A public record of the fraud, waste, and corruption identified by committed by the Trump Administration since January 2025.
Everybody’s getting paid. Here’s the tab.
What Trump has raked in since returning to the White House.
Estimated Trump family net worth, Kushner included. Nearly doubled since the 2024 election.
Active or promised government contracts for companies backed by Trump’s sons.
Entries in the record below, logged August 18 to October 20, 2026.
Three columns, every one sourced. The take is money that landed with Trump and his circle. The buyers are the governments, donors and companies who paid in. The bill is what it cost the public.
Money that landed with Trump, his family and his envoys.
Who paid in, and how much.
What it cost everyone else.
The Qataris didn’t give Trump a jumbo jet “merely out of friendship.”Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic: “If American-government decisions are now for sale, then many will eagerly buy them.”
Every string leads back to the same desk. Pick a payer to see what they put in and what they got back.
When Kushner and Witkoff met Putin at the Kremlin, he asked them to help push through a sale of Lukoil’s overseas holdings. They agreed.The investors bidding for it include a $1M MAGA Inc. donor and Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Tahnoon, whose entities own nearly half of the Trump family’s crypto company. Kushner and Witkoff decide whether to approve it. The family has no known direct stake.
The ten most brazen schemes logged in The Corruption Report since August 2026, ranked by scale and nerve.
Trump directed his budget director to fund pro-Trump TV spots ending “Paid for by the U.S. Government.” OMB moved $20M into a Customs and Border Protection pool Congress set aside for border security and memorials to officers killed in the line of duty. CBP awarded it to an ad agency the next day, skipping competitive bidding, and Trump personally picked the footage. After he promised his super PAC would pay, taxpayers spent nearly $10M more. Two ads aired after a federal judge ordered them pulled. The White House says taxpayers won’t be reimbursed.
Four days before the inauguration, Abu Dhabi’s national security adviser Sheikh Tahnoon made an undisclosed $500M investment in World Liberty Financial, the family’s crypto venture. The administration was negotiating limits on AI chip sales to a Tahnoon-controlled firm at the time. It lifted them. Then Trump’s bank regulator gave preliminary approval to a bank charter for the venture, and Tahnoon backs the largest shareholder stake in its holding company. Trump reported $1.4B in personal crypto income for 2025.
Umar Kremlev, head of a boxing federation financed by Gazprom and a man Putin personally honored, paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for Don Jr.’s Bahamas wedding: a private island, fireworks, planning. Four of Trump’s children and their spouses, Jared Kushner included, spent three days with Kremlev and a Russian delegation that was absent from every family photo. Kremlev was once denied entry to the U.S. Former CIA Russia operations chief Marc Polymeropoulos: It’s an intelligence service’s dream.
The attorney general’s response: Am I investigating what?
Kremlev now says Don Jr. paid him back.
Companies backed by Don Jr.’s 1789 Capital and Eric Trump’s ventures hold more than $6B in active or promised government contracts, per ABC News. Drone maker Powerus got $90M from the Air Force, then Trump slapped tariffs of up to 100% on its foreign competitors. Hadrian landed a $900M Navy contract and its CEO then gave $443,000 to RNC entities. Anduril, a 1789 investment, just landed a $6.6B submarine-parts factory deal backed by $2.9B from the Navy, a category it has never worked in, a week after its founder got a Pentagon advisory role.
Trump said the ballroom is being paid for a hundred percent by me and some friends of mine.
He isn’t on the leaked list. Who is: the daughter of a banker Trump pardoned on bribery charges ($2.5M pledged). EchoStar’s Charles Ergen, whose FCC investigation was dropped ($25M). Salesforce, which won an Army contract worth up to $5.6B that drew only one
bid.
Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund staff rejected a $2B investment in Kushner’s fund as having no track record. Mohammed bin Salman overruled them. Qatar and the UAE added $1.5B just before the 2024 election. All while Kushner negotiates U.S. foreign policy with those same governments. A classified European intelligence report says Trump’s team may have discussed personal business deals in Russia tied to a peace deal favorable to Moscow.
