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Congressional Daily Record
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June 23, 2026
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Download official Senate Record PDFReturn to issue contextMr. MURPHY. Mr. President, colleagues, over the last year and a half, our President Donald Trump has turned the White House into a 24-7 corruption operation. This is a national crisis, and we should start acting like it.
self-enrichment—to hand out so many favors to his friends, his family, and his political allies—that it just becomes the pitter-patter of rain. It is normal. It is constant. It is never-ending.
dealing every few days, that the press will stop covering it or the public will just stop paying attention. To an extent he is, tragically, succeeding.
conclusion that this is normal because all of our politics are this corrupt, that every Senator, that every previous President is this corrupt. That is not true.
largely remain silent in the face of this misconduct, it is true that not a single Senator on either side of the aisle engages in the behavior that our President does.
or for political contributions. We don't run side hustles like crypto companies. Senators don't give contracts to their kids just because we can.
Trump has done. No President has done 5 percent of the self-dealing that Donald Trump has done in the last year and a half.
This moment is exceptional. It is a one-of-one moment. And if it becomes normal—if people stop being outraged at what he is doing to enrich himself—then I fear there is no going back. The White House will just become a place to get rich.
view this as just one isolated scandal after another—every single one popping up each week or every few days—but to understand the full scope of this illegality.
Donald Trump's mind-blowing corruption. Since then, especially in 2026, the pace of his misconduct has quickened dramatically.
than a few minutes doing this—laying out what has happened since I gave that last speech. This is the story of 500 days of corruption.
And I am going to start on April 7, 2025. This is when the current Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche issues a memo ordering the termination of several Biden-era DOJ investigations into crypto companies.
Now, here is the problem. The then-Deputy Attorney General is a major investor in crypto companies, and he works for a President who is a major player in the crypto industry. But the DOJ just drops these investigations, signals that the Department of Justice is no longer going to hold crypto companies accountable. But Blanche owns major investments in crypto stocks. The President is one of the biggest players in the industry.
Blanche doesn't actually stop there. He eliminates the entire enforcement team at DOJ dedicated to rooting out crypto-related fraud and money laundering schemes. This is a crypto investor, who works for a President who owns crypto companies, shutting down the unit at DOJ that holds this industry accountable.
Let's move to 3 weeks later on April 30. Later in the month, a curious announcement from the Department of Agriculture: They are reversing a rule that would require poultry companies to limit salmonella bacteria levels in their product. This is essentially a rule to make it less likely that people will get salmonella poisoning. It sounds like a strange rule to eliminate.
inauguration was a poultry company called Pilgrim's Pride. They made a donation to Trump's inauguration that was bigger than practically any other company—bigger than Amazon, Meta, or Exxon—$5 million. And after they made the donation, they asked for one thing: the reversal of the salmonella rule. And they got it.
This is pay-for-play. You make a donation to the President or the President's political operation, you ask for a favor, and you get it. And we will see, as we wind through these 500 days, this happens over and over again.
In May 2025, the pardon racket starts. Every member of the Senate should be outraged at this. You all know what is happening. The President is pardoning people based on their ability to pay either him and his political operation or pay people who are close to the President.
On May 27, Donald Trump pardons a man called Paul Walczak. This is a really bad guy. He stole millions of dollars from the nurses and healthcare aides at the nursing home he owned, and he used the cash that he stole from his employees to buy a $2 million yacht.
He got convicted. He went to jail for fraud. But his mother paid $1 million to buy a face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump. And 3 weeks after that paid audience, her son was given a full and unconditional pardon that went so far as to relieve him of any duty to pay back the $4.4 million that he stole from his employees. This is a new pay-for- pardons scheme that begins in May.
cashing in on government contracts that benefit their own investment portfolio. Stephen Miller is more than just the architect of the administration's hard-line immigration policies. He has a personal financial stake in them.
For instance, Miller owns up to $250,000 in Palantir stock. And just a month before Miller's holdings became public, ICE announced that it was awarding a $30 million contract to—you guessed it—Palantir to provide real-time surveillance information to ICE officers.
And you will be shocked to hear this: There was no competitive bidding process for that contract. And you will hear this over and over again. Competitive bidding basically doesn't exist.
directed to a friend or to a company in which they invest, Miller— overseeing ICE—ICE gives a no-bid contract to Palantir. The investors in Palantir, which include Stephen Miller, get rich.
