Mar 24, 2026
On March 19, The Capitol Forum held a conference call with Brendan Ballou, former federal prosecutor and founder of the Public Integrity Project, to examine recent developments in corruption enforcement, including questions raised by presidential pardons, the rollback of certain white-collar enforcement efforts, and the legal tools available to pursue accountability outside traditional federal prosecutions. The full transcript, which has been modified slightly for accuracy, can be found below.
TEDDY DOWNEY: I’m Teddy Downey, Executive Editor at The Capitol Forum. Today, I’m very pleased to be joined by Brendan Ballou, former federal prosecutor and founder of the Public Integrity Project. He has written extensively on corruption, corporate accountability, private equity, enforcement trends. And he had a great opinion piece in the New York Times recently examining the role of private legal action in addressing alleged corruption. Brendan, thank you so much for doing this today.
BRENDAN BALLOU: Thank you for having me.
TEDDY DOWNEY: And so, I think first, before we get into the corruption stuff—which is what I really want to talk about and I think what everyone here wants to hear about—you have another book coming out. You wrote a great first book about private equity. Your new book, “When Companies Run the Courts: How Forced Arbitration Became America’s Secret Justice System.” Can you tell us when that comes out, like how you turned from private equity to forced arbitration, just how you got into that space?
BRENDAN BALLOU: Yeah, so briefly, the book comes out May 12th. It’s certainly available for pre-order now. This is my first time publicly plugging the book. So, you’re seeing me do this in real time.
But basically, for lawyers, we all have experience with forced arbitration. But I think most folks that aren’t dealing with the law and with the courts every day have no idea that there is essentially a secret justice system in America that is run by corporations. The judges in the forced arbitration system, called arbitrators, by and large, are paid for by the companies that people are suing. And so, unsurprisingly, these arbitrators rule for the companies that are, in effect, their bosses.
I wrote about it because I think people feel strongly, if a little vaguely, that the legal system is biased against ordinary people and towards corporations. And I wanted to explain to folks that that is absolutely true, but to do so in a really specific way, focus on one issue to help them understand why companies so often seem like they’re beyond the reach of the law. Because, at least in the case of forced arbitration, they literally are. So, the book explains how we’ve got to the place that we are, how it’s affecting your life, and how we can escape.
TEDDY DOWNEY: Yeah, we’ve written a ton about forced arbitration, particularly when there’s a big imbalance of power between the worker and the corporation or what have you. So, I’m super excited about that. But the topic today is corruption. We did a call a while back with Zephyr Teachout after her book came out about corruption, which was really a fascinating history around corruption law, enforcement of corruption, and how strong the original laws really were and how against corruption the Founding Fathers were. And really, she told a tale about how deeply perverted those laws have gotten over time. And even since then, a lot obviously has happened.
And maybe the best way to start is, could you put in perspective what’s happened in this second Trump administration, in terms of corruption, what that has done to the law, and also just the enforcement of the law? I mean, obviously, we’re familiar with some of this stuff, but how bad really is it? And maybe give us a sense of where we are right now.
BRENDAN BALLOU: Yeah, well, the refrain on social media tends to be that a Watergate is happening every single day in this administration, which I think is true. The sort of wave of actions that would ordinarily be essentially administrative ruining scandals are happening weekly, maybe daily.
I think that there’s a very reasonable critique of the concern about this administration, when people say, look, there’s always been corruption in American politics. There are always specific scandals about congressmen taking bribes or whatever it happens to be. Or sort of a legalized corruption that allows for powerful wealthy interests to have a disproportionate influence in our political process. I think that’s a really fair critique. And I think it’s really important to talk about what we might call legalized corruption.
But I also think it’s important to recognize that the moment that we’re in is genuinely unprecedented. And what I mean by that is you’ve had a lot of instances where presidents and high ranking politicians have taken money. But generally, that money has been funneled back into the political process for better or worse, going to secretive super PACs or campaign committees or whatever they happen to be. You don’t really have a practice of money going to personally profit the President in exchange for immediate public actions, whether it’s regulatory approval of a deal, a favorable foreign investment, or dramatic changes in American foreign policy.
We really have never seen that before. And we’ve really never seen a president get enriched by $1.4 billion in just the first year of this second term, which is what the New York Times estimates. So, I think there’s really something that’s unique, both in the scale and the quality of the corruption that we’re seeing right now, that really has no precedent in American history.
