TENS of TRILLIONS: the swamp's staggering corruption

Key Markets report for Tuesday, 27 May 2025

​A Senate appropriations committee hearing on 21 May found that, during the 76-day interval between Donald Trump’s election and his inauguration, the Department of Energy handed out $93 billion to various entities. This was done without any accountability or oversight and many of the entities receiving the loans did not even have a business plan or any financial reports to submit. According to the Energy Secretary Christopher White, the $93 billion is more than twice the amount that the Department of Energy had handed out in the previous 15 years.

Regular corruption + Trump-proofing

Energy Secretary under Biden was the Harvard lawyer Jennifer Granholm and DOE’s Loan Program was managed by Jigar Shah. The corruption within the department had attracted much attention in the past, like when, on 19 October 2023, Senator Josh Hawley questioned Shah about his practices. In February of the same year, the Wall Street Journal ran a story titled, “Hundreds of Energy Department Officials Hold Stocks Related to Agency’s Work Despite Warning.” The article alleged that as many as a third of the Energy Department’s senior officials or their families owned stocks related to the agency’s work.

However, in addition to the ordinary corruption, the staggering $93 billion handed out in only 76 days additionally has the stench of political Trump-proofing of various agendas by making sure that Trump couldn’t defund them on his watch. Other examples of this tactic include Biden’s pre-paying US subscription to Project Ukraine, and the Environmental Protection Agency under John Podesta giving out $375 billion, much of it to charity organizations with no record of business, formed only months prior, seemingly for the purpose of receiving government’s handouts.

Enter DOGE…

Of course, it would be futile to blame any of this on Joe Biden, since the man barely knew where he was. Instead, it was an organized looting operation behind the scenes of the Biden administration. This and other abuse is the reason why one of Trump’s first Executive Orders on the day of his inauguration (EO 14158 of January 20, 2025) created the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in order to investigate fraud and corruption, cut wasteful spending and increase productivity and efficiency in government.

So far, DOGE has claimed to have uncovered between $115 and $170 billion in potential savings through canceling fraudulent or wasteful contracts, grants and programs. Some of the examples include the following:

• $630 million in Small Business Administration (SBA) loans to ineligible borrowers (e.g., those over 115 or under 11 years old).

• $5.1 billion in improper unemployment benefit claims, particularly in states like California, New York, and Massachusetts.

• $1.75 billion in USAID grants to organizations like the GAVI Foundation and WHO Polio, labeled as "pure waste."

• $1.9 billion in "misplaced funds" at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

• $4.7 trillion in federal payments described as "nearly impossible to trace due to a bureaucratic loophole," though this claim lacks detailed evidence.

DOGE found other irregularities and suspected frauds but most of the corrupt practices come wrapped up in the cellophane of legitimacy and legality. Corrupt practices in government have gone unchallenged for a very long time. Even as changes in laws and regulations have rendered much of the corruption perfectly legal, the scale of the corruption is staggering, dwarfing the above revelations.

It’s a whole lot worse than we know

In 2017, Catherine Austin-Fitts, former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (1989-1990), co-authored a report alleging that the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development wasted $21 trillion through unauthorized spending over a 17-year period, between 1998 and 2015. Earlier this month, Austin-Fitts gave an interview to Tucker Carlson in which she elaborated on those claims.

Corruption at this scale will render many families wealthy and many people inclined to do whatever is necessary to preserve and defend this system. It is little wonder that DOGE triggered such passionate opposition from the media and politicians, as though investigating corruption, fraud and theft should be controversial. What DOGE has uncovered thus far are only drops in the ocean and for much of it, proving that it constitutes fraud will probably prove difficult.

The secret war behind the scenes

It might even be unfeasible given that the court system itself is slow, unreliable and in many cases biased in favor of vested interests. But who knows, there may be other ways of fighting the fight; the CIA, FBI, NSA and other agencies likely have a lot of records of communications and monetary transactions should not be possible to conceal. I often wonder if there’s a good reason for the Trump cabinet breaking their promise to release the Epstein files to the public: they could be a powerful weapon against many powerful individuals who could otherwise be above the law.

Time will tell, but I expect that we might see many people go down, not for corruption but, like Al Capone for something trivial like tax evasion. Tax evasion is also the charge that put Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia’s most powerful oligarch in jail for 9 years when Vladimir Putin went after him. Whatever the means utilized, a general purge of the system is overdue and we should hope that Trump is sincere in his intention to effect that purge, and pray that he be as successful at it as possible.

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