Let's move to September of 2025. In September, we start to learn the danger of Donald Trump's crypto corruption. I covered this in the first 100 days of corruption. This is maybe the most corrupt thing that Trump is doing.
cryptocoins. There is no disclosure on who is buying those coins. The President promotes them. He invites people to official events, who purchase the coins.
On September 18, though, we come to find out that Trump made $57 million selling crypto tokens to entities associated with the regimes in North Korea, Iran, and Russia: extraordinary investments being made by entities that are tied in with North Korea, Iran, and Russia into Trump's crypto companies.
It begs the question: As we are currently debating an Iran deal that basically exists on Iran's terms, why was there a flood of money from Iranian regime-backed entities into the Trump crypto companies? Why were they putting that investment in? What did they expect to get from the President?
We have never, ever before had this exist. We have never had a backdoor mechanism by which foreign governments could just shovel money into the pocket of the President. It exists because of Trump's meme coin and his stablecoin.
it is—there is a pay-to-play regime in charge of the White House. A week later, on September 23, Donald Trump closes the books on a criminal investigation into one of his key advisors, Tom Homan. This is his border czar.
The FBI had caught Tom Homan redhanded, engaging in naked corruption. Undercover agents had handed him $50,000 in cash in a bag, and he agreed to give them government contracts. This was on video. This is the border czar getting a bag of cash in exchange for contracts on video, but the administration on September 20 just makes the investigation go away because that kind of bribery—that kind of naked graft—is okay in this White House.
We are moving on to October 2025 right now. Two weeks after Homan is left off—maybe the most nakedly corrupt partner—there is not a single Senator that could defend this. Changpeng Zhao built an entire business based on allowing terrorists, drug traffickers, and sex predators to use his cryptocurrency to evade the law. He went to jail for this, but he also helped Trump launch his crypto business.
So who cares about financing terrorists and sex criminals? Trump gives this guy a full pardon on October 7. It is as naked—this is a guy who built a company that allowed terrorists and sex predators to engage in private financing. He went to jail. He got out of jail because he agreed to help get Trump rich.
We are still in October. Later that month, the bulldozers arrive to destroy the East Wing of the White House—it is still amazing to think that actually happened—and the ballroom corruption racket begins. The word goes out: If you want something from Donald Trump, donate to his ballroom. It is all he cares about. We know that. Donald Trump talks about his ballroom all the time. As of this month, more than half of the publicly identified donors to the ballroom project have, since they made their donations, won new or expanded Federal contracts totaling more than $50 billion. More than half of the people who donated to the ballroom have, since they donated—and this just all kicked off on October 15. It has only been like 8 months. Half of the people who donated to the ballroom have gotten new or expanded contracts worth $50 billion.
who are getting rich now. Part of the White House's daily operation is to find creative ways to funnel taxpayer money to Trump's kids. This one is wild. The Trump administration in early November announces a really unusual deal: The government—the Pentagon—is taking a $50 million stake in a single rare earth minerals company called Vulcan Elements and giving them a $620 million taxpayer-funded loan. That is big money. The Pentagon doesn't really do deals like this, but they do when Donald Trump, Jr., is one of the company's key investors.
to do this deal. They only did it because the White House told them to do the deal.
One official said:
The call came from the White House. We have to get this
done.
Before the deal, Vulcan was worth $200 million. Donald Trump, Jr., made an investment. His father got the Pentagon to give them the contract and buy the stake in the company, and the valuation jumped overnight from $200 million to $2 billion. Donald Trump, Jr., 10x'd his profits. I mean, how does anybody in this body justify that?
You have probably not even heard that story. It barely cracked the news. In normal times, that scandal alone of the President's son making an investment in a company and the Federal Government then making a massive investment subsequently—the Pentagon didn't want to do it and only did it because the President told them to do it after his son made the investment, and the value of the President's son's investment went up by 10 times. That scandal alone would take down a Presidency. This one barely gets noticed.
in U.S. Coast Guard bases and facilities to stock his personally branded wine and cider—directly profiting from his control over the military. He tells the Coast Guard: Sell my products.
That is it. That is not a complicated one. That is just like ordinary, ho-hum corruption. Nobody even knows that happened or that it exists because this all feels normal now.
