Trump's Slush Fund Shows Off This Administration's Shameless Impunity

"All of the gravest trespasses of the Watergate scandal were brewed up and executed at the behest of the keepers of the Nixon White House's vast network of covert slush funds. The Committee to Re-Elect the President, chaired by the administration's fathomlessly corrupt attorney general John Mitchell, was the chief sluicegate for the White House's dirty-tricks fund-but it wasn't the White House's only, or even most notable, foray into mob-style governance."

"Four months before the break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters, a separate slush fund steered $400,000 in corporate dosh to the 1972 Republican National Convention in order to secure a favorable antitrust ruling from the White House. A year prior to that, a group of dairy cooperatives arranged a $2 million donation to the GOP in exchange for the White House agreeing to lift price controls on milk-which worked out to a nifty $100 million return on investment for the nation's milk producers."

"As it later would with Watergate, the Nixon White House sought to suppress and downplay critical reporting on the slush-fund scandals, but to no avail-these casual mob-style shakedowns harmed the administration's reputation, fueled the greater lawlessness of the administration, and metastasized into what White House Counsel John Dean aptly called "a cancer" on Nixon's presidency."

Watergate-style corruption involved covert slush funds run from the Nixon White House, including the Committee to Re-Elect the President chaired by John Mitchell. The committee functioned as a major channel for dirty-tricks funding. Other slush funds supported political objectives, including steering $400,000 to the 1972 Republican National Convention to influence an antitrust ruling, and arranging a $2 million donation from dairy cooperatives in exchange for lifting milk price controls. These actions were paired with efforts to suppress and downplay critical reporting, which failed. The resulting scandals harmed the administration’s reputation, increased lawlessness, and grew into a destructive force described as a cancer on the presidency.

Read at The Nation