison Camp Bryan was done. For months, he'd watched convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell receive treatment befitting a guest at a luxury hotel—not an inmate serving 20 years for recruiting teenage girls to satisfy Jeffrey Epstein's pedophilia.
So, he alerted Congress.
The whistleblower's documents revealed Maxwell's cushy new reality. Custom meals delivered to her cell. After-hours access to staff exercise facilities. Playing with service puppies—a privilege denied other inmates. Private meetings where visitors brought computers, creating security risks. And most damning: the prison warden personally helping Maxwell copy, print, and send her commutation application to President Trump.
The timing reeks. Maxwell was transferred to this minimum-security prison after sitting for two days of interviews with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche—Trump's former personal defense attorney. During those sessions, she discussed "100 people linked" to Epstein—while espousing Trump’s innocence.
Now Maxwell wants Trump to commute her sentence. Her October email to her attorney carried the subject line "commutation application" and read: "I am struggling to keep it all together as it is big and there are so many attachments."
Representative Jamie Raskin asked pointedly "what information is Ms. Maxwell agreeing to suppress in order to receive such outlandishly favorable treatment as a federal prisoner and convicted sex offender?"
The anonymous whistleblower risked career destruction to expose this corruption. Warden Tanisha Hall retaliates against anyone who questions Maxwell's pampering, according to reports to Congress. But someone had seen enough.
He could have stayed silent. Instead, he spoke truth—even knowing Trump has transformed the Department of Justice into his personal vendetta machine.
He’s nobody’s b*tch now.
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