We are not out of November yet, fellas. Two weeks later—you feel this, right? The pace now has quickened—Trump releases the head of a nursing home empire, Joseph Schwartz, from prison. This guy, who is similar to the other guy, scammed his patients, his employees, and the IRS out of tens of millions of dollars. He was a tax cheat. People died in his facilities due to his negligence. He was stealing money from his nursing homes. But he paid $1 million to Trump-connected lobbyists, and Trump pardoned this fraudster after serving 3 months. There was no claim that he was innocent. There was no claim that the trial was rigged. No. This guy was convicted of massive fraud—he hurt people— and he got out of jail because he paid the right lobbyists who were connected to Trump.
This is how it all works. It is not just Trump getting rich. It is not just Trump's sons getting rich. It is about everybody connected to the President getting rich—this pardon-for-cash scheme.
All right. We are into December now. Two weeks later, out of the blue, the Trump administration revokes a Biden-era rule—this is back to nursing homes—to ensure that nursing homes have sufficient staffing to meet the basic standards of care. We have a lot of evidence that understaffed nursing homes have higher mortality rates. But this rule is now rescinded, and guess what we find out. We find out that nursing home executives got together and paid to have a private lunch with Donald Trump—because, remember, you can pay millions of dollars to Trump-affiliated political entities, and you will get a private audience with him. At lunch, they asked him to revoke this rule, and he immediately ordered it done—no public discussion, no consideration of the merits. The nursing home executives paid the price to get a lunch, they asked for the rule to be rescinded, and the rule got rescinded—no process. They had the lunch. They paid the money. They asked for the rule to be rescinded. Trump called up, and the rule was rescinded.
We are now in 2026. On February 10, Trump announces—this one is wild—that he is blocking the opening of a bridge that is ready to open connecting Detroit to Canada. It is ready to open. This is a bridge that is going to help people on both sides of the border. Guess what we find out. The owner of an existing bridge, whose profits would be harmed by the competitor bridge, donated $1 million to get a meeting, this time with Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick. Within days this time—within hours—of the meeting with the Commerce Secretary—hours— the owners of the existing bridge get what they wanted. Trump announced that he would block the opening of the bridge. One million dollars, a meeting, and donors get what they want within hours.
they can get in on the action. Very few people are closer to President Trump than Corey Lewandowski. He was at the time the special adviser to the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and Lewandowski was basically like: There are no rules anymore. I can do whatever I want.
contractors. He demands direct payments from companies that want DHS contracts for his protection.
If you pay me money, I will protect your contracts.
tell the
style protection—suddenly, their contracts from DHS dried up. A DHS employee confirmed that he received direct instructions to not give a company that didn't pay Lewandowski any more contracts.
In April, there was another scheme to help Donald Trump's kids. For almost 100 years, it has been illegal to ship handguns through the mail because it is a lot easier for violent criminals to illegally access guns if they can just get those weapons shipped to their front doors. But Donald Trump, Jr., bought a huge stake in a company that was going to corner the market on the mail order sale of guns, so Trump's DOJ got to work and declared that this 100-year-old law is magically, all of a sudden unconstitutional, clearing the way for another company owned by or invested in by Donald Trump, Jr., to make big bucks by mailing guns.
We are still in April. As the war begins in Iran, Trump's inner circle finds a new way to cash in. They can place bets on prediction markets or on futures markets based on the inside information they have about the war. This is illegal war profiteering.
investors—likely inside the White House—placed approximately $950 million on bets that oil prices would fall. When later that day Trump announced a cease-fire that sent oil prices tumbling by 15 percent, those investors got filthy rich. You can literally look at the pace of trades that day. There is this avalanche of trades that happens hours before Trump announces the cease-fire. That can only be because people had inside information. This practice would continue to happen over and over and over.
But why do they think they can get away with this? Why does anybody think they can get away with this? So much of this is illegal, right? You would say to yourself: Nobody would engage in that kind of naked illegal practice. Nobody would award contracts to the kids knowing that that doesn't pass legal muster.
with it. On April 10, Donald Trump makes an explicit promise that everybody engaged in this corruption will get away with it. Here is his quote on April 10 as the pace of this corruption increases:
I will pardon everyone within 200 feet of the White House.
