TRUMP CORRUPTION INDEX

This Week in Trumpland Corruption: Fundraising on Fake Fraud

Cashing in on claims of election fraud, plus some sketchy pardon practices

Is there enough graft, double-dealing, and self-interested chicanery in the Trump administration to publish this column every week? Only time — and Trump — will tell. (But we feel pretty confident.) Presenting this week’s installment of the Trump Corruption Index.

Trump’s defense fund is really a piggy bank

While President Trump’s assault on the election results has done next to nothing to prevent Joe Biden from moving into the White House come January, his campaign has raised more than $150 million through fundraising efforts, the Washington Post reported on Monday. A good deal of that money will go into an account that Trump can use for political activities after he leaves office, and some will go toward continuing to push a legal fight that’s based on totally unfounded claims of voter fraud. The surge of donations tops fundraising records set during the campaign and comes mostly from small-dollar donors, many of whom have been inundated with hundreds of messages asking for help combating voter fraud. “Small donors who give to Trump thinking they are financing an ‘official election defense fund’ are in fact helping pay down the Trump campaign’s debt or funding his post-presidential political operation,” Brendan Fischer, of the Campaign Legal Center, told the Post.

• Corrupt-o-meter (out of a possible five emojis): 💰💰💰⚖️⚖️

Inside job

Texas Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson sent a letter last week to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Neil Jacobs, an assistant secretary at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), questioning the creation of a new senior-level role within NOAA for Dr. David Legates, a meteorologist and well-known climate denier. In her letter, Johnson, a Democrat, lamented that congressional committees were not given advance notice of Legates’ appointment to the position, which she worried was “created… for the specific purpose of detailing him [to the U.S. Global Change Research Program] in order to influence the development of the 5th National…