In recent weeks there has been a lot of attention on sensational claims of large-scale fraud, in this case supposedly perpetrated by the Somali-American community concentrated in Minneapolis. The latest episode of scapegoating against Somali Americans was prompted by a viral video created by a rightwing youtuber. While the video is full of distortions and unsubstantiated claims, we should be clear that fraud – the use of deception to steal or take advantage of taxpayer money for personal gain – is a real thing and is totally unacceptable, no matter who does it. The real purpose of the video, however, was not to investigate real fraud, but instead to incite anger against the entire Somali-American community in Minneapolis. In this case, the videos characterized the entire community as collectively guilty of supposedly freeloading off hardworking taxpayers.
The fallout from this scandal has been huge. Billions of dollars of federal funding to childcare centers around the country have been frozen and there has been a massive surge by ICE and Customs and Border Protection forces into Minneapolis. This invasion has resulted in a reign of chaos and terror, including thousands of arrests and detentions, raids on schools and separation of families, and now the murders of at least two Minneapolis residents – Renee Good and Alex Jeffrey Pretti.
While all of this terror has been inflicted in response to exaggerated and obviously racist accusations of fraud, there is in fact real and enormous fraud in this society that doesn’t often get discussed. For example, of the 88 individuals that Donald Trump has personally pardoned so far during his second term, over half of them have actually been convicted of white-collar crimes of some kind, often fraud. Some of those include:
- Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire founder of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, who was found guilty of money laundering.
- George Santos, former Republican representative from New York, who admitted to deceiving donors and stealing the identities of 11 people — including people in his own family — to make donations to his political campaign.
- Devon Archer, a former business associate of Hunter Biden who was convicted of defrauding the Oglala Sioux Nation for $60 million in bonds.
- Wanda Vazquez Garced, Puerto Rico’s former Governor, who was charged with campaign finance fraud.
And there are many more.
These sorts of pardons have consequences. For the 87 individuals and one corporation that Trump has pardoned during this administration, they were originally expected to pay $298 billion in fines and in restitution to the people they defrauded. Now they are expected to pay nothing back. It also sends a strong message to others who are considering fraud that they can likely get away with it – so long as they have a loyal relationship to the Trump administration, the ultimate mob boss.
This shouldn’t be a surprise. Donald Trump himself was found guilty of 34 counts of business fraud by falsifying financial statements to lie about the value of his properties. Trump didn’t even have a problem with scamming his own supporters with his so-called “$Trump” memecoin cryptocurrency. He himself is a criminal who has never faced punishment for his crimes.
It’s not just Trump and his buddies. In the eight years that the Pentagon has been audited, for example, it has never passed an audit. With a seemingly infinite budget to reign terror on the rest of the world, the Pentagon still can’t account for billions of taxpayer dollars. BILLIONS of taxpayer dollars disappear every year! Fraud is everywhere!
But Donald Trump and his friends who sit atop this system are firm believers in the “golden rule” – that is, that those who have the gold make all the rules.