Trump Media charges up to $100,000 a month for a faster feed of posts that move markets. One sent U.S. Steel up 22.5% in minutes. On March 23, traders placed more than $2B in S&P futures bets about 15 minutes before Trump backed off threats to strike Iran. CFTC career analysts referred it for an insider-trading probe. A senior adviser to Trump’s chairman told their supervisor to retract it and took over the analysis himself.
The top 185 holders of the $TRUMP meme coin get a private dinner with Trump, and the top 29 a VIP reception. At least 52 of the top 100 on the leaderboard moved funds through exchanges that bar Americans, and at least 44 used Binance, whose co-founder Trump pardoned. Trump earned $635M from the coin. Buyers of his crypto ventures lost about $4.7B, and the coin has lost more than 95% of its value. One investor who put in $450,000: The grift continues until morale improves.
Senior DOJ officials, including Todd Blanche while he was deputy attorney general, lobbied Swiss prosecutors to resolve a money-laundering case against Alejandro Betancourt without criminal penalties. CNN reports Blanche’s office ordered a decade-long Miami probe into him closed. DOJ disputes it. Now the Pentagon owns 35% of his company, acquired through penny warrants at “zero cost,” with century-long rights to 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil.
A Center for American Progress Action analysis found 79% of the $404.6M major donors gave MAGA Inc. came from 108 donors who got a documented potential benefit back. Crypto.com got CFTC help in litigation 25 days after a $5M gift. Reynolds American had fruit-flavored vapes approved within a week of meeting Trump. GEO Group gave $1.4M and won $165M a year in ICE contracts. Trump calls the PAC’s money my money that I control.
“If Kushner wasn’t the son-in-law of the President, he would be under investigation by the F.B.I. No one else could get away with this.”Virginia Canter, former White House counsel and SEC ethics lawyer, in The New Yorker
Entries from The Corruption Report, newest first. Filter by who’s involved and where the money moved.
The Washington Post obtained 67 gifts over $10,000. Among them: the daughter of a pardoned banker, an FCC target whose probe was dropped, and Salesforce, which won a one-bid Army contract worth up to $5.6B.
Tether steered millions to Bo Hines’s consulting firm, which has earned $6.3M, while he led the push for the Genius Act. Three weeks after Trump signed it, Hines left; Tether made him CEO of its U.S. arm. Lutnick’s family firm owns 5% of Tether.
Alvarez & Marsal Federal got a $281M no-bid contract to advise the office run by George Kollitides, still listed as a senior adviser at its sister firm months after joining the Pentagon. The total is about five times what its entities got from all agencies in the two decades before.
No-bid awards went from under 1% of DHS contract spending in 2024 to nearly two-thirds. A firm founded in 2023 got up to $915M to run the “self-deportation” campaign; its founder’s aviation company got $464M for used planes that mostly sit parked.
A $17.6M wire from Congo’s Finance Ministry has set Trump’s circle at war. Alina Habba’s husband says Richard Grenell directed it and texted that a donor would “get close with the administration, even with POTUS.” Grenell denies it. Trump asserted executive privilege over Kennedy Center records.
MAGA Inc. began airing the same ad that had appeared on the White House YouTube channel on Oct. 12. A judge has extended her restraining order past Election Day.
The former DOGE leader is now the largest individual political donor in modern American history, while his companies hold billions in federal contracts.
The PAC was renamed and has raised more than $4.5M. The tour company still sells trips promising tourists they’ll “hear from top Israeli officials.”
Bets equal to 6M barrels of oil and $2B+ in S&P futures landed 15 minutes before Trump’s post, at more than 8.5 times usual volume. A former CFTC enforcement director: in every previous administration, that would have “never” been done.
Konstantin Sokolov gave $3,600 to politics before 2025. Then $12M to MAGA Inc. and a ballroom gift. Treasury cleared his Russia-sanctions license in about 10 weeks.
She quit within two hours of the White House asking, after reports she sought $100,000 wired to her American Express card in exchange for access. The gas deals she pushed are unraveling.
Turhan Mildon got state cement plants from a Maduro confidant. Venezuela’s interim leader revoked the contract, then paused the order. His explanation: “Now, know-who (who you know) is important.”
FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who created a peace prize in Trump’s honor, drove the deal. FIFA already has offices in Miami.
The administration loaned them Strategic Petroleum Reserve oil, setting Trafigura up to make as much as $450M if fuel prices fall back to pre-war levels, and put Mercuria and Glencore in charge of a minerals stockpile backed by a $10B Export-Import Bank loan.
At least 44 used Binance, which pleaded guilty to money laundering and sanctions charges. Trump pardoned its co-founder. “Trump is holding the front door open and inviting them in for a steak dinner.”
Nearly $22M in taxpayer money aired the ads since late September, per NPR. They kept running after a court-ordered deadline, hundreds of times.
Signal messages: “It won’t show up anywhere if you wire money to American Express.” She promised access to the FBI director and IRS commissioner. The donor: “it was quid pro quo.”
Judge Jennifer Rochon found the plaintiffs “likely to succeed.” Two ads aired after her deadline, including during “60 Minutes.”
Seven senators from both parties say allowing Russian diesel imports “runs directly counter to” the 2022 ban on Russian energy imports.
Continental Strategy, where Katie Wiles is a partner, is paid $35,000 a month by Republika Srpska. Dan Scavino made $1M+ on Trump Media stock. DOGE alumni startups have raised $500M+. Trump rescinded his first-term five-year lobbying ban.
Up to $5M in bonds on Aug. 18; a launch-permitting memo on Aug. 20. Bush’s chief ethics lawyer: “No effing way. Don’t buy the bonds.”
The ballroom nonprofit took in $320M+ in 2025, including three anonymous $25M gifts. Freedom 250’s budget lists $114M in federal money.
Hackers posted personal data of 3,000+ Trump Mobile customers. Eric and Don Jr. applied to run .trump as a top-level domain.
The bureau calls the UFC “the sole qualified vendor.” A former FBI Hostage Rescue Team member: “This is just Patel giving his friend Dana White a lucrative contract.”
His pledge covered future ads only. The $4M+ already spent from a fund for border security and fallen-officer memorials stays spent.
The largest $TRUMP holder moved about $70M in tokens to an account that enables sales, timed around the gala announcement.
Anduril has won 135 government contracts worth $1.8B since 1789 Capital invested. Its founder has given $5.9M to Republican causes.
Future presidents would get comped memberships to a club the Trump family still runs. Trump reported nearly $37M in income from it last year.
James Blair and Chris LaCivita were paid hundreds of thousands each to advise Republika Srpska, whose leader Milorad Dodik had his U.S. sanctions lifted. He thanked Putin in his victory speech.
Trump directed OMB Director Russ Vought to fund the ads. The CBP commissioner learned the money was spent from a news report.
The executives who ratified the toothless accord gave $227M to Trump’s super PAC and pet projects. Public Citizen: “Actually, they have bought the table.”
The coin spiked above $70 at inauguration and now sits near $2. Trump earned $635M.
Putin asked Kushner and Witkoff to help sell off Lukoil’s overseas holdings. The bidders are led by a $1M MAGA Inc. donor and include Sheikh Tahnoon. An all-American Carlyle bid was passed over. The family has no known direct stake in the deal.
Sons-backed Powerus imports drone tech developed in Ukraine with U.S. aid to bid on Pentagon work. Kushner’s fund holds Israeli defense investments while he negotiates in Gaza.
The jet has a stand-up bar, two bedrooms and marble showers, and was listed for under $90M. The donor’s companies got $900M+ in DHS contracts under Noem, who says the purchase was finalized under her successor.
Its monthly briefings cover autonomous weapons, drone swarms and AI in combat, areas where SpaceX competes for Pentagon contracts.
OMB moved the money to CBP under a “commemorative events” line. The next day CBP handed it to an ad agency through an existing Coast Guard contract to avoid bidding.
Seven donors whose enforcement actions were dropped gave $78.6M. Six who won federal contracts worth $11B+ gave $41.7M.
The accord leaves enforcement to industry. AI czar David Sacks was listed on the seating chart under his venture firm.
A complaint says he stood to profit from ending them. The DOJ inspector general “declined further action” on a matter involving his holdings.
