It is Time for the Corruption to End
Floor Speech
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Mr. NEGUSE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to sound an alarm, to sound an alarm about something dangerous and dark and pernicious that is happening inside our government. I recognize there are only a handful of my colleagues in the Chamber to hear that alarm and a few folks in the gallery, but I pray that Americans writ large will hear it.
George Orwell in his famous book ``1984'' wrote of a time when ``The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.'' His warning proved pressing because today the Trump administration asks the American people to ignore what they see with their own eyes and what they hear with their own ears, which is the complete corruption of their government from the inside out.
The Trump administration's pay-to-play schemes are literally ripping off hardworking American taxpayers as we speak. We see the evidence everywhere: A $10 billion payout that Donald Trump, the President of the United States of America, now demands from his own Treasury Department in a lawsuit that he filed against the IRS.
By the way, who does he demand pay him this $10 billion? The American taxpayer. The countless pay-to-play schemes and vanity projects that have consumed his administration, all paid by American taxpayers, are stripping the pocketbooks of Americans to line their own.
Last weekend, The New Yorker reported that the President and his family have raked in $4 billion in personal profits by leveraging the Presidency. Let's think about that, $4 billion.
The most salient example of this, by the way, we just learned about in the last 7 days. It was an expose by The Wall Street Journal about a scheme that the Trump administration engaged in last year.
The Trump family, according to these public reports, sold a 49 percent stake in their crypto company to a member of the Emirati royal family. They did so for nearly half a billion dollars.
We don't know every detail of this transaction. We do know that the Trump family received $187 million from that transaction, a payday entangling the President's financial interests with a foreign country.
Months later, we know that the Trump administration approved a crypto deal with the UAE that included transferring advanced U.S. technology and AI chips.
Mr. Speaker, this is corruption, plain and simple.
It is the prioritization of personal profit over the national security interests of our country, the country we all love so dearly.
It is wrong. It is immoral, and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle say nothing. Worse, some of them defend this conduct, notwithstanding that they know it is unlawful, that it is violative of our Constitution.
We have an Emoluments Clause, Mr. Speaker, for a reason. The Foreign Emoluments Clause was one of the few provisions to survive and be transferred from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution in 1787. It was contemplated for precisely a scenario as this one.
George Mason, one of our Founding Fathers during the Constitutional Convention, warned his fellow delegates that ``if we do not provide against corruption, our government will soon be at an end.'' His words are as true today as they were when he said them 240 some-odd years ago.
It is shameful the lack of courage from my Republican colleagues. It is repugnant to the constitutional order that we all have been sworn to defend, to protect, and to vindicate.
The question I have, Mr. Speaker, for my Republican colleagues and for every American of good faith is: When is enough enough? How many sweetheart deals will Republicans refuse to condemn?
The corruption must end, Mr. Speaker. The corruption must end.
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