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jamie raskin
'Unprecedented Kleptocracy': Sanders Slams Trump Family's Presidential Profiteering
"The Trump family has made $4 billion off the presidency," the senator said.
Apr 24, 2026
Amid renewed scrutiny of self-dealing by President Donald Trump and his relatives ahead of this weekend's Mar-a-Lago gala for top investors in the $TRUMP meme coin—whose value has plummeted more than 90% from its high—Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday took aim at the First Family's corruption.
"The Trump family has made $4 billion off the presidency," Sanders (I-Vt.) said on X following reporting by New Yorker staff writer David Kirkpatrick and others detailing how Trump and relatives have profited from his position during his second term.
Sanders listed sources of Trump family presidential profiteering, including more than $3 billion from cryptocurrencies like $TRUMP and $MELANIA—the latter whose value has plunged by over 99%—Persian Gulf deals worth over $425 million, $150 million in the form of a luxury jumbo jet gifted by Qatar, and various business ventures and deals the senator slammed as part of an "unprecedented kleptocracy."
In addition to the two meme coins, many of those crypto gains are linked to ventures including American Bitcoin and World Liberty Financial—which has raised eyebrows for being co-founded by Trump’s sons, with disclosures showing 75% of its token sales going to a Trump-linked entity.
Democrats on the US House Oversight Committee have published their own running tally showing nearly $2.5 billion in "Trump family digital grift profits"—including more than $634 million from foreign sources—and $6 billion in "Trump family digital grift wealth."
"While Americans struggle to buy groceries and pay rent, Donald Trump is making his family richer through digital grift schemes—collecting profits through digital wallets and granting pardons to the highest bidders," the House Oversight Democrats said.
Sanders isn't the only US lawmaker to denounce what Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) last year called Trump's "superhighway of crypto corruption."
Also last year, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, released a report detailing how "Trump and his family have transformed the presidency into a personal money-making operation, adding billions of dollars to his net worth through cryptocurrency schemes entangled with foreign governments, corporate allies, and criminal actors."
"President Trump and his family kept lining their pockets while he and his allies in Congress closed down the federal government—refusing to extend tax credits to make healthcare affordable for American families, putting continued food benefits for women and children in doubt, and placing active-duty military personnel in danger of missing their next paycheck," House Judiciary Democrats said.
Trump is the only president to ever be convicted of felony crimes. In 2024, while he was running for a second term, a New York jury found him guilty of 34 felony charges related to the falsification of business records regarding hush money payments to cover up sex scandals during the 2016 presidential election.
Last year, a New York appeals court tossed a $355 million civil fraud judgment—which increased to more than half a billion dollars with interest—against Trump and his two eldest sons in a separate case in which the trio exaggerated the wealth of their business organization. The ruling upheld the fraud finding and banned Trump and his sons from leading businesses in the state for 2-3 years.
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‘Ruthlessly Corrupt’: Democrats Take Aim at Trump's ‘Plunder’ of US Taxpayers in New Bill
Sen. Elizabeth Warren said the bill would stop Trump from "trying to snatch up billions of taxpayer dollars to line his own pockets and settle personal scores."
Apr 15, 2026
Four Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday unveiled legislation aimed at ending what they described as President Donald Trump's "plunder" of US taxpayers.
The Ban Presidential Plunder of Taxpayer Funds Act—cosponsored by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Dave Min (D-Calif.)—was crafted in response to Trump's effort to get the federal Internal Revenue Service to hand him a $10 billion settlement for the 2020 leak of his tax records and his demand that the US Department of Justice (DOJ) pay him $230 million over its past criminal investigations of him.
Among other things, the bill would bar both the president and the vice president, as well as their immediate family members, from collecting settlement payments from the federal government while in office.
The proposed legislation would also prohibit both the president and the vice president from filing administrative claims for damages while in office, and would only allow presidents and vice presidents to "collect compensatory damages awarded by a federal court if the court appoints an independent counsel to represent the agency and makes all proceedings public."
