The Trump family is openly looting the federal government. Congressional Republicans have decided that's fine.

My congressman, Rep. Bob Onder, recently sent a constituent email praising the Trump White House for its anti-fraud efforts. "The White House anti-fraud task force," he wrote approvingly, "highlighted efforts to identify fraud in government programs and implement new safeguards to prevent future abuse."

The irony was hard to miss.

Last week's big story was that President Donald Trump backed down from pursuing his deeply fraudulent "anti-weaponization" fund to reward his political supporters with almost $1.8 billion of the taxpayers' money — potentially including rioters who assaulted police officers on Jan. 6, 2021 — because Senate Republicans revolted.

But the very reason that revolt was such a big story is that it was so rare. Most of the time, Congressional Republicans look directly at the most documented corruption in modern American political history — and then turn around and send their constituents emails bragging about safeguards against fraud.

They have mostly done nothing. Collectively, deliberately, nothing.

The oversight machinery of Congress exists precisely for moments like this: the committees, the subpoenas, the public hearings that serve as the constitutional counterweight to executive overreach. Republicans control all of it. They have chosen not to use any of it.

Consider what they are choosing to ignore.

Four days before Trump's second inauguration, son Eric Trump signed a deal giving an Abu Dhabi-connected investment firm a 49% stake in World Liberty Financial, the Trump family's cryptocurrency venture, for $500 million.

Of the first $250 million wired upfront, $187 million went directly to Trump family-controlled entities. At least $31 million more went to entities tied to the family of Steve Witkoff — who was subsequently appointed U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East.

His son, Zach Witkoff, serves as World Liberty's co-founder. Months later, the Trump administration reversed a prior policy and authorized the export of America's most sensitive AI chip technology to the UAE — to companies connected to those same investors.

The Biden administration had blocked that transfer over fears the chips could reach China.

That Trump had previously pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao — who had pleaded guilty to permitting his exchange to be used by terrorists, cybercriminals, and child abusers — only deepened the questions. Congressional Republicans have not asked a single one of them.

Then there is the matter of the president's sons and the Pentagon. In April 2026, the U.S. Air Force agreed to purchase interceptor drones from Powerus, a defense company backed by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.

The brothers' investment firm helped engineer a reverse merger between Powerus and Aureus Greenway, a golf club company they had previously backed, taking the combined entity public and landing them seats on its board.

That same week, Eric Trump celebrated a separate $24 million defense contract won by Foundation Industries, another firm where he serves as chief strategic adviser.

The president's sons are financially profiting from defense contracts awarded by a military under their father's direct command, during an active war. Congressional Republicans have said nothing.

According to a January 2026 report from Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Trump and his family have generated nearly $2.25 billion in realized, risk-free profits from foreign payments, corrupt businessmen, and others — rising to as much as $9.72 billion when unrealized paper wealth from digital assets is included.

That's not a rounding error. That's a sitting president enriching his family at a scale that dwarfs anything in American history, in plain view, while his party controls both chambers of Congress.

And what have congressional Republicans done? They have blocked Democratic attempts to compel testimony and documents. The oversight machinery of Congress has been dismantled for partisan convenience.

This is not an accident; it is a governing strategy. As long as Republicans hold the majority, there will be no Watergate-style select committee, no Iran-Contra hearings, no special counsel appointed with the blessing of Congress. There will only be silence.

The message the Congress sends to the Trump family is clear: Take what you want. We will not look.

The corruption is brazen. But congressional complicity is the story. Trump can only govern this way because the people constitutionally empowered to stop him have chosen, repeatedly, not to.

Every blocked subpoena is a permission slip. Every canceled hearing is an invitation to do more. Congressional Republicans are not merely failing in their oversight duty — they are actively protecting a system of enrichment that degrades the government they were elected to run.

Let's not forget that this is the same Republican Party that spent years — appropriately so — investigating Hunter Biden's laptop and is now waving away a foreign-government stake in the president's crypto company, Pentagon contracts flowing to his sons, and pardons that appear timed to financial windfalls.

This will not change until the people who could stop it decide that their oath to the Constitution outweighs their fear of a primary.

____

_____

©2026 STLtoday.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.