Dr. Jodi Vittori
Appearances
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
But Pol Pot was not buying mansions in the south of France or anything during this, or Ayeri in Tanzania, the entire population was impoverished under his regime, but he wasn't buying fancy mansions somewhere in the States or something like that. So they are rare, but you can have authoritarian and even totalitarian regimes that are not kleptocracies. But most kleptocracies will be at least...
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
competitive authoritarianism have significant backsliding if they've been democracies ever because you can't have rule by thieves in a functioning governing democracy and have people not protesting and voting the bums out and so forth so you need to make sure you stay in power to run your kleptocracy so they'll at least be very shaky on the democracy side all the way up to full-fledged totalitarian dictatorships like kim jong-un or you know north korea or something like that
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
Well, autocracies can come in a lot of different forms. So you asked me a couple of different types and they work different ways. The one we most think of is probably Russia and it's, you know, think of their oligarchs.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
They're not quite oligarchs nowadays, but the types of oligarchs is very, very tiny inner grouping that controls the Russian economy can decide to send it to war in devastating ways and, you know, devastate their next door neighbor in Ukraine. The lack of democracy in there, they have kind of fake votes.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
But it's not obviously it's not a functioning real democracy, but just the huge amount of money, what we call asset stripping and so forth that occurs there. That's one kind. You have other kleptocracies like in Afghanistan under the Taliban, part one and the United States, where it's just a free for all. In Russia's case, you know exactly who's in charge.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
So Sudan right now would be a great example of that, just total chaos sort of quote-unquote. And then you have sort of the more refined sort of kleptocracies. Think of Hungary or the UAE. That can be nice places to go visit. They seem to have some level of rule of law when you're there. You're not getting, you know, this is not Afghanistan or Sudan, clearly.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
You know, they're kind of shiny, the nice downtown areas and so forth. And they're a much more subtle sort of form of kleptocracy. You know, Hungary is the classic example. Orban calls this country an illiberal democracy. That's his goal. Of course, it's an oxymoron. Liberal with a small L, obviously, not a big L. It's an oxymoron.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
You can't be democratic and not be liberal with the rule of law and rule of law institute. Right. but he has made it so that his cronies control the media. He makes sure his friends get contracts. These are very expensive contracts and so forth.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
The United States, if it does slip into kleptocracy will be unique because we have never had a situation where a consolidated democracy with strong governing institutions has gone to a full-fledged kleptocracy before. It was always theoretically possible, but it hasn't happened. There have been grand corruption scandals in places.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
But the United States wouldn't be considered a consolidated democracy at that point. We don't really, truly become a fully fledged, consolidated democracy until after the passing of the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s. So again, that's not going to qualify. Plus, U.S. is the country in the international system. It's the reserve currency. It's the largest military.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
What happens when the state power in the global system, if it becomes a kleptocracy? We don't have a historic model for that.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
I think a little bit. I mean, our founding fathers did an amazing job on taking government and setting up in ways with checks and balances.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
And well, and they were in many ways, some scholars make the argument that a lot of what went into the Constitution is actually anti-corruption methods and institutions as they understood them at the time. Things like the Emoluments Clause. They had seen kings bribed with, you know, chests of gold. They didn't. That's why they put it in there. It was in the Articles of Confederation.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
There's not even really debate in putting it in the Constitution.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
Well, you have to live in your district. So you can't just, you know, have these rotten boroughs where, you know, somebody's patron or whatever, just, you know, you declare them your MP in Parliament. So a lot of the Constitution is actually corruption as they know it. But it, of course, assumes famously, if men were angels, we wouldn't need government.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
They in many ways, it's set up to use one person's greed against the other. It's one of the things I've always loved most about our founding fathers is someone who reads a lot of political theory, Marxism and a lot of the Islamism underside could have been others assume that you can make a perfect society. And our founding fathers took people as they were.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
And so, you know, it's this idea that Congress should be a check on the president, actually supposed to be the most important power, which you've brought up before in other episodes. And the role of the Supreme Court evolves over time. But right now there's big concerns because, of course, Congress isn't acting as a check. Indeed, Trump is not unlike in his first term.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
I mean, they approved Pete Pegg's death. I mean, come on.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
Yeah. I mean, who in a million years would have thought that these people are qualified to be in government? You know, we have a Supreme Court that basically gave a tremendous amount of impunity to Trump himself. in the United States versus Trump, which is extremely concerning. And a Supreme Court that, especially since 2010, has really shrunk what the definition of corruption is.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
Well, and the concerns about, you know, half million dollar Winnebago's and so forth aren't exactly helping their credibility with the people. Not at all. Damn. That's a big part of what you deal with in any sort of society, but particularly if society really is becoming much more kleptocratic. Every day it's another, how is this okay?
