For the past eight years and across two impeachment trials, the Democratic Party has defined itself in opposition to Donald Trump’s corruption, assailing the ways he abused the presidency for his own financial and political benefit. But with Mayor Eric Adams of New York fighting a federal corruption indictment, former Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey awaiting sentencing for a similar fraud and bribery scheme and numerous California officials sitting in federal prison, it’s hard to deny that corruption is a bipartisan problem.
For a party that wraps itself in the mantle of truth and integrity, pointing across the aisle and saying “they’re worse” is not good enough. For the sake of their electoral fortunes, not to mention the country they purport to serve, Democrats must show voters a serious plan to curb corruption and corporate crime — including within their own ranks.
Mr. Adams is accused of hitting up Turkish executives for campaign contributions and disguising their illegal origins via front donors. On the side, according to the allegations, he’d fly Turkish Airlines to exotic locales, receiving tens of thousands of dollars in business class seats, luxury hotel stays and meals.
In return, Mr. Adams is accused of influencing several city decisions, most notably the fire safety certification for a garish new headquarters for Turkish diplomatic missions at United Nations Plaza. The indictment quotes a Fire Department inspector’s email citing “major issues” with the alarm system. Told that he’d lose his job if he balked, the fire prevention chief cleared the way for the building to open anyway, on the Turkish government’s schedule.
The betrayal of public trust alleged here is shocking: The mayor of New York may have tampered with fire safety provisions for a Manhattan skyscraper — to please a foreign government.
In Mr. Menendez’s case, Egypt was the main authoritarian government to benefit from a Democrat’s corruption. For cash and gold payments, he provided information about U.S. embassy staffing and military assistance policy to Egyptian government contacts, met with Egyptian intelligence officials and helped lobby his Senate colleagues to release a hold on $300 million in military aid. In Los Angeles and San Francisco, Democratic officials have been implicated in myriad bribery and kickback schemes, often involving commercial real estate, including on behalf of Chinese investors. In the context of climate change and an affordable housing crisis, land use policy is as important on the California coast as skyscraper safety is in New York.
These scandals undercut one of the Biden administration’s key foreign policy commitments: to fight kleptocracy. Such wrongdoing encourages foreign corrupt practices, which help drive desperate victims to flee their countries, often winding up on our southern border. And it undermines national security, by thwarting environmental and safety regulations meant to protect our land and communities, and by suggesting that U.S. officials are for sale to the highest bidder.
While some may be tempted to dismiss corruption as a matter of a few errant politicians, it is in fact a far more pervasive scourge — to which the Democratic Party has contributed.
Since 1987, U.S. Supreme Court justices appointed by Democrats have largely concurred in a series of decisions narrowing what legally qualifies as corruption. One, which raised the requirements for an exchange of gifts for services to be considered a bribe, contributed to the failure of the first corruption prosecution against Mr. Menendez in 2017.
Although liberal justices dissented in the most recent such ruling — which legalized what amounts to bribes, so long as the money is paid after the official renders the service — almost all the previous votes in these cases were unanimous. The Democratic icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg penned one of the opinions.
Democratic Party leadership supported Mr. Menendez in his 2018 primary race, despite that first corruption prosecution. And it was Democratic lawmakers who stripped the wide-ranging ethics provisions out of a 2021 political reform bill called the For the People Act and joined Republicans in fighting legislation curbing stock trades by members of Congress and their families. Hunter Biden’s persistent business dealings with a who’s who of the corrupt former Soviet Union raised scarcely a murmur from Democrats.
With this kind of track record, Democrats’ effort to contrast themselves with the lawlessness of Mr. Trump’s Republicans can be taken only so seriously. Committed partisans will always look past their own party’s wrongdoing, but in a race this close, Democrats need to make a convincing case to uncommitted voters.
Beyond electoral arithmetic, how Democrats respond to malfeasance within their party will affect the character of American democracy and government. The fundamental ethos of the Democratic Party should be to expand political participation. But a major reason so many Americans choose not to vote is their conviction that “the system is corrupt.” How does the party hope to draw these citizens into the conversation when it keeps providing good reasons for their distrust?
Moreover, the way corruption is prosecuted and reported on — as one-off scandals committed by these individuals at a specific point in time — camouflages what may be modern corruption’s greatest evil: It is at its heart a system of exclusion, designed to reserve ongoing access to political and monetary gain to a close-knit group of insiders.
Around the world, and increasingly in the United States, networks of public officials, financiers, business executives, philanthropists and even out-and-out criminals have used corrupt practices to monopolize public power. These networks repurpose the levers of government to serve their private interests at the expense of the public and to ensure their own impunity.
The fact that so many corruption cases in the United States have gone to trial and resulted in convictions over the past half-dozen years is a tribute to the Justice Department. But the persistence of the corrupt system that these cases put on display is anathema to the very spirit of democracy. The Democratic Party should treat this scourge as the peril it is, with an energy and intensity of focus that have so far been lacking.
Given Vice President Kamala Harris’s past as a California prosecutor, she is perfectly positioned to lead this charge. Rather than just touting her record, she should use it to develop a plan full of hard-nosed specifics.
Elements might include:
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An unflinching pledge to set and enforce specific standards in all her executive branch appointments regarding conflict of interest, nepotism, gifts and gratuities, and the revolving door — in either direction — between private sector and regulatory agency work.
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A commitment to push Congress to pass into law these standards and other ethics provisions that were dropped from the For the People Act, so that their enforcement doesn’t hinge on a president’s discretion.
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A commitment to significantly increase the budget and standing of the corporate crime and corruption efforts within the U.S. Department of Justice.
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An equivalent commitment for independent watchdogs within federal agencies.
Even in the few weeks left before November’s election, forceful and forthright support for measures like these may drive home this key distinction between the two parties that Democrats are trying to draw. Such a campaign, and real follow-through, would put the Democratic Party where its name suggests it ought to be: leading the fight to wrest American democracy away from cliques of elite insiders and giving it back to the people.
The post Democrats Have a Corruption Problem. They Can’t Keep Ignoring It. appeared first on New York Times.
