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TRUMP’S PLAN: MAKE AMERICA CORRUPT AGAIN  
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Noah Shachtman
February 11, 2025
Rolling Stone Magazine
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_ While Adams may have been the most immediate beneficiary, he’s
not the only one. If you’re a foreign government or a corrupt
company trying to turn a public official into your toady, this sends a
powerful signal—everything and everyone is up for sale _

Eric Adams and Tom Homan on Fox and Friends, screen grab

 

Give Eric Adams [[link removed]] some
credit: He put his back into this one. Once the mayor of New York
[[link removed]] was indicted on bribery
and conspiracy charges, the man and his legal team worked overtime to
get President Donald Trump
[[link removed]] to somehow overturn
the case. 

Adams was indicted in late September
[[link removed]] for
allegedly doing favors for the Turkish government as payback for
illegal campaign donations and travel perks. Almost instantly, he
started floating Trump-friendly conspiracy theories that the
prosecution was a Joe Biden revenge plot. He stood up for
then-candidate Trump when his opponent dared to call him a fascist.
Adams has now reportedly directed
[[link removed]] his
subordinates to only say nice things in public about the president —
anything, really, for the Don. 

On Monday night, Trump returned the favor, when his Justice Department
ordered prosecutors in Manhattan to drop their charges against the
mayor, two months before he was set to go to trial. This
get-out-of-jail card isn’t free, though. It practically demands that
Adams implement Trump’s deportation agenda, and it leaves open the
possibility that Adams could be charged again if he doesn’t go along
with the program. 

Legal observers tell me they’ve never seen a deal quite like it
before. And while Adams may have been the most obvious and immediate
beneficiary, he’s not the only one. If you’re a foreign government
or a corrupt company trying to turn a public official into your toady,
Monday’s move sends a powerful signal — one of many — that
America is open for business. Everything and everyone is up for sale.
Just name your price, and start the negotiation.

That might sound a little over-the-top, especially when the case
against Adams felt a little small, if cut-and-dried. Adams is alleged
to have fixed some fire permits in exchange for some first-class
flights and a bunch of straw donations. Icky, but happens all the
time, right? Well, no. And also, the directive to drop Adams’ case
can’t be viewed in isolation. 

Last week, Attorney General Pam Bondi disbanded the corporate
enforcement unit of DOJ’s National Security Division
[[link removed]] — the
prosecutors who went after the people stealing company secrets on
behalf of China, or illicitly financing Russia’s war in Ukraine. She
also broke up the task force that seized the yachts of Russian
oligarchs, or busted them for violating global sanctions. At the same
time, she killed a 50-person task force, established during the first
Trump administration, to investigate covert foreign influence —
attempts to steer U.S. policy through clandestine means. (Think of
the $10 million
[[link removed]] that
a Kremlin-backed media operation steered to MAGA influencers in last
year’s election.) “It’s now a free for all for foreign intel
services
[[link removed]],”
former head of FBI counterintelligence Frank Figliuzzi told NBC
News. 

And if Bondi has her way, criminal investigations like the one that
exposed that $10 million influencer network will be a thing of the
past. Last week, Bondi ordered prosecutors to dramatically scale back
their investigations of violations of the Foreign Agents Registration
Act. That’s the law, passed after World War II, when the Nazis got a
bunch of Congressmen to secretly push their agenda. The idea was to
stop that kind of covert propaganda. 

The law lay dormant for decades, until 2016’s election interference.
Since then, FARA prosecutions had gone through the roof. This new
Bondi directive stops all that. Remember the case against Pras, the
Fugees’ rapper, for acting as an agent of China
[[link removed]]?
Some of those charges likely wouldn’t have happened under Bondi’s
new rules. Or the one against Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), who got all
those gold bars in exchange for doing favors for the Egyptian
government? Or the one involving Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), who
allegedly took $600,000 to covertly do the business of Azerbaijan?
Same. Gone. 

Criminal FARA probes from now on, Bondi wrote, “shall be limited to
instances of alleged conduct similar to more traditional espionage by
foreign government actors.” But we already have laws and lawyers to
stop secret-stealing and the like. FARA is for something different. 

Perhaps this is the moment when I should mention the attorney general
herself was, until recently, a registered foreign lobbyist for the
government of Qatar — earning a rather nice salary
of $115,000-per-month
[[link removed]].
And that Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, Kash Patel, was also working
for the Qatari government, but without bothering to register
[[link removed]].
And that on Monday, Trump sacked the head of the Office of Government
Ethics
[[link removed]]. 

