John,
Over the past three years, President Trump has racked up so many scandals that none of them gets the attention they deserve. And the only thing he seems to have taken away from his acquittal in the Senate is the belief that he and his administration can get away with just about any scandal, big or small.
When Ivanka Trump posed with a can of beans, it wasn’t just tacky, it was a violation of federal ethics regulations prohibiting government employees from endorsing products and another example of administration officials misusing their power to help businesses that help them politically. So we filed a complaint last week, because ethics rules apply to everyone, even the daughter of the president. But to be honest, canned bean promotions are not even close to the most pressing issue facing our country.
We saw the Homeland Security secretary send unidentified law enforcement officers into an American city. We saw President Trump say he may not accept the results of the presidential election. We saw Trump commute the sentence of Roger Stone, who committed crimes to help Trump get elected. And all of this is happening against the backdrop of a raging pandemic that is disproportionately hurting Black and brown communities.
The anti-democratic actions that Trump is taking are very real, and while we have to call out every scandal big or small, we can’t let that distract us from the catastrophic state of the country and this presidency.
It is CREW’s role to be a witness to and a watchdog against the anti-democratic actions taken by our corrupt president, and we take that role very seriously. We are investigating CBP and ICE presence at protests for racial justice. We are sounding the alarm about Trump’s postmaster general slowing down the mail just 100 days before many millions of Americans will need to vote by mail. We filed a complaint against Trump’s chief of staff for illegally trying to influence the election using his White House position. We are exposing members of Congress whose companies got taxpayer funded loans, but voted to keep that fact secret.
Reading such a long list of scandals can be dizzying, but we hope it helps for you to know that there is a watchdog on the case.
We invite you to join the fight by sharing our work with your friends and family, and by joining our calls for Congress to impeach Attorney General Barr and to pass the CORE Act to fight corruption in the next stimulus package. We need as many people with us as possible to put an end to the constant scandals.
Thank you for standing with us,
Noah Bookbinder
Executive Director, CREW