The bill allows former presidents and vice presidents to collect damages from the federal government, but only if the agency being sued "appoints career expert staff to lead the agency’s review or adjudication of any administrative claim brought by the former president/VP, and no official appointed by any president/VP is involved in handling the claim."
Additionally, any settlement made to a former president or vice president must be made public within seven days.
Warren said that the legislation was necessary to stop Trump from "trying to snatch up billions of taxpayer dollars to line his own pockets and settle personal scores."
Raskin accused Trump of exploiting the power of his office to "loot billions of dollars from American taxpayers," an operation that he described as the "ongoing scandal of this ruthlessly corrupt administration."
"The ‘Ban Presidential Plunder of Taxpayer Funds Act’ will prevent the president from pursuing the emerging MAGA grift of suing the government as a ‘plaintiff’ on bogus grounds," Raskin added, "and then settling the suit as ‘defendant’ for big bucks, a collusive settlement scam they recently executed with the disgraced former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who waltzed off with more than a million dollars for a bogus claim already dismissed by a federal court."
Flynn settled with the DOJ last month in a case in which he accused the government of "improperly and politically" targeting him, after he was charged with making false statements to the FBI in 2017.
The Democrats' bill has earned the endorsements of government watchdogs Democracy Defenders Action, Common Cause, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), and the Project on Government Oversight (POGO).
Debra Perlin, vice president of policy at CREW, praised the bill for establishing "common sense guardrails to protect against corrupt payouts to the president and the vice president during their terms in office and after they depart."
"Since returning to office, Donald Trump keeps finding troubling new ways to enrich himself at the taxpayers' expense," Perlin noted. "The president’s lawsuit against the IRS for $10 billion is emblematic of a pattern of self-dealing and corruption that appears pervasive in his administration."
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'We Are at a Dangerous Precipice': Raskin Bill Would Create Commission to Examine President's Fitness
"We have a solemn duty to play our defined role under the 25th Amendment by setting up this body to act alongside the vice president and the Cabinet."
Apr 14, 2026
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) on Tuesday unveiled legislation that would establish a congressional commission tasked with determining whether the president is able to continue executing the duties of the office.
The bill, titled the Commission on Presidential Capacity Act, would also set up "expedited" emergency procedures under which Congress could activate the newly created commission and fast-track its consideration of presidential fitness.
As envisioned by Raskin, this commission would act as a legislative counterpart to the US vice president and the president's Cabinet, which the text of the 25th Amendment grants the power to declare the president incapacitated. The 25th Amendment also gives that power to a majority "of such other body as Congress may by law provide."
"The Constitution explicitly vests Congress with the authority to create a body that will guarantee the successful continuity of government by responding to presidential incapacity to discharge the powers and duties of office," said Raskin. "We have a solemn duty to play our defined role under the 25th Amendment by setting up this body to act alongside the vice president and the Cabinet."
Raskin pointed to Trump's recent erratic behavior to argue that Congress needed to take a more assertive role in determining whether he has the mental capacity to serve in the most powerful office in the federal government.
"Public trust in Donald Trump’s ability to meet the duties of his office has dropped to unprecedented lows," the Maryland Democrat said, "as he threatens to destroy entire civilizations, unleashes chaos in the Middle East while violating Congressional war powers, aggressively insults the pope of the Catholic Church, and sends out artistic renderings online likening himself to Jesus Christ."
Raskin went on to warn that "we are at a dangerous precipice, and it is now a matter of national security for Congress to fulfill its responsibilities under the 25th Amendment to protect the American people from an increasingly volatile and unstable situation."
Fifty House Democrats signed on as original co-sponsors of Raskin's bill, which is unlikely to pass the Republican-controlled US House of Representatives.
Calls for invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office grew louder last week after Trump declared that "a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again," unless Iran agreed to meet his demands.
In a letter sent to congressional leaders on Monday, four psychiatrists warned that Trump's "behavior and rhetoric... have crossed a threshold that demands the immediate and bipartisan attention of Congress."
The psychiatrists added that Trump "exhibits what forensic mental health experts have, across dozens of independent assessments, identified as the 'Dark Triad' of personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy."
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