TEDDY DOWNEY: I mean, what you’re describing really sounds like just straight out bribery. I mean, corruption usually is like—I mean, I guess that’s included in corruption law. I mean, obviously, there are still bribery laws on the books. I think it was pretty well reported that the DOJ basically stopped enforcing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. So, bribery happening internationally. But what is the state of our bribery laws here? Is the DOJ just not enforcing them at all? Or how are people getting away with bribery?
BRENDAN BALLOU: Absolutely. So, there’s really two things that are going on here. One is the dismantling of the infrastructure for going after rich criminals. And then the other is impunity for specific people that are allied to this President or this administration.
So, on the first, you already touched on this with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. When Attorney General Bondi came into office, they paused enforcement of the FCPA entirely. They paused criminal enforcement of the Foreign Agent Registration Act, which prohibits acting as a secret agent of a foreign power in the United States. They’ve also decimated the public integrity section, which goes after rich criminals. They dismantled entirely the Department of Justice’s tax division, which goes after rich tax cheats.
They disbanded the KleptoCapture Task Force, which goes after Russian oligarchs, the Crypto Task Force, which was criminally pursuing people that are scamming people in the crypto field. So, all the real tools that the Department of Justice has for going after corruption really have been kneecapped or dismantled entirely. So, there’s sort of a systemic issue with how this administration enforces the corruption laws.
Then there’s also sort of specific impunity. You think about Tom Homan, the White House border czar. There was public reporting from NBC saying that he accepted $50,000 in a paper bag from an undercover FBI agent with the promise that he would help secure favorable government contracts in the future. That is an extraordinary scandal. In any other administration, it would probably be an administration-ending scandal. And yet, not only has Tom Homan not been arrested, as far as we know, he isn’t being investigated, and he remains in office.
And so, for specific kinds of people who seem to be allied to this administration, it really seems like the law simply doesn’t apply to them. And I think that is another area that’s essentially unprecedented.
TEDDY DOWNEY: You were at DOJ. I’m curious if you have followed some of the saga at the Antitrust Division, where really mergers, that otherwise were going to be challenged, have basically either not gotten a second request or got settled, basically because people have paid lobbyists with connections to Trump to get them settled, sort of over the heads of the antitrust enforcers.
That seems to us particularly extraordinary because there is a law against that and it requires a judicial process called the Tunney Act. But one of the things we are seeing is that the Tunney Act is being enforced. Like this corruption actually is going through—or alleged corruption—is going through a legal process with potential pretty big consequences. The merger could get unwound. There’s tremendous transparency into what is happening.
But then if they didn’t settle, nothing happens. Or at least we haven’t seen anything yet unless maybe the states retroactively sue on a case like Compass Anywhere or something like that. How do you think about that, what’s going on with the antitrust? And is there any other area where there’s like a little transparency into this? Or is it just so overwhelming that there’s just no way for people to keep up with how much is going on?
BRENDAN BALLOU: Yeah, so a bunch of thoughts on that. So, this is one of the things that’s so extraordinary about the current moment, and I think helps us understand sort of at a visceral level what the rule of law means. The idea that the laws apply equally to all people rather than a single individual deciding who the law applies to or not, which seems to be the case here.
That favored parties with well-connected lobbyists literally just are not getting antitrust scrutiny and their deals are getting approved at the expense of fair competition, at the expense of the Antitrust Division, famously. They are hemorrhaging staff and even the politicals are quitting or getting fired.
So, I think it’s enormously concerning. I do think that there are sort of avenues of accountability. You’ve already touched on one, which is the Tunney Act—which 18 months ago, I think, was a pretty obscure part of the antitrust laws—is suddenly becoming enormously prominent. Because this is an opportunity for outsiders to ensure that these deals actually comply with the public interest.
Colorado just submitted a challenge under the Tunney Act to the HPE Juniper deal, which I think is really encouraging. My understanding is that the administration has, at the last minute, dropped its Live Nation Ticketmaster case. They have come up with some sort of settlement that presumably will have to go through some sort of Tunney Act review. So, I think that there’s some opportunity to take action there for outsiders.
But you’re exactly right. For some of these deals, there is no settlement or consent decree. So, you don’t have to go through any sort of Tunney Act review. Paramount Warner Brothers seems like the primary example there. Which just means that we have to think creatively about in a world where the first line DOJ review isn’t happening or maybe happening in a corrupt way.
