When the topic is immigrants or Democratic cities, President Donald Trump loves to talk about crime. But when it comes to Wall Street bankers and C-suite executives, he tends to keep his mouth shut.
Within the first 100 days of his second term, Trump pardoned a slew of financial fraudsters. And in February, he signed an executive order announcing that his administration would pause enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a law passed in 1977 that was designed to prevent American citizens and companies from bribing foreign officials to serve their own business interests.
Now, it’s becoming clear how Trump’s Department of Justice likely intends to handle financial crimes. If these crimes involve drug cartels or political opponents — anything that fits his narratives that immigration is dangerous and that Democrats are corrupt — then they merit the DOJ’s attention.
This month, for example, Trump accused California Sen. Adam Schiff of committing mortgage fraud. Similarly, the DOJ opened an investigation into New York Attorney General Letitia James’s real-estate transactions — the same Letitia James who filed a lawsuit against the Trump Organization that resulted in a judge ordering Trump to pay over $450 million.
But if Trump’s allies or major corporations engage in some corruption to get ahead, then the DOJ might be inclined to just look the other way.
How the DOJ’s white-collar crime priorities are shifting
On paper, the Trump administration’s words have not necessarily indicated a more dramatic shift in priorities than the routine modifications you might see from one administration to the next. “What I see in the actual policies and the details that are emerging is sort of more of the fine-tuning you would expect with a change in administration, consistent with not only the first Trump administration but also prior Republican administrations,” said Joseph Facciponti, a former federal prosecutor who now serves as the executive director of NYU School of Law’s Program on Corporate Compliance and Enforcement.
Still, there are signs that the Trump administration might continue to deprioritize enforcing white-collar crimes. Since Trump returned to power, the DOJ has retreated from lawsuits involving money laundering, crypto markets, and foreign corruption. In fact, as of March 31, federal prosecutions of white-collar crime have declined by more than 10 percent compared to last year, when Democrats still controlled the White House. That’s made defense lawyers representing clients with ongoing investigations feel more optimistic about their pending cases, according to the Wall Street Journal. It’s also left them concerned that they’ll have less work and fewer lucrative clients during the Trump years.
To say that this approach is business-friendly is an understatement. Trump’s February executive order pausing enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act states that upholding anti-bribery laws essentially punishes American companies for “routine business practices in other nations” and “actively harms American economic competitiveness and, therefore, national security.” The executive order is not merely willing to ignore corporate corruption — the language practically encourages it as a necessary means to stay competitive.
This line of thinking was continued in a memo issued by the DOJ in May, which announced new investigative and policy priorities for white-collar crime enforcement. While the memo stated that “white-collar crime also poses a significant threat to U.S. interests,” it also stated that rigorous enforcement of corporate law is a burden on businesses. “The vast majority of American businesses are legitimate enterprises working to deliver value for their shareholders and quality products and services for customers. Prosecutors must avoid overreach that punishes risk-taking and hinders innovation,” the memo says, adding that the department has to strike the right balance between investigating criminal wrongdoing and minimizing burdens on businesses.
To be sure, effective law enforcement does require prosecutors to be prudent and not take on every single case that comes their way. But the DOJ seems to be implying that prosecutors have been too aggressive in pursuing cases involving financial crime, despite the fact that white-collar prosecutions have been trending down since 2011.
The May memo does outline some areas of white-collar crime that it plans to focus on, including health care and elder fraud, Ponzi schemes that defraud investors, and money laundering or tax evasion schemes that compromise US national security interests. But the question is whether the DOJ will have the capacity for robust corporate enforcement in those areas. “I think the real issue is how [the administration’s priorities] all get implemented because we know that there’s been a number of resignations within the criminal division, and specifically the fraud section. We know that they have shifted personnel around and reassigned staff to do other things,” Facciponti said. “And so what kind of resources do they have at this point to do the kinds of investigations that they say that they’re interested in doing?”
Indeed, changes in the administration’s staffing have also slowed investigations or brought them to a halt. In April, the Wall Street Journal reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi is “swapping out and sidelining career supervisors who were responsible for charging crimes such as corruption, price fixing and securities fraud.”
There are other signs that the administration is going soft on major corporations. Earlier this year, for example, the DOJ decided to drop its criminal case against Boeing, which involved the company’s role in two plane crashes that killed 346 people. That’s despite Boeing previously agreeing to plead guilty in the case.
“The failure to hold corporate criminals accountable has hit a new low under Attorney General Bondi,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) in a statement to Vox. “It’s alarming that the Trump Justice Department’s enforcement priorities appear designed to turn a blind eye to corporate crimes regardless of the harm to real people.” (In May, Warren wrote to Bondi urging her to hold Boeing accountable for its actions.)
Trump has also signaled to convicted white-collar criminals that they might have an out. Since retaking the White House, he has commuted the 14-year sentence of Jason Galanis, who defrauded investors, including a Native American tribe and a teachers’ pension fund, of tens of millions of dollars; he has pardoned Julie and Todd Chrisley, the reality TV stars convicted of bank fraud and tax evasion; and he granted clemency to Lawrence Duran, a health care executive who was convicted of leading a Medicare fraud and money laundering scheme. These are just a few of the fraudsters Trump has granted clemency to, which House Democrats say has cost victims and taxpayers some $1.3 billion in fines and restitution.
This has given convicted white-collar criminals some hope that they can get pardoned if they get on Trump’s good side. Former Sen. Bob Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey who was convicted of bribery and corruption under President Joe Biden’s DOJ, has been gunning for a presidential pardon by accusing Democrats of weaponizing the Justice Department — a familiar line lifted from Trump’s presidential campaign. Sam Bankman-Fried — the cryptocurrency mogul who was convicted of fraud and conspiracy and sentenced to 25 years in prison — and his allies have also been trying to secure a pardon from Trump, according to the New York Times.
How Trump thinks about crime
The president likes to tout a tough-on-crime persona, having successfully run law-and-order campaigns that relied on racist and anti-immigrant tropes to whip up anger among his base supporters. His administration has also made crime a focus, largely to serve its interest in curbing immigration and its mass deportation agenda — so much so that the White House’s official channels have turned arrests of immigrants into memes.
But Trump clearly doesn’t view some crimes — specifically white-collar crimes — as worthy of scrutiny. That’s in part because Trump has long ingratiated himself with the business world, not to mention the fact that he and his businesses have also been found guilty of fraud.
More than six months into the second Trump administration, a pattern is emerging in which Trump’s political opponents are scrutinized in ways his allies never would be, as is the case with Schiff and James. And people who try to get on Trump’s good side, like New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who was indicted on bribery charges during the Biden administration, have seen Trump’s DOJ drop its charges against them.
By being soft on white-collar crime, the lesson from Trump’s Justice Department might be that if you’re a businessperson looking to dabble in some light fraud, now might be the best time to do so. And if you want extra insurance, it probably wouldn’t hurt to get on Trump’s good side.
After all, Trump’s businesses have opened up several avenues for corruption during his second term, allowing anybody to invest in his crypto or media ventures. At the very least, that seems to be paying off for some people so far.
Update, July 17, 9:15 am ET: This piece was originally published earlier on July 17 and has been updated to include a statement from Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