Three ads closing with “Paid for by the U.S. Government.” The latest, a near-copy of a 2024 campaign spot, aired during NFL games and SNL.
Officials mistook the lobbyist for Ambassador Guilfoyle’s chief of staff. Aktor’s joint venture signed a $6B, 20-year Albanian gas deal.
84% of 846 sanctioned Iran-linked wallets transacted almost entirely in Tether. None of the reports accuse Tether of wrongdoing. Cantor Fitzgerald, run by Lutnick’s sons, manages Tether’s reserves. The day after Lutnick’s stake sale closed, Tether lent the trust an undisclosed sum.
Blanche, Patel and Dhillon attended. Patel was photographed with an MMA manager the FBI dropped as an informant over double-agent suspicions.
Trafigura got buying rights from a state miner the U.S. designates a national security threat. Some of the gold is tied to miners who pay a gang for protection.
He sold Northrop Grumman stock the same day he signed an order tightening defense-contractor rules.
Tokens jumped 10% to 26% when WLF’s buys became visible, then collapsed. Trump personally collects 75% of certain token sales.
The complaint cites $580M in suspicious oil futures placed 15 minutes before a March post on Iran. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R): “It’s a form of buying access.”
Kremlev, convicted of extortion in the early 2000s, took a name meaning “the Kremlin’s man” and joined a sanctioned Putin-aligned biker gang.
A Washington Post analysis found companies tied to the sons’ funds have generated $3B+ in federal business. Weeks after a $20B Emirati data-center pledge, the sons launched an AI data-center venture.
An air-traffic startup’s PAC gave in March; in June Duffy announced its $875M FAA contract. Duffy’s own committee moved $1.5M to a super PAC backing his son-in-law.
Kennedy disclosed $250K+ in free flights and gifts and $4M+ in book advances from the summit organizer’s publishing house.
Trump Organization executives returned to scout real estate. Franklin Graham’s charity got a $40M no-bid aid contract.
Harold Hamm, who has given $4.3M to Trump-aligned PACs, presented a 30-billion-barrel deal standing beside the Energy Secretary.
Ventures backed by Lutnick’s family firm, ex-Trump Organization staff and a GOP megadonor stand to cash in.
FBI Director Kash Patel admitted under oath he hadn’t read the ProPublica report.
A 70-story Trump Tower in Tbilisi. The land came from a foundation controlled by Bidzina Ivanishvili’s family.
Nearly 28,700 trades in 17 months, against roughly 22,200 for all of Congress combined. He bought up to $1.38M in DoorDash, then staged a DoorDash photo op.
It would have grandfathered his meme coin, WLFI token and USD1 stablecoin. Sen. John Kennedy (R) blamed Trump’s disclosure of $1.4B in crypto income.
Thomas Dans chairs the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, where members don’t have to file conflict-of-interest disclosures.
Umar Kremlev rented a private island and covered fireworks. A retired senior FBI counterintelligence official: “If I’m paying for your wedding, at some point, you’re going to owe me something.”
MBS overruled his own fund’s staff to give Kushner $2B. Qatar and the UAE added $1.5B before the 2024 election.
Trump and his three sons moved 20B+ WLFI tokens into a vesting contract that starts the clock toward a potential sale. The company denies it’s a step toward selling.
A federal judge called the conduct around dismissing the Gautam Adani case “highly unusual.”
Katie Miller held $500K to $1M in Musk’s xAI, acquired 10 days after interviewing Musk on her podcast.
He pitched Qatar and the UAE on hiring him, held up a $2.7B Palantir contract and installed an ally paid up to $19,000 a week. DHS’s inspector general is weighing a criminal referral. Lewandowski denies it.
Rep. Raskin’s investigation alleges 1789 Capital bought into Polymarket, Anduril and Vulcan Elements shortly before favorable government decisions. The firm refused to hand over records.
A former Bush White House ethics lawyer: “You can’t do that.”
CNN reports Blanche’s office ordered Miami prosecutors to close a decade-long probe, timed to the White House recruiting him for the oil deal. DOJ disputes it.
