Leah McGrath Goodman brings two decades of investigative journalism experience covering politics and money to a new newsletter, Column C, where she explores "cultures of corruption, climate change, crypto and other calamities."
BRATTLEBORO-There is a formula for corruption. It is Klitgaard's rule of "corruption equals monopoly, plus discretion, minus accountability," also known as C = M + D - A.
That seems so satisfyingly pat, doesn't it? Its author, Robert Klitgaard, one of the towering figures of anticorruption research, has occasionally been chided for making this formula a mite simplistic but, with experts still debating what corruption actually is, it gives us a place to start.
Another widely cited definition of corruption comes from global civil society organization Transparency International, which holds that corruption is "the abuse of entrusted power for private gain." This tends to be one of the more favored definitions, as it encapsulates a wide range of situations.
"Private gain" covers many things - money, status, honors, titles, access, special privileges, or anything that could be desired by another human and used to coerce, motivate, or control them.
Meanwhile, entrusted power could be trust in a politician, a corporation, or a government; anyone who holds power may potentially engage in such breaches of trust and, therefore, become involved in all sorts of corrupt acts.
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The games played on the elite, influential, ultra-wealthy - and, yes, gullible - by the late predator-financier Jeffrey Epstein were not only legion, but appear to have been focused on corrupting them both for his own purposes, as well as for reasons well beyond just himself.
Before Epstein's mysterious prison death in August 2019, stories about the sex trafficker's chummy relationships with both former presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton had circulated for more than two decades.
Trump even told some of these stories himself, such as in 2015, when he made an offhand comment about Clinton while considering his own run for the presidency.
"Nice guy," Bill Clinton," Trump said. "Got a lot of problems coming up, in my opinion, with the famous island with Jeffrey Epstein [...] Lot of problems."
Later, while president, Trump retweeted spurious conspiracy theories tying the Clintons to Epstein's death.
Yet both former presidents had flown multiple times on Epstein's notorious "Lolita Express" private jet, which ferried a gaggle of other billionaires, royalty and VIP pals between New York and Palm Beach.
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Here's why all this matters: A judge in recent days ordered the release of previously sealed, old grand jury transcripts of the sex-trafficking investigation into Epstein in Florida in 2006, calling Epstein "the most infamous pedophile in American history."
By my count, 176 pages of these transcripts have dropped. (Trigger warning: I have yet to read the entire thing myself, but the judge described it as "disgusting and criminal" and that "details in the record will be outrageous to decent people." So be warned.)
The Epstein case in Florida almost two decades ago ended with little more than a slap on the wrist for Epstein, but it turned out to be a canary in the coal mine.
Very notably, the wider details of Epstein's predatory activities, which continued for another decade-plus, spanned the globe with - as the Florida judge put it - Epstein flaunting his wealth "while cavorting with politicians, billionaires, and even British Royalty."
The leniency extended to Epstein back then by the U.S. legal system was "widely reported by news [agencies] as 'special treatment' regarding his prosecution," Florida Circuit Judge Luis Delgado said, and it's widely "been the subject of much anger and has, at times, diminished the public's perception of the criminal justice system."
The judge did not go so far as to call what happened in the Epstein case corrupt, but he clearly didn't think the transcripts should be hidden from the public anymore.
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The release of the transcripts has now spurred some wider soul-searching and a rightful re-examination of the sexual assault allegations, Epstein-linked and otherwise, against both Clinton and Trump, which trace as far back as the 1970s and continued into the past decade, with implications for U.S. elections.
The allegations included accounts from Epstein accusers about Bill Clinton repeatedly visiting Epstein's island, flying on his "sex plane," and consorting with young women.
It also includes a lesser-known, but deeply troubling, case filed against Trump by a woman who says Trump, in league with Epstein, committed horrific acts of sexual abuse against her when she was just 13 years old. (I must add another trigger warning, as I have read the court filing in full and can say it is extremely harrowing.)
The suit was later dropped, as the woman decided not to go through with it after receiving multiple death threats.
For both Clinton and Trump, these allegations, which they deny, came to light in 2016 - the year of the presidential race between Trump and Hillary Clinton. Looking back, it is no wonder that Hillary was not inclined to attack Trump as a potential serial predator in light of her own husband's atrocious record.