This is reported on April 27, so we are still in April: Trump wants to get all his friends involved in the grift now, so Trump gives a no- bid, $17 million contract to refurbish two fountains near the White House, including the Reflecting Pool. We are living with the consequences of this corruption right now as we have a green Reflecting Pool. This is a completely unqualified contractor who is already in over his head because he is involved in the ballroom, and he gets a new $17 million contract.
Does it really cost $17 million to clean up fountains? The answer from the National Park Service itself is no. In fact, the National Park Service was planning to bid that contract out for one-fifth of what Trump gave it to his friend for, but it was a no-bid contract. It just went to Donald Trump's friend. The value was wildly inflated.
So now Trump's buddy has an extra $14 million—more than the actual cost of the project. It is your money. This money doesn't grow on trees; this is taxpayer money. It is supposed to cost $3 million; he gave the contract for $17 million.
We are still in April. Big Tobacco has wanted for years to break into the $6 billion flavored vape and e-cigarette market, but the FDA, of course, has had regulations to say that you can't sort of run back this old playbook of the tobacco companies' marketing to kids, so we haven't allowed them to market these flavored vape products, these bubble gum- flavored vape products. I have two teenagers. I know exactly what is going on. They were marketing these products to kids, and they weren't allowed to do it.
over and over again: They made a $5 million donation, and if you make a $5 million donation, you get a lunch with the President or a dinner with the President. So they get this lunch with the President, and they say to the President, just like the nursing homes executives said: I want the vape rule to be rescinded.
the moment calls the FDA Commissioner and tells him to rescind the regulations.
He calls up Dr. Oz. Look, all this is happening immediately. He tells him to rescind the regulations. The FDA Commissioner resigns in protest. He said that, in good conscience, he couldn't do this; he couldn't be part of this kind of corruption.
traditional rulemaking to adopt the exact policy that the tobacco executives asked for the weekend before. Less than a week—less than a week—no rulemaking, the FDA Commissioner resigns.
We are now on to May. Not all of the stories of the corruption in this White House require deep journalistic dives into obscure public records. Sometimes, you can just log onto YouTube, where you can find Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy's family road-trip reality show.
Who is bankrolling this stunt? Who is paying for the gas, the hotels, the cameras; filming his vacation? Not Duffy. It is Toyota. It is Boeing. It is United Airlines. It is all the companies that Secretary Duffy is responsible for regulating.
Secretary of Transportation is riding in snowmobiles in Montana, paid for by the companies he regulates.
your vacations—would have resulted in a Cabinet member resigning in disgrace. My Republican colleagues know this. This didn't used to be acceptable. But in Trump's White House, everyone has their hand out for a payday. It is encouraged.
scheme. The market bets based on inside information have not, in fact, been limited to Trump's staff and friends. The entire time that Trump has been in office, we discovered, he has not been putting his money into a blind trust. He has been personally signing off on thousands and thousands of individual trades. No previous President has done this.
Here is an example of how it works. Early in the year, Trump buys a million dollars of Dell stock. A couple days later, from the White House podium, he boosts the company—Dell—that he just bought stock in. A couple months later, he gives Dell a $10 billion defense contract with the Pentagon.
That happens over and over again. The President buys stock. He publicly boosts the company. He gives government work.
have never ever seen this before. I only listed, like, half of the publicly disclosed incidents of corruption, and we just can't pretend that this is normal.
crisis—the pay-to-play schemes, the pardons for donors, the contracts for friends, the favors for Trump's children, the use of inside information to make money. This is not a disconnected series of scandals. This is a system.
The government is supposed to serve us. It is supposed to lower costs. It is supposed to protect our families, strengthen our schools, make life better. But Donald Trump believes that government exists to serve him, to make him richer, to protect his friends, to reward his donors.
This is why he doesn't have time for you. He doesn't have time to solve real problems because he is making money for himself and his friends.
stop hearing it; that the outrage will just turn into exhaustion, and the exhaustion will just turn into acceptance. We can't let that happen because once corruption becomes normal, it becomes permanent.
The White House is not a business opportunity. The Presidency is not a license to steal from the American people. The Government of the United States doesn't exist to make Donald Trump rich. It belongs to the American
people. And after 500 days of corruption, Democrats and Republicans in this body, along with the American people, should start acting like it.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
Mr. RISCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 5 minutes before the previously scheduled recess.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.