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
That degradation of society, its values, its norms, as its institutions are allowed to degrade themselves. The society at large in many ways degrades itself.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
It's, I mean, different scholars will some will argue that we're already at least in an oligarchy. And this came up quite a bit since 2008. And you actually brought up in one of your other shows the fact that nobody was actually went to jail for gross not led to 2008.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
That at least if not a kleptocracy, these increasing concerns about the United States already being an oligarchy ruled by the few were those few. It's an Aristotelian term literally from 350 B.C., that these are individuals that are in charge for their benefit, not for the benefit of society overall.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
And I understand the argument at the time. It actually makes a lot of sense. And many of those who were in charge had been students of the Great Depression. But after the fact, they still didn't go to jail. And it wasn't just that. We've seen the role that money is playing increasingly in politics.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
How different as we focus a lot in the Supreme Court and Citizens United, but a lot of campaign finance issues. laws and rules have actually been degraded under the courts and particularly the Supreme Court over the years to to a shell of what they were in the past. The amount of what what constituted corruption has shrunk, the ability of politicians to accept money.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
One of the interesting things about the definition of a conflict of interest overall is we know it's very it degrades a democracy. But conflict of interest doesn't actually have to be illegal, unlike bribery or something where there's illegality.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
The concept is if a rational person could have questions about that civil servant or that politician and where their interest lies, that's where the conflict of interest is.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
It makes it highly unethical, but it also just degrades your overall democracy and your overall governing system. And that's the kind of things that we see with the Supreme Court and the expensive fishing trips and the expensive Winnebago's. Clearly I need better friends because I'm not getting free Winnebago's.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
The ability for large amounts of money to be bundled and so forth and given to politicians, the weakening of the rules of what they can use for personal use versus non-personal use and the role of private loans. even book sales, stuff like that.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
In some ways, yes. In some ways, no. And the laws are always changing. And when you make a law, someone finds a loophole, you know, right?
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
It will be, but when we look at the United States compared to other countries, like the ability to give unlimited amounts of dark money under many circumstances is unique. Fair point. The German Marshall Fund did a really interesting study and looked at a lot of countries and their campaign finance laws, and everybody's got a loophole somewhere that everybody thinks is crazy.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
But, you know, this whole Citizens United and dark money capability, that one really stands out in the world that you don't have another that you really don't see in other places. When you get a big corruption scandal with campaign finance in Britain or something, you're talking about a few million dollars, not tens and tens of millions of dollars.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
And we just kind of look at them like, oh, isn't that cute? When they're complaining about their corruption scandal, they're like, oh, let's talk here.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
So the kinds of things, the rules that keep coming out are more and more concerning. We talked about campaign finance and the issues with that. But given my teaching and my career, I started working on these issues actually when I was back in the military on an anti-corruption task force.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
What really stands out for me is the fact that as the Trump administration has come in this time, they have undermined so many of the anti-corruption rules and the Department of Justice institutions that are meant to minimize the levels of corruption coming in. So we already had lots of issues and lots of loopholes and questions about enforcement, like with 2008 and nobody going to jail.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
But things like the fact that this ties with your constitutional crisis concerns, the fact that the government said, we're just not going to enforce the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for the next six months. And we're not going to enforce the law, ironically, which passed in Trump 1, that ends most anonymous shell companies.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
Not only are we not going to enforce it, we're going to make an interim final rule that is the exact opposite of what Congress legislated. And Congress, good luck with that, and the courts, good luck with that. These are very frightening issues. And then you add crypto to it. Not only the Trump family and their business interests with crypto, but just putting crypto-friendly individuals in there.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
Lots of people have different opinions on what is the value of crypto or does it have a value outside of money laundering and corruption.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
So our prior secretary of the treasury, Janet Yellen, had noted and lots of people noted it before that the United States was already the easiest place in the world to launder your money. Now with not enforcing the- Hey, I watched Ozark.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
Let's throw some crypto in there. What could go wrong? And let's let- What could go wrong? More and more. And yeah, let's let normal people get involved. What could go wrong? Mm-hmm. So you've already got a place where we have lots of dirty money flowing around. We don't actually know how much because we have more secrecy rules than about 90 different countries in the world.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
The standard is not anonymous shell companies, for example. The United States, on January 1, 2021, passed the Corporate Transparency Act as part of the National Defense Authorization Act. They did have to override Trump's veto for it, not because of the corporate transparency act.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