And the second line review in the Tunney Act isn’t available. How can you creatively enforce the antitrust laws here? I think there are a couple of different options.
One obviously is state AG enforcement. The problem that you’ve got there is the AGs are stretched enormously thin across all different legal avenues to challenge this administration. Antitrust is one part of that. And it’s arguably the most expensive part because you’ve got to hire all these really pricey expert witnesses to challenge these cases.
They’re also facing the uphill battle of, to my knowledge, I can’t think of—maybe Kroger Albertsons. There really isn’t a precedent for states successfully challenging mergers without the involvement of the Department of Justice. Now, I think that there’s a good reason why we need to create some precedent here because DOJ just doesn’t seem interested in fairly enforcing the law here. And I think that can be conveyed to a judge. But you’re really forcing state AGs to go out on a limb in bringing these expensive, creative cases that don’t have a track record with them before.
The last thing that I’ll add on this is the alternatives here are private enforcement. But again, there really isn’t a record of private enforcement successfully challenging merger actions. All of which leads me to say, I think for folks that really care about fair competition and the antitrust laws, they really need to be thinking creatively about sort of not quite direct attacks to some of these mergers. Thinking about things like California or other states’ unfair competition laws where the challenge is not on a traditional merger analysis about market shares and product definitions and so forth, but rather talking about the core corruption that’s arguably gotten us to the specific place that we’re in.
I think those kinds of cases might be—well, they’ll certainly be a lot cheaper to bring. And they might be more effective because they might expose some of the corruption that may have gotten us here. And that may dissuade some of this really, really concerning deal-making that’s going on.
TEDDY DOWNEY: So, let’s talk about private enforcement. Because obviously, there’s a lot of plaintiff’s laws out there. They’re doing a lot of price-fixing cases. They’re doing cases really where it’s like there’s a potential for a big payout and settlement. But in terms of like injunctive relief, there’s not a lot out there.
How do you envision creating an ecosystem of private enforcers who are basically doing public interest law effectively and not plaintiff settlement, kind of get rich law? Although I’m not saying anything bad about that. Obviously, typically, they’re trying to do something good, which is like punish law-breaking among corporations. But what you’re suggesting seems different. How do you create an environment for that? And like, how is the law firm set up? And I understand you have a new law firm as well. So, I don’t know. Tell us about the ecosystem, and maybe if you can, a little bit about your firm.
BRENDAN BALLOU: Yeah, so we’re the Public Integrity Project. We’re two and a half months old. Our purpose is to be a law firm that litigates to raise the legal and reputational cost of corruption. And antitrust is definitely a part of that. We brought our first case about two weeks ago against the government for approving an illegal sale of TikTok’s U.S. assets to various administration allies. Happy to talk about that case if it’s useful. We’re definitely very interested in pursuing some of these antitrust cases. That’s my professional background. It’s something that we’re really, really excited about.
I think you’re exactly right, which is the challenge that you’ve got here is for a lot of these merger deals or a lot of these deals where it seems like it was connections that got the deal approved, not strong antitrust analysis. The challenge that you’ve got is you can really only get injunctive relief, maybe attorney’s fees. It’s really hard to get damages in these cases. And so, it’s hard for the plaintiff side antitrust bar to justify their involvement in cases like these.
Which really means you either need to have an organization that’s not particularly profit focused—like ours is, where we really are mission oriented at getting injunctive relief—and you need to find the financing for it. We’ve been fortunate in that there have been folks that want to support this kind of work financially from a public interest perspective. I think that there are a lot of pro-democracy organizations out there right now that have really been very successful at getting money in the current moment because people understand the threat to democracy that we’re facing.
I do think that there needs to be a bit of a marriage between the pro-democracy folks and the economic justice folks to understand that our interests are really aligned here. You can’t solve the challenge of the threat to American democracy unless you address the underlying economic inequality that got us to the present moment. And conversely, you can’t bring a successful antitrust case unless you can backstop or stop the corruption that would blow up the case entirely or make it move.
So, the future of these two movements are absolutely intertwined. And I hope that the organizations increasingly realize that. I think that they are. And I hope that the donors increasingly realize that no matter what your priority is, these things are going to succeed or fail together.
