Matt Gertz at MMFA:
“We have a president of the United States who was potentially involved in all of those entanglements with foreign entities,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said, “which could lead to complications or compromise as the president now.” Hegeth’s comment serves as a searing indictment of his current boss, President Donald Trump, whose “entanglements with foreign entities" deepen with each new investigative report on his family’s sprawling business interests and attempts to cash in on the presidency.
But of course, Hegseth wasn’t talking about the recent Wall Street Journal investigation revealing an apparent quid pro quo in which a Trump family company received a half-billion dollar investment from an Emirati prince days before the president took office, then the Trump administration funneled AI chips to the prince’s firm. The quote is actually from July 2023, and it shows Hegseth using his prior role as Fox News host to denounce then-President Joe Biden. It is not an overstatement to say that arguing against foreign money influence on the White House was a defining principle for right-wing media during the Biden years. But their arguments were based in fantasy, and the Trump family’s corruption is both much more straightforward and involves sums of money that are larger by orders of magnitude. Thanks to Trump’s propensity to hire the people he saw on his television, many of those who loudly complained about the purported corruption of the Biden family — and even called for the criminal prosecution of President Biden — are now working within the Trump administration. Meanwhile, the Fox smear machine that once went into overdrive promoting conspiracy theories about presidential corruption has gone quiet.
The Trump family’s corruption is orders of magnitude worse than the Biden allegations
Fox’s effort to turn Hunter Biden’s foreign business interests into a political liability for his father dates to Trump’s first administration, but became an obsession once Joe Biden took office in 2021. While the network’s narratives were never credible — and some even appeared to be the result of a Russian disinformation campaign — the pressure of its all-consuming coverage and its media power within the GOP eventually goaded congressional Republicans into an ill-fated impeachment effort, at which point the whole edifice collapsed. But the Fox conspiracy-mongering takes on a new light given that some of the people who pushed it now work for a president who embarked on self-enrichment schemes of staggering scale and eye-popping corruption in his first year back in office. While feverish claims of a “Biden Crime Family” involved a total of less than $7.5 million paid to Biden family members over the years — and nothing to Joe Biden — Trump had already “used the office of the presidency to make at least $1.4 billion,” the editorial board of The New York Times reported on the anniversary of his second inauguration.
Trump and his adult children oversee a sprawling business empire that has grown dramatically since he launched his reelection campaign and includes international real estate deals through the Trump Organization; his social media company and its parent, “which trades like a meme stock”; immense holdings in cryptocurrency; and an array of consulting and venture capital positions held by his sons that have the aroma of influence peddling. These businesses benefit from Trump’s presidency even as they frequently conflict with U.S. policy (by contrast, the right’s core allegation of Joe Biden aiding his son’s foreign business interests involved him carrying out U.S. policy as vice president).
[...]
They called for Biden’s prosecution; now they run the DOJ under Trump
Several Fox pundits who joined the Trump administration — including some who now serve in senior Justice Department posts — even argued at the time that Joe Biden’s actions warranted a criminal probe. Fox host Sean Hannity asked Bondi — then a frequent Fox guest and now Trump’s attorney general — during an August 2023 segment whether anything would “ultimately happen to Joe and Hunter Biden.” Bondi replied that “when we have a new administration, absolutely Sean, it has to,” adding that a criminal investigation “must be opened” and that the Bidens would be “prosecuted” under a future Trump presidency.
Bondi also stressed in 2022 that if Trump had been president under the same circumstances, he would have “right away, recused himself” and had “a special prosecutor take over.” Duffy argued that the FBI and Justice Department should be investigating the “shady” dealings to determine whether Joe Biden is “corrupt” and has “made money off of this.” But he claimed that “they won't do a forensic audit because they know that the money goes from foreign countries to Hunter Biden into Joe Biden's pocket.”
Some Fox figures claimed to be concerned about corruption… when it was aimed at the Biden family.
Now, with some of them-- most notably Jeanine Pirro and Pete Hegseth-- working for Trump, they turned a blind eye to Trump family corruption.
