Letters from an American - A Flood of Corruption Stories

Episode Date: October 5, 2026

October 4, 2026Saying he will make a payment to seniors, and also pay all Americans if Republicans win in the midterms, Trump is openly talking about using taxpayer money to buy votes, Trump is increasingly worried about Democrats winning control of Congress in the upcoming elections, Democratic control of one or both chambers of Congress will mean that investigations will start immediately, The administration is asserting that executive privilege protecting conversations by the president with government advisors extends to civilians to whom the president speaks, Stories of corruption are surfacing, Sen. Ron Wyden is demanding the release of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein’s finances and the transcript of FBI 302 reports, The administration is involved in business deals with Russia which will benefit Trump's family and donors, The deals shine a spotlight on the fact that under Trump national security is for sale, Jared Kushner’s financial interests in the Israeli military are shielded because he is not a government employee, Donald Trump Jr’s financial deals are likely to be investigated, The extensive hack of the FBI's jobs portal appears to have been the result of incompetence. To read this letter, click here:Listen on Apple PodcastsListen on SpotifyYou can also find Heather at:YouTubeBlueskyInstagramFacebookThreadsTikTok Get full access to Letters from an American at heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribe

October 4th, 2026. On Friday night, just before 11 o'clock, Trump announced that his administration will immediately begin sending checks of nearly $100 to over 20 million wonderful seniors to help pay for their Medicare Part B premiums, which we have already reduced by significant amounts. This money will come from the Medicare Improvement Fund, a pointless slush fund that has only been used by Democrats in Congress to pay for the waste, fraud, and abuse for their special interest friends and drive up health care costs. Congress established the Medicare Improvement Fund in 2008 to enable improvements to the program and periodically adjust payments to health care providers. A Republican Congressional aide told Dan Diamond of the Washington Post that lawmakers had been

planning to use the fund to help fund several health programs. this year, and were taken aback by Trump's announcement. Trump continued, because I delivered on this very important issue for the American people, they can also rest assured the highly popular $5,000 Trump dividend will be distributed to every U.S. citizen, if and when the Republicans win the midterm elections. The fact that he is openly using taxpayer money to buy votes in the election, suggests just how worried Trump is about Democrats winning control of Congress in the upcoming midterms. He has reason to be worried. If Democrats retake control of one or both chambers of Congress,

they will not necessarily be able to pass legislation, since Trump will still be able to veto it. But they will be able to start investigations immediately, and they have made it so clear they intend to do so that the administration is already taking steps to trip them up. In April, the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice issued an opinion that the president doesn't have to comply with the Presidential Records Act, enacted to make sure presidents after Richard M. Nixon could not destroy their records. In May, a federal judge said they did, in fact, have to follow the law. In August, the Department of Justice issued a memo, saying that the executive privilege that enables a president to protect his conversations with government

advisors also covers any civilian to whom the president speaks, so long as they relate to official presidential decision-making. As Trump's time in office stretches out, more and more stories of corruption are surfacing. As Aaron Parnas reported in Midas News, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee wrote a letter on September 30th to Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Cash Patel, demanding they immediately release a document they are illegally concealing and any others like it.

Wyden has been doggedly following the money trail connected to sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein, noting that his operations, including human trafficking and sexual abuse, depended on the banks whose officers looked the other way, as Epstein's finances repeatedly indicated he was engaged in criminal activity. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant has refused to give the Senate Finance Committee access to Treasury materials about those finances, including suspicious activity reports or SARS. When Wyden tried to get Congress to pass a law forcing the release of those files, Senate Republicans,

blocked it. Now, Wyden's investigators have discovered that the FBI conducted an interview with a banker tied to Epstein, but the Bureau did not release the transcript of the interview, known as a 302 report, as Congress required when it passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Widen suggested that the Department of Justice, or DOJ, and the FBI are withholding key documents from Congress and the public. Furthermore, he added, the existence of this 302 indicates that it is likely that the FBI possesses additional related FBI 302s that have not been released, as they should have been under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. A new report from Anton Trenovsky and Eric Lipton of the New York Times Saturday revealed that the administration's talk about doing business

deals with Putin while he continues to strike Ukraine, was not hypothetical. As they have allegedly been negotiating for an end to Russia's war on Ukraine, Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and Trump's special envoy, Steve Whitkoff, neither of whom are diplomats, have been talking with Russia's president Vladimir Putin about a multi-billion dollar deal to buy the assets of Russian oil giant Luke oil at the rock-bottom prices to which they have sunk because of U.S. sanctions. Because such a sale would immediately remove those assets from U.S. sanctions, they would instantly become far more valuable.