TEDDY DOWNEY: When you talk about corruption being linked with democracy, I certainly feel that. It’s deeply depressing to think that you’re in a democracy and then you watch corruption go unchallenged, unenforced. It feels like you’re not in a democracy, that you don’t have a rule of law.
But for the average audience, maybe like you said, maybe they’re jaded and just think that’s just politics how it is. Maybe if you could just make this link for us again between corruption and democracy and like how they’re not—they don’t go together. It’s an indication that you don’t have one. Maybe talk a little bit about that and some of the history there. I think that’s easy to lose sight of just given how much is going on.
BRENDAN BALLOU: Absolutely. And this is something that we were talking about in this New York Times piece that we had a couple of weeks ago that you mentioned. Illiberal regimes tend to live or die by their ability to keep corruption going.
So, if the corruption can continue, generally there’s enough support to keep the regime going. Conversely, if the corruption becomes unattractive or unaffordable, illiberal movements tend to fall apart for two reasons. One is that wealthy elites no longer see their future as tied up in the success of the administration. They don’t think they’re going to be able to enrich themselves through corruption because it’s not working. So, you lose elite support for the administration.
You also lose everyday support for the administration. Because I think a lot of people that saw their whatever straw man person they voted for as representing them and their interests, it turns out and they realize that, in fact, the straw man is really just supporting a very narrow and corrupt elite.
And so, raising the salience and the cost of corruption is really important to protecting or returning to democracy. And you see that happen in all sorts of historical and international examples. You think about Poland relatively recently, India in the 1970s, Peru under Fujimori. There’s all sorts of examples where it really is the corruption that undermines the illiberal regime more than anything else.
TEDDY DOWNEY: One of the things that stood out to me in what you were talking about in terms of unwinding all of the apparatus to enforce corruption is a lot of these things are what would have gotten Epstein. And potentially, the thing that people in the general public are enraged about the most is Epstein. And like I haven’t seen these things like totally tied together.
Obviously, there’s a lot of Epstein class outrage. And obviously, people tied to Epstein are not getting enforced against in the U.S. as opposed to what’s happening in the UK, for example. But what do you think about that connection? Is that a way to say, hey, people actually don’t want this. You’re undoing the apparatus that is what allowed for prosecution of one of the most sick humans ever?
BRENDAN BALLOU: Absolutely. And candidly, this is an area that we’ve been looking at and we’re thinking about litigation around the administration is so obviously not in compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act in terms of not producing documents they’re supposed to produce, redacting things they’re not supposed to redact, not explaining the redactions they’re making. So, I think that there’s a lot of legal opportunity there to really force compliance with the law for this administration in a world where Congress is pretty limited in what it can do. And the administration has no interest in fully complying with the law, it seems.
So, there’s definitely an opportunity there. I do also think to your point, that these stories are ultimately connected. Yes, the Epstein story is much more salacious than the apparent corruption in the Antitrust Division and so forth. But I do think both stories speak to a fundamental rot, this idea that for certain kinds of people who are either wealthy enough or loyal enough or connected enough, the law simply doesn’t apply to them. There is literal impunity.
So, I actually think it’s helpful for people to continue to focus on the Epstein story. Because I think it emphasizes that the law in our current moment is not being applied equitably. And so, I think if we can make progress on the Epstein scandal, in terms of forcing transparency, in terms of forcing accountability, it will have positive follow‑on effects in sort of the more core economic justice litigation that we’re doing. Because it shows, yes, in fact, the law does apply to all.
TEDDY DOWNEY: One of the things that I find has not come up as much as I thought is that markets really do like rule of law. Hedge funds, investment firms, they’re always talking about how they need rule of law to enforce their contracts. And also, I’ve gotten the sense that businesspeople don’t like having to beg the government.
But what you’ve seen in this administration is a real sycophancy, a real sucking up to Trump and the Stephen Millers of the world to protect their business interests. Has that surprised you? Or how does all this fit into a regime that really allows for a lot of corruption?
BRENDAN BALLOU: No, I think you’re exactly right, which is in the abstract most companies, most investors, do not want to exist in a world of corruption. Because you succeed or fail, not on the skill of your business, the quality of your business, but on the quality of your connections to the administration. And I think that’s a fundamentally exhausting way and destructive way for us to run our economy.
