Between the rises of President Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and the downfall of Hillary Clinton, the 2016 presidential election cycle put on full display of widespread, bipartisan exasperation with the corrupt political establishment. And even now, three years later, the more we learn about the players in the game, the more that exasperation looks justified.
Paul Manafort’s newfound guilt on eight charges of fraud underscores that swamp fever infected the highest levels of the Trump campaign. His former business partner, Rick Gates, has already pleaded guilty to similar charges. Gates was Manafort’s deputy on the campaign. Several other Trump allies face charges that, in a less technical sense, involve the kind of conduct the president’s supporters rightfully wish to flush down the proverbial drain.
But it wasn’t just Republicans. Flashback to August of 2016, when the Associated Press first reported that Manafort and Gates “helped a pro-Russian governing party in Ukraine secretly route at least $2.2 million in payments to two prominent Washington lobbying firms,” all without filing proper disclosures with the Justice Department. One of those firms was the now-shuttered Podesta Group, run by Clinton campaign bundler Tony Podesta, and co-founded by Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. According to Tony’s belated DOJ filings, he was regularly lobbying the State Department on behalf of the Ukrainian government under Clinton’s tenure, then turned around and bundled plenty of cash for her just several years later.
The Manaforts and Podestas of the world seemingly avoid registering with the DOJ to avoid publicly disclosing their lucrative work on behalf of dubious foreign interests. The special counsel’s interest in their efforts has lead to a string of charges against others accused of failures to disclose foreign lobbying — and plenty of actors in both parties are implicated.
Manafort’s guilty verdict, by the way, came down the same day that Trump’s longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to breaking campaign finance laws, tax evasion, and bank fraud. It’s enough to make a Swamp Drainer sick.
We needn’t relitigate the Clinton family’s myriad problems, or dive into the troubles of Trump allies like Michael Flynn or Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., for the ethics of 2016 to come into focus. It all amounts to a sad statement on our system.
The culture of corruption — of influence peddling and bad behavior from wealthy Washington insiders gaming our political process to get wealthier — that Trump and Sanders railed against in 2016 was manifest in both major parties’ presidential campaigns. Trump’s campaign proved his own point about the swamp, and so too did the campaign Sanders ended up endorsing (much to the chagrin of Susan Sarandon).
We can debate the scale of the corruption, but collusion and witch hunts aside, this stuff is wrong, it’s happening on both sides of the aisle, and it’s exactly what people outside Washington hate. That’s what launched Trump and Sanders to the forefront of our political conversation in the first place.
