Drain the swamp!

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And then we have this for swamp..

Russia isn’t the only foreign danger to our democracy. The trial of Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, reveals another. It shows that Manafort hired a small army of American lawyers and lobbyists from both parties to influence U.S. lawmakers on behalf of Kremlin-connected former Ukrainian strongman, Viktor F. Yanukovych, These were essentially laundered bribes – from Yanukovych through Washington-based influence peddlers, then on to U.S. politicians through the political action committees run by those influence peddlers. 

A similar kind of laundered bribe from abroad occurred recently after the Chinese telecom giant ZTE was caught red-handed violating international sanctions on Iran. When the Commerce Department imposed penalties on the firm, ZTE hired the big Washington firm Hogan Lovells – which got Trump to lift the sanctions. The timing was curious. Just before Trump came to ZTE’s rescue, Chinese state enterprises agreed to give $500 million in loans to a project in Indonesia that included Trump-branded hotels, residences and golf courses – funneling millions of dollars into Trump’s pockets.

When Congress threatened to reinstate the penalties on ZTE nonetheless, Hogan Lovells turned its sights on lawmakers. The firm’s political action committee made fat donations to legislators who had the power to reduce the penalties. The strategy paid off. Last Wednesday, the Senate passed a bill containing far weaker sanctions on ZTE than lawmakers originally intended. The Trump administration is also ending the requirement that nonprofit groups that engage in political activity disclose the names of their large donors – another loophole through which foreign money can stream in to influence American politics. All this raises the fundamental question of what we mean by national security..

Robert Reich