I think the challenge that we’ve seen is – and you’ve pointed to this—that companies have not shown a lot of courage at the current moment. They might not like the sort of deal making and quid pro-quo that this president seems to demand, but no one entity seems particularly willing to stand up to it. And I think that’s why we’ve seen sort of the strongest resistance happening at the ordinary citizen level when you’re talking about it’s not big companies standing up to this administration and litigation, but grand jurors that are blocking prosecutions and so forth.
So, I don’t think that big companies are going to be really the strong institutional force fighting back against authoritarianism. I don’t think there’s really a lot of historical or international examples when that ever was the case. So, I’m not sure we should really depend on it.
That said, I do think that they can play a role here. I’m not expecting a big studio or agency or production company to oppose the Paramount Warner Brothers deal, but there are people that have made money from those companies that could be supporting litigation here. And they don’t have to do so super publicly or anything like that. But there’s a role for people with means to play. If they’re not willing to do so publicly, they can do so behind the scenes. So, I do think that there’s something that can be done here.
TEDDY DOWNEY: Obviously, there’s a big election coming up later this year. Prediction markets and polls suggests the Democrats are very likely to win the House. Like right now you have like no help as a private attorney, a private law firm, in terms of transparency from the government for the most part.
How does that change if the Democrats win the House and/or the Senate? Does that create more transparency? Does that fuel litigation? Are we going to see a better ecosystem for holding corruption accountable?
BRENDAN BALLOU: Potentially. So, let me give you an example. I alluded to our first case from a few weeks ago where we’re suing over the administration’s approval of the sale of TikTok’s U.S. assets to Oracle and MGX, which is a sovereign wealth fund that bought $2 billion of Trump’s preferred cryptocurrency.
The administration’s facially violating the law here in all sorts of different ways, granting these extensions that weren’t permitted, telling the attorney general not to enforce the law, ultimately approving a deal that allowed ByteDance to continue to be intimately involved in the company.
We’re suing as a private law firm with private plaintiffs. In that world, I think we’re going to be successful. I think we’ve got really good facts on our side. I do think that Congress can be helpful in cases like this, both from an information gathering transparency perspective and from an advocacy perspective. We can certainly use the documents that a House committee or subcommittee subpoenas on what led to this deal, what the specific terms of the deal are and so forth.
That said, I don’t think the administration is really complying with congressional subpoenas particularly well. And I’m not sure how aggressive the House or Democratic members are willing to be in trying to enforce that subpoena authority. So, in a world where members may or may not be willing to or able to sort of move aggressively on the investigation side, at least they can be helpful on the advocacy side. Which is all litigation occurs within the realm of public discourse. Judges only go into rule on something that’s within the realm of acceptable and are going to care more about a case the more that people care about a case.
And so, to the extent that members of Congress can be banging the drum and explaining this—in the TikTok case, this was such an obvious blatant violation of the law and it’s having an effect on our democracy, on free speech, raising the salience of this case—I think is going to be helpful for us given that we are simply trying to get the law enforced. So, I do think there’s a role for Congress to play. It might not be the role that one would immediately think for Congress.
TEDDY DOWNEY: One question I get a lot is, well, who would have standing for this type of creative litigation? And I’m curious how you got standing in that TikTok case. But there’s another case that’s pending. The states today brought litigation against Nexar, Tegna.
And one thing that the FCC has said that they’re planning to do is sort of a pocket waiver for allowing for the violation of media concentration law. Where instead of having a vote on it, which would be subject to court proceeding appeal, they’re going to basically have the media bureau issue the waiver and then have the chairman sit on the vote and not have the vote as a way to not be subject to the legal—any kind of court process. Which strikes me as pretty flatly illegal. But I’m curious in a case like that, or in your TikTok case, how do you get standing? Are you just like, you just get one citizen and they’re like this is bad for all citizens? Or how do you think about that kind of question?
BRENDAN BALLOU: Yeah. No, it’s a great question. And it’s the fundamental thing you have to answer is how do you get a plaintiff that’s willing to sue and has the ability to sue? In a lot of these stories, there are competitors to these companies that absolutely have standing to sue. But to our earlier point in the conversation, I don’t think companies are, by and large, standing up here and willing to join in litigation. Maybe if we’re successful in the coming months, that’s going to change and some of these businesses are going to be willing to sign on.
I think in a world where the big companies that are getting harmed financially really are not willing to get involved in litigation, you really need to think about, to your point, regular citizens. And in particular, the most straightforward way to get standing is to show that there was some sort of financial harm.