um that ended this anonymous disability to anonymous shell companies so if you have anonymous shell companies we have anonymous trust we have all sorts of anonymity that we treat as basically the getaway car for all sorts of illicit money coming by with the united states but if you think of a society with so much dirty money coming in into its politics into its economic sectors into we've often focused on federal government but state and local governments are particularly susceptible to corruption
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
And what that does to your larger country, what it does to your democracy. So we were already the easiest place to launder money. And we basically put out a giant welcome sign that says, bring it here, bring it on. And here's if you have five million dollars, you can buy some citizenship, too.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
So states don't get evaluated the same way as countries do. This is one of the issues for the United States. We're such a big country, and we kind of have 50-plus, you know, we've got D.C. and Puerto Rico and all that, different polities, different local governments, different civil societies.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
So, you know, when we think of what place is the most corrupt in the world or whatever, there's the corruption barometer that Transparency National does. There's the Corruption Perceptions Index. There's the World Bank Governance Index. There's all these indexes, but none of those are states. Right. There's only been a couple attempts to even look at how corrupt states are.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
And there's a lot of issues in even trying to measure a couple of different ones. One of them looked at what were some of the worst states when it came to their actual laws. For those who live in Virginia, it actually comes out as one of the worst ones because they have some of the worst laws in the United States.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
You can you can have you can have business in front of the state legislature and write a check and no problem.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
No. And there's huge loopholes in it.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
Florida recently did that as well. Florida made it easier to hide money. It was interesting, too, because they were as far as you could tell, was actually changed to the Wal-Mart family, or at least that was the main lobbyist behind it. But it was, you know, as far as local media reports, you know, hey, if Wyoming can do that, why can't we?
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
to make it easier to do anonymous trust, which are- It made it a competition thing.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
In Wyoming, it's been good for a tiny number of five or six key individuals. Actually, it's not helped the typical population at all. And it's become one of the scam capitals of the world. And strangely enough, North Korean government was using the ability to form these anonymous companies and trusts and so forth in Wyoming, particularly to undermine U.S.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
national security, to be able to get into companies and so forth, to make these fake LinkedIn profiles and so forth and get their people embedded in companies and secrets and so forth and money. So it's undermining U.S. national security with no real benefit to the state of Wyoming itself.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
And so other ways we measure states is just an attempt to look at do their laws actually meet the needs of their citizens and stuff. Not surprisingly, southern states do particularly poorly by that.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
A recent book that literally just came out in the last month by Michael Johnston and Ozgan Dinser tries to do different assessments of states and try to figure out looking at things like police violence and its links to racial politics and the environment in those states.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
So a couple of things are going to have to happen. And a lot of these have been put out by Lewicki, Ways, Iblat. I mean, there's lots of these out. Some of these are going to be a surprise. A lot of it is just making politics so that people have a greater input into the politics themselves.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
And so that's going to include anti-gerrymandering so that people choose their politicians more than politicians choosing their vote.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
And the size of Congress. But you're still going to have to make anti gerrymandering rules. Both parties have played with gerrymandering. The Republicans took it to a new level, but both sides have played with it. So gerrymandering, you're you're going to have to do some sort of anti Citizens United reform. You're going to have to do an amendment to over.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
You think there needs to be a constitutional amendment, right? Yeah. So there are probably some constitutional amendments or some creative ways to get around them. Popular elections would help a great deal so that you no longer have that imbalance between rural and less populated areas versus.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
But they're not impossible. I mean, think of the 16th Amendment was the income tax amendment. And that was all about corruption and the fact that you had robber barons and they weren't paying their taxes. Wow, that sounds really familiar lately. Obviously, they immediately found loopholes, et cetera.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
But this was supposed to be one of the means that you limited corruption, you limited oligarchy in whatever year, past 1920, whatever. This was one of the major reforms. And it was an amendment that passed incredibly rapidly. So it was hard. It's not impossible. But with some of the Supreme Court decisions that have come down, Trump versus the United States is probably the most frightening one.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
And then, you know, movements to to reform the Supreme Court itself. You know, who gets to pick the judges, maybe having a certain term limits on the court. You know, people so many years and then go back to their old courts, for example. So you have a constant rotation or giving every president to.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
