Donald Trump Floods The Swamp

How the “anti-establishment” president sold out to the very forces he once vowed to fight.

Oct 24, 2025

Remember when Donald Trump promised to “drain the swamp.” Well, he didn’t. Instead, he sold it naming rights.

Trump once said he’d take on the lobbyists, the big contractors, the deep state. Now, as one watchdog group put it, his second administration is defined by “unprecedented levels of unabashed political corruption: multimillion-dollar checks get donors appointed, seven-figure corporate donations rewarded with legislation and contracts.”

Donald Trump’s Ballroom IS the Swamp.

Trump has torn down the entire East Wing of the White House to build a new “Donald J. Trump Ballroom.” A gilded monument to self-enrichment financed by the very corporations he once railed against.

The donor list reads like a who’s who of entrenched power: Amazon, Apple, Alphabet (Google), Microsoft, Meta, Palantir, Coinbase, Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar, Reynolds, Union Pacific, T-Mobile, and the Adelson and Lutnick families.

You know, the common man of America.

Each company has received, or stands to receive, lucrative federal contracts, deregulation or political protection in return.

Tim Miller of The Bulwark summed it up perfectly:

The Grift: A Down Payment on Policy

Here is how Trump’s pay to play scheme works.

Alphabet (Google’s parent company) paid $22 million towards Trump’s ballroom as part of a settlement after YouTube banned Trump for inciting violence on January 6th. A completely legitimate action on YouTube’s part.
Apple donated to Trump’s ballroom after being threatened with tariffs on its products, they now find themselves exempt from certain tariffs impacting their competitors.
Amazon, Microsoft, and Google all secured billions in federal cloud and AI contracts immediately following their contributions.
Palantir another donor is being paid by the government to spy on you.
Coinbase, Ripple and Tether, all Crypto based companies, appear on the donor list. In return Trump has redrgulated crypto markets, promoted a “government crypto reserve,” and directly profited through a Trump-linked stablecoin and his World Liberty Financial ventures.
Lockheed Martin donated $10 million to the ballroom, roughly what it spends on all federal lobbying in a single year. Trump, the self-proclaimed “anti-war president” has become the military-industrial complex’s favorite salesman.

Donald Trump’s ballroom is the biggest pay to play corruption scheme this country has ever seen. Sadly, that isn’t all the corruption.

Crypto Corruption: The New Swamp Currency

If the ballroom is Trump’s gilded monument to old-school corruption, crypto is his new frontier for it. And thanks to his return to the presidency, Trump is now wealthier than ever.

Since taking office again, Trump’s net worth has risen by roughly $3 billion, according to Forbes and Bloomberg estimates, driven largely by his family’s new ventures in cryptocurrency, including World Liberty Financial, the Trump-branded crypto platform.

Trump has turned cryptocurrency into a shadow finance system for influence, deregulating the industry, issuing pardons, and personally profiting through family-controlled ventures.

Three of the ballroom’s biggest donors, Coinbase, Ripple, and Tether, are at the center of this story. Each poured money into Trump’s ecosystem and received something tangible in return.

Coinbase and Ripple both benefited from Trump’s rollback of SEC enforcement, which weakened consumer protections and reopened the door to speculative pump-and-dump trading.
Tether, long accused of facilitating money-laundering and market manipulation, was effectively freed from scrutiny when Trump’s Treasury Department issued “revised guidance” that loosened reporting rules for stablecoins.

Then came the Binance pardon.

Binance and its founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) pleaded guilty in 2023 to federal charges of money-laundering, unlicensed money-transmission, and sanctions violations after the company admitted it had processed transactions tied to Hamas, ISIS, and Al Qaeda. Binance paid $4.3 billion in penalties. One of the largest corporate criminal settlements in U.S. history.

Despite that, Trump issued a full presidential pardon for Zhao.

Shortly before the pardon, Binance entered into a business arrangement with Trump’s World Liberty Financial, alongside an Emirati-backed firm that committed $2 billion in Trump’s USD1 stablecoin. That deal effectively funneled billions in liquidity into Trump’s crypto enterprise. After the pardon, Binance resumed U.S. operations under “enhanced compliance oversight.” A move critics called a political favor disguised as reform.

So while the Trump administration uses the IRS and Justice Department to investigate what it calls “domestic extremism” by liberal nonprofits, it’s quietly letting the financial pipelines of actual terrorist networks back into the global system.

Crypto was supposed to disrupt the financial elite. Under Trump, it became their newest tool, the swamp’s preferred currency.

$230 Million for the President: A Taxpayer-Funded Payoff in Disguise

If the ballroom is the visible monument of Trump’s corruption and crypto is the hidden system, this $230 million claim is the check that pays for both.

Trump has filed two administrative claims with the Department of Justice, seeking roughly $230 million in damages for what he calls “malicious prosecution.” One tied to the investigation of his 2016 campaign’s Russia connections and another to the 2022 FBI search of Mar-a-Lago.

Both claims were submitted while he was out of office, in late 2023 and 2024. But now, as president again, Trump controls the very agency that will decide whether to pay him.

How the Scheme Works

Under DOJ procedure, settlements of this type are approved by the Deputy or Associate Attorney General. Both positions are now occupied by Trump loyalists, Deputy AG Todd Blanche, his former defense attorney, and Associate AG Stanley Woodward, who represented several Trump-allied co-defendants.

In other words: the judge, jury, and claimant are the same man.

Trump’s legal basis is shaky at best. The investigations ended not through exoneration but through his return to power. And any payment would almost certainly violate the Emoluments Clause, which prohibits a sitting president from receiving federal funds or gifts beyond his official salary.

Yet Trump is still seeking payment, and there is really nothing that can stop him from collecting.

Meanwhile, Meet George Retes

While Trump seeks $230 million from taxpayers, George Retes, a U.S. Army veteran and natural-born American citizen, can’t even get an apology.

Retes was wrongly detained by ICE during a farm raid in Camarillo, California. Despite immediately presenting proof of his citizenship and military service, agents held him for three days in an immigration facility before releasing him without charges or explanation. He says he was denied a lawyer and repeatedly told to “prove” his citizenship.

Retes has filed a formal complaint under the Federal Tort Claims Act and plans to sue the government for violating his constitutional rights.

Who’s more likely to win their case? Trump, who controls the DOJ, or Retes, the veteran it wrongly jailed?

Spoiler: it won’t be Retes.