But it is also no wonder why these old testimonies, accusations, and court filings would resurface now, prompting a deeper re-evaluation of what was really going on in 2016.
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With so much attention on U.S. President Joe Biden's bowing out of this year's presidential race due to reasonable concerns about his age, health, and ability to do the job, many have forgotten Trump had his own get-out-of-the-race moment.
Cue in the Access Hollywood tape. When the recording leaked of Trump's lewd remarks about women, with the 2016 presidential election just days away, Trump was told by then–Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus that if he didn't drop out, he would "lose by the biggest landslide in American political history," noted Steve Bannon, Trump's former chief strategist, in an interview the next year.
But Trump didn't want to drop out. He also didn't want to apologize, and he absolutely refused to grovel.
Instead, he and Bannon devised a plan that, to this day, few have heard about but that you can find in Fear, Bob Woodward's superb 2018 book on the Trump presidency.
As a journalist at the time for Newsweek closely following the Access Hollywood mess, I found it confounding how Trump had somehow managed to downplay the leak to clinch the presidency, while Hillary Clinton was utterly annihilated over her emails. (Not that I thought much of either of them, and I didn't vote for either.)
Until I read Woodward's book, I did not know the extent to which Trump used Bill Clinton's reported history of sexual predation to neutralize the Access Hollywood nightmare.
Here's what happened: First, Trump refused to make any comment to the press other than that he was still running for president and wouldn't drop out. Then he waited until the night of his debate with Hillary Clinton, which was set to take place days later.
The press, by that time, was dying to interview Trump about the leaked tape, and Bannon took full advantage, inviting journalists to come and meet Trump just before the debate kicked off.
Unbeknownst to the press, Bannon had also invited three women who had accused Bill Clinton of unwanted sexual advances and, in one case, rape: Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey, and Paula Jones.
According to Woodward, Bannon said, "That f-ing media, they think they're going to come in for the end of debate prep. And we're going to let them in the room and the women will be there. And we'll just go live. Boom!"
When the doors opened and the press burst in, there sat Trump, flanked by the women, who, according to Woodward, "breathed fire into the microphones."
Broaddrick told journalists, "Actions speak louder than words. Mr. Trump may have said some bad words, but Bill Clinton raped me, and Hillary Clinton threatened me."
Then all three women marched into the debate, causing no shortage of chaos.
While the debate organizers would not let them sit in the VIP family box by the stage, where they were invited per Bannon's scheme, they sat in the front row with the audience instead.
During the debate, when asked about the tape, Trump announced that Clinton's accusers were in the room and said, "When Hillary [...] talks about words that I said 11 years ago, I think it's disgraceful, and I think she should be ashamed of herself."
Trump cloaked himself in Clinton's accusers, thereby quashing the worst of the fallout from the Access Hollywood tape. At the same time - and as the public now knows - he was also strong-arming other women accusing him of sexual misconduct.
Trump went on to win 304 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton's 227, although Clinton did win the popular vote.
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The scandal, in the end, became another in a long line of Trump scandals - with Stormy Daniels and E. Jean Carroll and others since emerging to lampoon Trump in court. It is unclear what became of the woman who dropped her case against Trump under threat, but if that did happen, it does not appear it would be the first time.
All of this underscores how American politics, little by little, haS been terribly compromised by the influence of powerful predators, sometimes entangling or involving leaders all the way to the Oval Office. It has damaged the nation's political process and voters' ability to choose the best leadership. And it shows how mindful voters must be about how these influences have the capacity to undermine U.S. presidencies going forward.
Much is made of leaders' public lives - and keeping their private lives private - but if politicians have such serious and constant liabilities in their private lives that they can be so easily corrupted and manipulated, it is unlikely they will be able to serve anyone but themselves or, worse, those who seek to control them.
After all, in the "entrusted power for private gain" definition of corruption, private gain can be positive gains - but also it can include the avoidance of negative consequences, such as a shredded reputation, a ruined legacy, or prison.
If the latest trove of court documents proves anything, it is that far too much has been kept from the eyes of the public, especially at times when having key pieces of information may have been pivotal to deciding who runs the country.
This Voices column was submitted to The Commons.
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