know two two justices that come in so that you're not always having this major fight um so these are some of the standard things that really stand out and a lot of the just the campaign finance reform sort of things that were there in the past sort of getting back to the original founders um limiting lobbying there the you know lobbying was not an enforceable contract in the united states in the 1870s per the supreme court it wasn't criminal
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
But if you got double-crossed by, you know, if you paid a lobbyist and then the lobbyist felt like they didn't get paid enough, they couldn't take you to court because it wasn't considered a enforceable contract because you were monetizing your citizenship.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
It starts to change. It's affirmed by the Supreme Court up to the 1870s. And then starting in the 1930s is really where this starts sort of like bit by bit sort of getting taken apart. And then it really hits gangbusters after 2010.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
And that's where we really start getting back to our original discussion of the concerns about kleptocracy. Where in a kleptocracy, the institutions of the state are morphed in a way that the national interest, the interest of the citizens at best are secondary. They're definitely not the primary. And that goes for domestic politics, foreign politics. They're definitely not secondary.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
Maybe tertiary. In some states, like Democratic Republic of Congo or something, they don't even show up. They're not, you know, they're not even there. And so your discussion about different lobbyists for different industries arguing with each other Where does a citizen go to have their interests brought forward?
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
There are some controversial studies that say citizens actually have very little influence on government. Those are controversial, and there's a lot of legitimate arguments that the methodology was flawed in those particular studies. But certainly we've seen the realm where money seems to at least buy more influence.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
When I worked for civil society, we would often go work with the staffers for various members of Congress. They were wonderful staffers. They were great to work with. But I live in Washington or outside of Washington, D.C. My lobbyist friends would meet with the senator, not the staffers. Just that access. I mean, the advocacy groups, and these included religious groups and so forth.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
But one of the things you also see in a kleptocracy is where the institutions make it easier to engage in kleptocracy and you start getting on a vicious cycle. So when you say things like you're not enforcing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, you're not enforcing anti-anonymous shell company things, you're going to gut the IRS's ability to go after major taxpayers.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
Doesn't mean you're in one, but it's a very concerning set of red flags that you're making it easier to engage in significant corruption.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
Yeah. Absolutely.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
As I mentioned before, former Secretary of the Treasury Yellen said we're the easiest place to launder money and to tax Justice Network and plenty of other groups that have agreed with her.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
The Tax Justice Network tries to assess these, and the top ones are always the Cayman Islands, usually Switzerland, British Virgin Islands, and us somewhere in the top ones. I haven't looked at this year's, but we're always in the top three, which is not a top three you want to be in. But those are even before we get into the changes since January 20th.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
With, you know, enabling, further enabling crypto, saying you're not going to enforce anti-corruption laws, gutting various asset finance, asset forfeiture and other task forces that have now been dissolved by the attorney general. The golden passport thing is not really helping the situation in that regard because you're... Like, hey, pay me off and you can have U.S.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
citizenship and all the rights and protections that are actually that go with it. But even before that, there were concerns. The reasons the United States was already at the top. It was the easiest place to form anonymous shell companies, anonymous trusts, et cetera. It was the loopholes for being able to evade tax and stuff are already incredibly high.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
Those shell companies and through other means, but also things like tax sharing, information sharing. So when you filed your taxes, assuming you did it since we just passed tax day, you had to file whether you had any overseas bank accounts.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
The United States, with Switzerland in particular, was something called Swiss Leaks in 2016, where they found all these Americans are hiding their money in Switzerland. They require countries, they put a lot of pressure on companies to send the information on bank accounts of American citizens to the U.S. But the United States doesn't share that information with other countries in return.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
So what that did is become... Well, open all your bank accounts in the States and get an anonymous shell company, get an anonymous address. You can't just directly open an anonymous shell company into a U.S. bank. It's not quite that easy because banks have rules under the bank secrecy law and so forth.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
But you can use that as an ability to put money in hedge funds or other areas to launder your money. And so if you're a Swiss citizen... That information isn't going to be shared back to Switzerland. If you're an American citizen with a bank account in Switzerland, that information is going to come to the US government.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
If you're a Swiss citizen hiding your money in the United States, that's not going to go to the Swiss government. So that started bringing in, that made the United States an even better place to launder their money.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
I would put it if the United States is going into a kleptocracy and obviously the warning signs are there. The old Sun Also Rises quote from Hemingway that everybody uses, you know, how did you go bankrupt slowly and then quickly or something like that? Yeah, I would say the same thing with with kleptocracy. And that is, how did the United States become a kleptocracy?
