Senator Sheldon Whitehouse calls audacious request ‘definition of corruption’ amid investigation into Mar-a-Lago meeting in April

The original exposé describing Trump’s offer to end US efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions and end environmental for a billion dollars regulation is here

    • @SoupBrick
      41•25 days ago

      End goal of Capitalism, tbh.

    • IninewCrowEnglish
      16•25 days ago

      Didn’t the world go through this same scenario about 1500 years ago with the Roman empire?

    • @ramble81@lemm.ee
      12•25 days ago

      I mean, with lobbying, it’s already a country for sale. In this case it’ll just be more blatant and easily accessible to foreign interests

  • AutoTL;DRBEnglish
    2•25 days ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    “It certainly meets the definition of corruption as the founding fathers would have used the term,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse said in an interview about Trump’s audacious $1bn request for big checks to top fossil-fuel executives that took place in April at his Mar-a-Lago club.

    The two senators have written to eight big-oil chief executives and the head of the industry’s lobbying group seeking details about the Mar-a- Lago meeting, as has representative Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the oversight and accountability committee, who has begun a parallel investigation into the pay-to-play schemes that Trump touted to big oil leaders.

    Amplifying those concerns, former Federal Election Commission general counsel Larry Noble said that Trump’s unusually aggressive money pitch “violates the letter and spirit” of campaign-finance laws, and a veteran Republican consultant called it “blatant pay to play”.

    “The totality of … Trump, the fossil-fuel industry and a [conservative thinktank] Heritage Foundation blueprint advocate will put a dagger through efforts to avoid catastrophic warming,” said Joe Romm, a senior research fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media.

    Trump’s strong embrace of climate-change denialism and his pro-big-oil policies were underscored by his aggressive $1bn pitch at Mar-a-Lago, which drew CEOs from giants such as Chevron and ExxonMobil, and the fracking multibillionaire Harold Hamm, the founder of Continental Resources, as the Washington Post first reported.

    Likewise, Noble, the former Federal Election Commission general counsel, said Trump’s appeals for massive donations from oil and gas bigwigs [are] “pretty blatantly offering policy favors in exchange for large contributions”.

    The original article contains 1,403 words, the summary contains 259 words. Saved 82%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • @blazera@lemmy.worldEnglish
    -10•25 days ago

    All of them are selling policy making for money. Dems have mostly moved over to banks and investment firms.

  • @BigMacHole@lemm.ee
    -12•25 days ago

    Whitehouse and Raskin are the DEEP STATE! That’s the ONLY reason why they would Investigate Donald Trump’s attempts to allow Big Oil and other Corporations to BUY US Policy!