John,

Ten years ago, I joined CREW as its Executive Director. A lot has changed since then, so I wanted to take this opportunity to think back on the past decade at CREW and talk about what’s changed since 2015.

Back then, CREW’s entire team could comfortably share one small conference room. Now, we’re a team of more than 50 strong with an incredible roster of experts and seasoned professionals.

Back then, we had no idea the challenges our democracy would face. We knew that Citizens United had unleashed an unprecedented amount of money in politics, and we knew that a watchdog working to curb the influence of that money could play a role in helping government work better for Americans.

But we had no idea that the most corrupt president in American history was about to be elected—or that we would have such a big role in fighting for our democracy and the Constitution over the next 10 years.

About a year after I joined CREW, the team uncovered a major scandal: CREW discovered that the Trump Foundation had broken the law by giving an illegal $25,000 contribution to a political group supporting Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Since then, we’ve been no strangers to calling out corruption wherever we see it.

• We filed the first Emoluments Clause lawsuit days after Donald Trump took office in 2017.
• Our complaints led to dozens of findings of ethics violations by administration officials.
• We dragged secretive political donors into the light and secured a record breaking fine against a dark money group.
• We filed a criminal complaint about Clarence Thomas’s outrageous ethics scandals.
• We called for Bob Menendez’s and George Santos’s resignation from Congress.
• We successfully sued to enforce the disqualification of an oathbreaking insurrectionist from office, and then we took Trump to the Supreme Court under the same provision of the 14th Amendment.

Now, we’re back to fighting for transparency, democracy and accountability during Trump’s second term, and we've had encouraging early victories.

It’s been the honor of my lifetime to work with the incredible people at CREW to do all we can to secure this democracy we love. But everything we’ve done, and everything we will do in the future, has been made possible by your support.

Thank you,

Noah Bookbinder
President
CREW