Both sons are tied to domestic drone maker Powerus. Don Jr. also sits on the advisory board of Unusual Machines, the top U.S. maker of drone parts.
The 35% Betancourt stake came via penny warrants at “zero cost.” The office’s director previously worked at Cerberus, co-founded by the deputy defense secretary who approves the deals.
A 35% stake in Alejandro Betancourt’s company, which holds century-long rights to 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil.
Sons-backed Hadrian won a $900M Navy contract; its CEO then gave $443,000 to the RNC. Democrats say Trump’s oil and gas holdings have jumped as much as $15.5M since the war began.
Legal ethics professor Kathleen Clark: “How many red flags do we need?”
Don Jr. advises Kalshi and holds a Polymarket stake. The CFTC has sued nine states, all led by Democratic governors.
Stonepeak, run by a $1M inaugural donor, is being bought out of an offshore wind stake.
The charter would let World Liberty custody its own stablecoin reserves without independent oversight. The family has pulled an estimated $1.6B from the venture.
Truth API charges $60,000 to $100,000 a month. The Intercept and Freedom of the Press Foundation sued, calling it “profoundly corrupt.”
The firm, founded by a former Trump appointee, would have represented 20,000 migrant children. Both backed away within days.
“How many red flags do we need? Trump is selling out our national security in exchange for his own wealth maximization.”Kathleen Clark, legal ethics professor, on the Abu Dhabi stake in the family’s crypto bank
“If I’m paying for your wedding, at some point, you’re going to owe me something.”Retired senior FBI counterintelligence official, on Kremlev and Don Jr.
“No president since we’ve had this regime of conflict-of-interest statutes has ever conducted their finances this way.”Don Fox, former acting director, U.S. Office of Government Ethics
“Actually, they have bought the table.”Robert Weissman, Public Citizen, on Big Tech and Trump’s AI accord
“No effing way. Don’t buy the bonds. Don’t do that.”Richard Painter, Bush White House chief ethics lawyer, on Trump’s SpaceX bonds
“Trump is holding the front door open and inviting them in for a steak dinner.”Zach Everson, Public Citizen, on foreign buyers of the meme coin
“It’s an intelligence service’s dream.”Marc Polymeropoulos, former head of CIA clandestine Russia operations
“The grift continues until morale improves.”A $TRUMP investor who put in $450,000 and is down to about $50,000
“They have knowingly created a marketplace for insider trading.”San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu, on Truth Social’s paid early access
“It looks way too cozy to be legitimate. I think taxpayers should be appalled.”Virginia Canter, ethics lawyer, on the Pentagon’s no-bid contract
“Now, know-who (who you know) is important.”Turhan Mildon, Alina Habba’s husband, to Forbes Turkey
“This is the opposite of going against corporate capture. This is complete corporate capture.”A MAHA supporter, on $300,000 dinners with RFK Jr.
Copy a post, send a text, film a 30-second video. Everything here is written and sourced. Pick one and send it to someone who still thinks this is normal.
Nearly $22 million in taxpayer money went to pro-Trump TV ads, pulled from an account Congress set aside for border security and memorials to officers killed in the line of duty. The White House says it won’t pay it back. https://thefraudledger.org
Four days before the inauguration, the UAE’s national security adviser, known as the “spy sheikh,” put $500M into the Trump family’s crypto venture. The administration later lifted limits on AI chip sales to his firm. https://thefraudledger.org
A Putin-linked oligarch paid for Don Jr.’s wedding party on a private island. The attorney general’s response: “Am I investigating what?” https://thefraudledger.org
$333M from ballroom donors. On the leaked list: the daughter of a banker Trump pardoned, a billionaire whose company’s FCC probe was dropped, and a company that won a one-bid Army contract worth up to $5.6B. https://thefraudledger.org
79 documented schemes. $6B+ in active or promised contracts for companies backed by Trump’s sons. $635M in meme coin royalties. Everybody’s getting paid. Here’s the tab. https://thefraudledger.org
Have you seen this? Someone is keeping a running, sourced tab on Trump’s corruption. The ballroom donor list alone is wild: https://thefraudledger.org
