Five days before the midterms, Trump and voters have made their priorities clear. Another poll found that corruption is voters’ top issue, and Trump said he doesn’t “give a damn” about high gas prices because “we’re making a frickin’ fortune.”Everyday costs aren’t easing: annual inflation rose to 3.7% in September 2026. Yet Trump has offered families no relief. Instead, he’s spent the closing stretch of the campaign doing what he’s done all term: selling access to the presidency, steering public resources toward his family’s brand, and handing regulatory favors to the industries bankrolling his political operation. This week’s roundup documents it all.
This Week in Corruption: Wall Street’s Paid Head Start, Giveaways for Oil Donors, and Pay-to-Pollute
- Trump’s Corrupt Pardons Have Cost Crime Victims At Least $119 Million in Restitution: A deeply reported investigation from CBS News that looked at court judgments in over 160 clemency orders found that 92% of Mr. Trump’s second-term clemency actions have bypassed the Justice Department’s pardon office, as Trump’s “pardon economy” thrives in giving cronies and donors free passes with no serious evaluation of the merits of their convictions. But their crimes are also not victimless, many of them were fraudsters – one was pardoned for fraud by Trump twice, once in each term – and by granting them clemency they were let off the hook for the restitution owed to their victims. The costs for the victims didn’t go away, only the penalty on the fraudsters.
- Wall Street Pays Trump’s Company for Early Access to the President’s Market-Moving Posts: Bloomberg and two high-frequency trading firms, Susquehanna International Group and Jump Trading, have signed on to Truth Social’s paid “Truth API” feed, which Trump Media sells for between $60,000 and $100,000 a month. The service delivers the president’s posts roughly 50 milliseconds faster, an edge that matters when a single post can send oil futures tumbling. The deals likely mark the first time a business tied to a sitting president has sold access to his own statements. A lawsuit filed in August argues that putting a price on government information is potentially unconstitutional and gives wealthy Wall Street firms an unfair advantage. Trump is the sole beneficiary of the family trust that owns 41% of Trump Media, so every subscription feeds the president’s bottom line.
- FBI Awards No-Bid Contract to Install Surveillance Antennas on Trump-Branded Towers: The FBI’s Video Surveillance Unit is installing antennas on the roofs of Trump Plaza in New Rochelle and Trump World Tower in New York City, according to previously unreported contracting documents. The work went through a no-bid contract to NAMSI LLC, a company that manages the rooftops of several Trump-branded properties. The Justice Department awarded NAMSI a $72,525 contract for the two installations on Sept. 1, filing it under “Leasing of Building Space to the Federal Government by Owners.” The Trump Organization continues to manage Trump World Tower, and the records leave unclear whether the president’s company makes money from the FBI’s use of the roof. The FBI, NAMSI, and the Trump Organization all declined to answer questions.
- Bidders Paid Up to $225,000 to Hunt With Don Jr., Who Brought Along a Kremlin-Linked Oligarch and Dined With a Head of State: On a summer hunting trip to Mongolia, spots on Donald Trump Jr.’s weeklong hunt went to the highest bidders in a series of charity auctions, with one paying $140,000 and another $225,000 to join the president’s son. Federal records show the U.S. embassy in Mongolia’s capital spent $18,715 on hotel rooms tied to an unspecified Secret Service visit during the same period. For two days, Trump Jr. was joined by Umar Kremlev, a member of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars renting a private island for part of Trump Jr.’s wedding weekend. Trump Jr. also dined with Mongolia’s president, about which it was tweeted – then quickly deleted – by a government spokesperson, that the two had discussed U.S.-Mongolia relations and potential business opportunities. Trump Jr. runs the family business and is supposed to be firewalled from his father’s government. A former counterintelligence director on Trump’s own National Security Council warned that Russian intelligence actively seeks to weaponize relationships with anyone of high value.
- Trump Guts Methane Limits for Oil Donors at a Campaign Rally: At a Lubbock rally for Texas Senate candidate Ken Paxton, Trump announced he is “terminating” Biden-era limits on methane from oil and gas drilling, claiming the move would save “consumers and energy producers $45 billion.” The rollback scraps the EPA’s Super Emitter Program, which requires companies to investigate and repair major leaks, and loosens standards for small wells that produce just 6% of the nation’s oil and gas but account for up to half of the sector’s methane emissions. The industry got what it paid for. Executives at smaller independent producers, including several major donors to Trump, have pushed to roll the rules back, and MAGA Inc. has drawn millions from the industry, including $25 million from pipeline company Energy Transfer and its co-founder Kelcy Warren. Families shouldn’t expect relief at the pump: the EPA’s own economic modeling shows the rollback would do little to lower oil and natural gas prices, while projecting an additional 60 million short tons of methane emissions from 2027 through 2050.
- Industry Donors Wrote the Checks, Their Neighbors Get the Carcinogens: Trump has exempted 202 facilities in 39 states and Puerto Rico from clean-air rules designed to limit cancer-causing pollution. It’s the largest presidential intervention in Clean Air Act enforcement since the law passed half a century ago. About 3.3 million people live within three miles of at least one of these facilities. Companies secured waivers by simply emailing the EPA and citing an obscure national security clause no president had ever invoked, despite the fact that the required equipment was readily available. Those same industries were cutting checks. AdvaMed, the medical device trade group, gave $125,000 to Trump’s inauguration fund and $1 million to MAGA Inc., the second check written on the very day in April 2025 that its CEO attended a candlelight dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Trump also installed Aaron Szabo, a former AdvaMed lobbyist, to run the EPA’s air office, where he helped handle waiver requests and killed fence-line monitoring for chemical plants the same day staff warned the move would be hard to defend in court.
The pattern couldn’t be clearer: week after week, Trump and his allies treat the federal government as a tool for self-enrichment – burying accountability, rewarding friends with taxpayer money, and cutting deals that prioritize personal profit over national security. Want to follow and share these stories in real time? Follow Trump Affordability Campaign on X or Bluesky