Those looking to benefit financially from the purchase would include a major Trump donor, as well as Middle Eastern investors tied to the Trump family and the Whitkoffs. The U.S. government would take a stake in the company as well, through the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, which Congress authorized in 2018 to invest in development projects in lower and middle-income countries. While Luke Oil is technically a private company, observers believe Putin has control over it. And while the deal would have to be approved by the U.S. Treasury Department, it seems unlikely that Trump loyalist Bessent would stop it.

According to Traynovsky and Lipton, Putin suggested the deal on September 5th, It was likely not coincidental that the offer came after Senator Lindsay Graham, a Republican of South Carolina, died on July 11th. Graham, who was close to Trump, was firmly behind Ukraine as it tried to fight off Putin's invasion. Until Trump, Democrats and Republicans both felt strongly that American national security depended on stopping Putin's aggression, and they stood behind Ukraine. Trump's ties to Russia are extensive and well-known, but this apparent attempt to buy Trump's support for Russia, even as the war drags into another winter and Ukraine's drones are destroying Russia's oil sector, seems especially blatant. It puts a spotlight on the fact that, under Trump, U.S. national security is for sale. A Democratic-led Senate would undoubtedly object to what the Republicans have permitted.

Indeed, under Trump, there does not appear to be a line between foreign affairs and Trump family business deals. On October 1st, Allegra Goodwin, Katie Poglase, and Miley-Depueh Camp of CNN, reported that while in discussions about ending the war in Gaza, Kushner has major financial interests in the Israeli military. Kushner's private equity firm, Affinity Partners, has invested in Phoenix Financial, a firm based in Tel Aviv Israel, that, in turn, has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in at least nine companies that provide equipment for the Israeli military. The CNN journalists report that the stock values of all of the nine companies grew last year, and that many of the companies attributed that growth to the war in Gaza. Kushner's firm sold a quarter of its stock in Phoenix in July for more than $340 million,

more than five times the value of its initial purchase. If he were a government employee, Kushner would have to disclose his finances, but he is a volunteer negotiator. One of Kushner's lawyers told the reporters that Kushner has never participated in or directed Phoenix's decisions about investments. But, as the journalists note, Kushner told Forbes that he meets with the leaders of the financial group every few weeks and maintains a very active dialogue with them. Kushner's lawyer confirmed that was true a year ago when Kushner said it, but that since he has

been substantially more engaged in volunteer public service and diplomatic efforts, he has scaled back that contact significantly. It's not just Kushner, the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal on October 2nd warned that Don Jr.'s star turn is coming. noting that the Trump family businesses will be in the spotlight on Capitol Hill for the next two years. Does the Trump family know what is about to hit them? The board asked. It noted that even Republicans are upset at the news that an oligarch close to Putin had paid for Don Jr.'s Wedding Celebration. Senator John Curtis, a Republican of Utah, has called for the Senate to subpoena Don Jr.

to find out how that financial underwriting came to happen. While they're at it, Curtis wants to know more about the family's cryptocurrency and prediction market ventures. The corruption of this administration is matched by its incompetence and neither will come out well in congressional investigations. In September, hackers broke into the FBI jobs portal and stole information about nearly every FBI employee as well as more than 8,000 state and local law enforcement officers who had worked with the FBI agents.

On Saturday, Ken Delanian and Carol Lenig of MS Now reported just how devastating that breach was. The hacked data included names, home addresses, cell phone numbers, FBI email addresses, and employee ID numbers, in addition to personal identifying information for emergency contacts, including social security numbers and personal email addresses. According to FBI officials and outside experts, Delanyan and Lenin report, the breach is a counterintelligence disaster, one of the worst in U.S. history. The information not only exposes the people involved, but also enables adversaries to figure out U.S. priorities and who is working on what.

One cybersecurity expert at the FBI said the cause of the breach was definitely incompetence. The information should never have been linked to the Internet, the expert said. It belonged on our internal system, and some dumbass moved it all to a system connected to the Internet. The expert told Delanyan and Lenig that in chats the FBI obtained, the hackers wrote they couldn't believe that the hack of such important information was so easy. Speaking at a high school gymnasium in Ohio Saturday night, Trump told an audience, just get out and vote. If you do that, we're going to win and we're going to win big,

and we're going to shove it up there. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dead in Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.