TRUMP CORRUPTION INDEX

This Week in Trumpland Corruption: Trump’s Waikiki Whitewash

An official’s ties to a Trump-branded property in Hawaii, subterfuge at the CDC, and more suspicious activity from William Barr

Max Ufberg
GEN
Published in
5 min readSep 2, 2020

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Photo illustration. Source: State Department

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.

Hawaii’s gold coast of compromised real estate

New documents published Tuesday by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) show that the Trump-appointed IRS commissioner, Charles Rettig, has earned hundreds of thousands of dollars while in office by renting out two properties in Trump International Hotel Waikiki and Tower. CREW’s analysis of personal financial disclosures from the past two years found that Rettig, who has famously refused to release Trump’s tax returns, makes between $100,000 and $200,000 per year from two units in which he owns a 50% stake. Politico has previously reported that Rettig didn’t disclose that the units are in a Trump-affiliated building, listing them only as “Residential Real…

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Max Ufberg
GEN
Writer for

Writer and editor. Previously at Medium, Pacific Standard, Wired