So, in our TikTok case our plaintiffs are investors and competitors to TikTok that were financially harmed by the TikTok law not being enforced. So, that’s a very clear monetary harm they experienced. That’s sort of the core of how you get standing in a civil case in America. So, I think we’re on firm footing there.
You can also be thinking about how can you think about these sorts of things in related cases? I have not studied the Nexstar Tegna case particularly closely. But you can be thinking about, okay, is there an employee that’s about to lose their job because of this merger that may have standing to sue? Is there a smaller supplier to some of these businesses that are going to lose out on future deals because of the merger and so forth?
So, thinking about those sorts of things, I’ll just add one more thing, which is one area that we’ve been really interested in is cases where the President pardoned somebody that owed restitution to victims. So, you have various companies that agreed to pay millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars, for instance, under a CFPB consent decree or something like that. Their case gets dismissed. The consent decree gets lifted. And suddenly, victims who were once owed millions of dollars get nothing.
Those sorts of victims are the perfect plaintiffs for cases like this. Because it’s not just they have an interest as ordinary citizens in having the law enforced. They were supposed to get money, and they didn’t. And so, I think those are the folks that are going to be most successful at getting their cases into court.
TEDDY DOWNEY: I’ve got one question. Then I want to move to listener questions. If you have a question, please email us at editorial@thecapitolforum.com. Or you can use the chat function in the webinar panel.
You mentioned that cases will really be brought by private plaintiffs. But in your opinion piece, you mentioned state and local laws.
We had a conference last week out in LA on the future of Hollywood, where Director Chopra, former FTC Commissioner Chopra, said that people need to be monitoring not just state laws, but city laws as well for creative litigation particularly in the antitrust space or consumer protection space, stepping into the vacuum left by the federal government. What’s your thought about state and local laws as the way—and why is that more effective sometimes than federal law?
BRENDAN BALLOU: Yeah, absolutely. The problem that we’ve got with federal law is the federal enforcers don’t seem to want to use them. So, it really falls to states and localities.
I do think that there’s a huge opportunity for state AGs, especially on antitrust enforcement, with the caveat that I just said about the cases they currently have to pursue, the cost of doing antitrust work. But I love the idea of local enforcement as well.
The example that we gave was the Tom Holman story that we were talking about earlier about him allegedly accepting $50,000 in cash. If the administration isn’t willing to investigate that, one of the things that would be really interesting to see is if Tom Holman reported that on a state and local tax returns. And if he didn’t, potentially that’s a civil or criminal violation. So, I think localities can be thinking really creatively about where they have a jurisdictional hook to take action.
And going back to the Epstein examples, you have now New Mexico opening up an investigation because Epstein owned a ranch out there. There’s been great commentary about how New York, either the Manhattan DA, state AG, or the governor could be taking action here.
So, there’s all sorts of ways that states and localities could be taking action. I think you’ve got the resource problem. I also think that you have almost sort of a mindset challenge which is these are entities that are really used to, and rightly so, dealing with local issues. They’re not waking up every morning thinking about how do we go after the illegality of this administration? And so, I think it’s going to take a little bit of a mindset change for some of these institutions to be doing this work.
And then lastly, to sort of toot our own horn, I think what we have tried to bring—or have an advantage on—is as an entirely independent organization, you really just don’t have the inherent bureaucracy that comes with a big city or state government. So, we hope that we can be sort of nimble in a way that just structurally some of these government enforcers can’t be.
TEDDY DOWNEY: I’m excited to see what you guys do. I would say we have noticed a market shift in state AGs. Obviously, there’s that litigation I just mentioned today, standalone state action against a merger. We have just seen a night and day response, from the states, particularly since all the corruption allegations have come out against the DOJ Antitrust Division, culminating with Gail Slater being effectively fired, pushed out.
But I want to turn to listener questions before you have to go. First question, on the public integrity front, the Supreme Court has spent decades gutting fraud and corruption laws, often in 9-0 decisions. Do we need new statutes to correct that? I mean, this 100 percent lines up with my understanding. I mean, just you think about the Supreme Court, not just gutting actual corruption laws, where it’s just harder and harder, even if you have quid pro-quo,, if you can give a tip for quid pro-quo, I mean, you can get off on corruption, according to the Supreme Court.