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
Well, you know, there's this chiseling away of laws, campaign finance, United.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
The ability to avoid your taxes, the fact the IRS was already underfunded and unable to go after tax avoidance, tax avoidance and money laundering, even though they're not technically the same, use the exact same processes.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
So whether you're hiding your fentanyl, you're hiding money from your wife, you're about to divorce, so you don't pay alimony, they're the same processes, not from the same organizations. in the same places.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
So that sort of stuff was already there, but then, you know, whatever duct tape was kind of holding the system together and things were actually starting to improve a little bit in the United States with these new laws, with the new regulations that were going in, like that's just sort of, that's rapidly being hard to speak.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
Yeah. Anti-corruption specialist was definitely not on my bingo card. Actually, I didn't go to university. I went to military academy.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
And I studied engineering.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
Which one?
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
Air Force Academy.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
And so I was, you know, I went into the intelligence career field. I ended up working on issues with terrorism finance, the taxpayer.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
I got very interested when I was on peacekeeping in the Balkans, worked on some terrorism finance related issues, ended up getting pulled into NATO's only anti-corruption task force ever, which was in Afghanistan, which, you know, you really start to under, at the time, Afghanistan was the second most corrupt country in the world, according to the Transparency International.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
When I left, it was the most corrupt. So there we go. Those who can't do teach. But and it kept working on it. And I come from corruption from a different perspective than a lot of others. Most come into it from law enforcement or human rights perspective. I come from it from a hard military perspective.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
Very national security, very hard power. What does it do? You know, I served in Iraq. I served in Afghanistan. Both were mission failures. In many ways, because of of corruption, corruption. Right. Yeah. When you talk about why did Afghanistan fall to the Taliban? Ultimately, it's either Pakistan or corruption. Always one of those.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
Absolutely, yeah. And they're definitely overlapping circles there. So I kept working on it and realized that not many people from a military background were writing on it and had that academic background to like, what is corruption? What is kleptocracy? How do you define it? Why do we get mission failure out of these things? And just kept working on it.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
Yeah, no, it's a very combat boot sort of on the ground in, you know, Kabul and Iraq and the Balkans sort of.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
You know, I had my PhD and I landed on the ground and I'm like, you know, some things of the theory worked and some were like, boy, that was crap.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
So it was...
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
Absolutely.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
No, thank you for having me here today. I really appreciate it.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
Thank you.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
Thanks for having me here today. I appreciate it.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
Sure. So kleptocracy literally means rule by thieves, like kleptomaniac, someone who can't stop stealing. Ocracy at the end, like democracy, government by the people, theocracy, government by religion. So kleptocracy is just putting those two together. So government by thieves.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
No, there is not, although people will try to come up with some crazy reasons to justify why they should be a kleptocracy or what they're really doing is reforming things or that's how their culture is set up or whatever. But at the end of the day, they're very predatory on their citizens and often very predatory on the world.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
So there's not one definition of what kinds of things make rule by thieves or what's thiefy enough, what's thievery enough to make it a kleptocracy. But there's a couple of things that we look at that when we're thinking about a place that is a kleptocracy.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
One is that just the amount of money and stuff that is being basically stolen by these thieves and what happens to the institutions of government. And so we have different terms that have, like, if you like Venn diagrams, there's a lot of overlap. Kleptocracy, grand corruption, and state capture often get used interchangeably. There's some slight differences between them.
The Chuck ToddCast
A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint
It doesn't have to be. And I will push back on one of your first sentences just a little bit. There are cases where you have incredibly authoritarian regimes, even totalitarian regimes, that don't engage in large-scale grand corruption. So they're still hideous. Think Pol Pot in Cambodia. Lots of petty corruption, people paying bribes to just survive.