The last time he was president, Trump took in $8 million or so
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direct payments from 20 foreign governments. During his last campaign,
he asked oil and gas executives for $1 billion
[[link removed]] in
exchange for rolling back Joe Biden’s environmental policies; he
also told
[[link removed]] donors
[[link removed]] he
would immediately approve new pipelines and speed up oil company
mergers. For his second inaugural, he celebrated by launching a meme
coin
[[link removed]] that
seems to outside experts to be tailor-made for foreign payoffs
[[link removed]].
And let’s not forget the $2 billion
[[link removed]] Trump’s
son-in-law and top adviser got from the Saudi government for his
investment fund. Corruption
[[link removed]] has never been
antithetical to the Trump brand, and it surely isn’t now. 

Now his Justice Department is making moves so that everyone can get in
on the fun — if they stay loyal. On Monday, Trump pardoned
disgraced Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich
[[link removed]],
who was sent to prison for trying to sell Barack Obama’s old Senate
seat. Trump also signed an executive order directing his new attorney
general, Bondi, to “pause” enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt
Practices Act — the law that forbids Americans from bribing foreign
officials. “It’s going to mean a lot more business for America
[[link removed]],”
the president said.

Then there’s the Adams situation. The indictment was supposed to be
just the appetizer in a full-course meal, one of five federal
investigations into Adams and his inner circle. The bigger federal
case, many observers felt, was the one out of Brooklyn, where a
Chinese billionaire had already pleaded guilty to giving straw
donations to Adams. The one where there was strong evidence of a wider
scheme of straw donations, orchestrated by a top fundraiser with ties
to Beijing
[[link removed]].
A memo from Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove
[[link removed]] effectively
stops all of these probes (even though it’s addressed only to the
prosecutors in Manhattan). In it, Bove “block[s] further targeting
of Mayor Adams or additional investigative steps.” 

Adams’ lawyer Alex Spiro, in a statement, crowed that “the
Department of Justice has reevaluated this case and determined it
should not go forward.” But there’s more to Bove’s memo. It
“defers to the U.S. Attorney’s Office at this time” about “the
strength of the evidence” in the case. In other words, Bove is
admitting, at least provisionally, that the initial prosecution was
solid. He’s also holding open the possibility that the cases could
get revived, maybe if Adams gets crosswise with Team Trump.

“In theory, there’s nothing preventing the U.S. Attorney’s
office from filing new charges in November,” says Arlo Devlin-Brown,
a former chief of the public corruption unit at the U.S. Attorney for
the Southern District of New York.

There are things Trump and his team clearly want in return for holding
those prosecutors at bay. In his memo, Bove ordered Adams’ case to
be dropped so the mayor could “devote [his] full attention and
resources to the illegal immigration and violent crime that escalated
under the policies of the prior administration.” 

Last week, City Hall issued a draft memo directing public school and
migrant shelters to let ICE agents onto their properties without a
warrant “if, at any time, you reasonably feel threatened or fear
for your safety
[[link removed]].”
That appeared to be at odds with current local laws, which all but
forbid cooperation with ICE on the enforcement of purely civil
matters, like immigration status. Adams’ administration released
updated guidance on Monday that hew more closely to the previous legal
standards. But the day’s events left critics like mayoral candidate
Zellnor Myrie wondering, “What was this mayor willing to give
up? Which New Yorkers was he willing to sell
[[link removed]]?” Public
corruption is often viewed as a victimless crime. Not if the price for
Adams’ exoneration winds up being paid by immigrant kids.

Trump and his team have previously mocked the “thirsty
[[link removed]]”
mayor for going to any and all lengths to avoid a conviction. Earlier
on Monday, according to local news site The City,_ _Adams took things
to another level. He ordered local officials not to publicly
criticize Trump in any way
[[link removed]] —
and not to interfere with immigration enforcement.

That’s the thing about corrupt bargains. There are always more
strings attached to the deal.

_Noah Shachtman [[link removed]]
is a contributor editor at Rolling Stone. He previously served as the
editor-in-chief from 2021 to Feb. 2024. Before joining Rolling Stone,
Shachtman was the editor-in-chief at The Daily Beast. Shachtman has
written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall
Street Journal, and reported from Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia and
elsewhere around the globe._

_ROLLING STONE [[link removed]] is an American monthly
magazine [[link removed]] that focuses on
music [[link removed]], politics
[[link removed]], and popular culture
[[link removed]]. It was founded in San
Francisco, California [[link removed]] in
1967 by Jann Wenner [[link removed]] and
the music critic Ralph J. Gleason
[[link removed]]. (Wikipedia.
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* Eric Adams
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* Donald Trump
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* corruption
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* Pam Bondi
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