But also, I think tangentially, there’s other kinds of like corruption where just basically the Supreme Court has given rights to corporations in such a vast way, it kind of undermines the ability to go after corporations for violating the law, if they can just be like, well, it’s my First Amendment right to do this, or what have you. So, curious your thoughts on the current state of Supreme Court. Do we need new laws? Do we need new Supreme Court rules? What’s your take?
BRENDAN BALLOU: Yeah, no, it’s enormously concerning that so much of what people in other countries would consider obscene corruption is just straight up legal in the United States. And I think we can say that the Supreme Court over the past 30 years has really been the driving force in the narrowing of our corruption laws.
So, absolutely, I do think that we need to expand those laws. That really needs to be a priority for Congress, not just the economic justice reasons, but for the democracy protecting reasons that we were talking about earlier. We cannot have a functioning democracy where bribery is essentially legal in the United States. So, I think that there’s a way that the federal criminal laws can be expanded.
I also think that we need to be thinking about better private rights of action for some of these things. So, if we have a future administration that is really not interested in policing its own corruption, Republican or Democratic, it would be helpful if there is a private right of action for some of these statutes and clear standing for who can bring these sorts of claims.
One of the best statutes that we have for this sort of stuff is the False Claims Act, which allows for private rights of action to enforce cheating the federal government and creates incentives for ordinary people to enforce the law here. I think we need to be thinking about more ways to do that.
I’ll also just say, I think maybe inherent in the question, and very understandably so, is a certain amount of pessimism in the present moment, that what can be done, given where DOJ is, given where the Supreme Court is. I completely understand that.
I also do think that there’s a lot of opportunity, both with the federal laws that we have right now when you’re thinking about civil RICO and unjust enrichment, but also state statutes. We were talking earlier about California’s unfair competition law. These are laws, because they are state statutes, the Supreme Court has very little say over their interpretation. And so, I think, in a world where Congress might not be able to act right now because you have a president that’s not going to sign laws, states can be thinking about creating laws that can be useful here.
TEDDY DOWNEY: And our last listener question, and we’ll let you go. To what extent should the current Trumpian corruption be seen as a dialectical response from Republicans to corruption among Democrats in the Biden administration in particular? The Biden siblings, Hunter Biden, et cetera. The impunity there, the pardons there are inextricably linked to the corruption here.
BRENDAN BALLOU: Yeah, so this is an argument I’ve heard often. And I understand it. And I very much do not want to be in the position of defending any previous administration and its attitude towards corruption. I think we have created a form of legalized corruption in the United States that rightly so has created a profound cynicism in Americans about the power of corporations and the wealthy to be beyond the reach of the law.
So, I think that this is a decades long story that’s been going on. I do think it’s really important to distinguish the present moment from previous ones for two reasons that I sort of touched on earlier.
The first is the kind of corruption that we’re experiencing. You really don’t have an example of a president personally enriching himself while in office in exchange for public action. You really don’t have examples of Barack Obama being bribed by a foreign government for a land deal in exchange for lower tariffs in the present moment, Joe Biden or George W. Bush. This is a really new kind of corruption that is changing our foreign and domestic policy in real time.
I also think that there’s a difference in scale. Again, I am not going to defend any previous administration or any elected official for their actions. I think it’s extremely concerning that just about every politician we have in America leaves office rich, whether or not they entered office rich. I think that’s extremely concerning. But when you talk about one sovereign wealth fund buying $2 billion in a preferred cryptocurrency for the President and his family, that’s really just something that doesn’t have a precedent in American history. And I think that is really changing what our government does and what it focuses on.
And the last point here is if we think about this all as essentially an immutable or unchanging story across administrations, it breeds a certain amount of pessimism or hopelessness in thinking that nothing can be done, that the corruption will only grow worse and that sort of the slide towards illiberalism is unstoppable. And I want to be very emphatic. It is stoppable. We are working very hard to stop it. And I think that there is precedent, historically and across the world, of being able to change the course of history.
TEDDY DOWNEY: Well, Brendan, this was incredible. I always learn so much talking to you. It’s so great to have you on. I’m super excited for your book. I will certainly be buying a copy. Would love to have another event down here in D.C. We did one for your last book. Would love to do another one with you when the book comes out. But thank you so much for doing this today.
BRENDAN BALLOU: Thank you and thank you to your audience.
TEDDY DOWNEY: And thanks to everyone for joining us. This concludes the call. Bye-bye.
