Corporations That Enjoyed Enforcement Rollback Plowed $200 Million Into Pro-Trump Super PAC
Julia Conley for Common Dreams
Building on an analysis it released earlier this week
regarding hundreds of canceled investigations and dismissed lawsuits against
companies, many of which have ties to the administration, the group published a follow-up report detailing just how much some of the
corporations paid to have their legal troubles wiped away.
Companies that have benefited from the cancellation of
enforcement have given $210.5 million in contributions and pledges to MAGA,
Inc. and other super political action committees (PACs) that worked to elect
President Donald Trump
and other Republicans
in 2024 and are continuing to back right-wing candidates in
the midterms.
As Common Dreams reported, SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has benefited
from at least eight canceled actions, with lawsuits filed against the former
company by the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division
and the National Labor Relations Board dismissed and an investigation into data
center pollution
presumably closed. Tesla has avoided three investigations that the National
Highway Traffic Safety had begun and one that the Department of Labor has
opened into contract compliance.
“Corporations and ultrawealthy executives with enormous
financial interests before the federal government are pouring extraordinary
sums into the president’s political operation,” said Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman. “Once the
check is cashed, the administration is pulling back enforcement actions meant
to punish corporate misconduct. It’s a great deal for the corporate
wrongdoers—at the expense of their victims and the American people.”
Crypto.org is another top beneficiary of Trump’s favorable
treatment of the cryptocurrency industry, Wall Street, Big Tech, and large
corporations that have pledged to help push his far-right agenda in the
elections.
The Securities and Exchange Commission had been
investigating allegations that the crypto platform was trading unregistered
securities. The probe was abruptly closed in March 2025, after the company gave $35 million to
MAGA, Inc. and $2 million to Keep America Great, another super PAC aligned with
the president.
Gemini, co-founded by Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, had been
facing a similar investigation, but it was also closed after the company gave
$20 million to MAGA, Inc.—on top of $10 million each that the two founders
personally donated.
“Allowing corporations to make political payments in order
to make enforcement go away is hardly a model for governing that supposedly
prioritizes ‘law and order,’” wrote Rick Claypool, research director for Public
Citizen, in the report. “On the contrary, it is indicative of a profoundly
unjust and arbitrary mode of enforcement organized around the principles of
rewarding insiders, punishing outsiders, and concentrating power in the hands
of an increasingly authoritarian president.”
He noted that while the Trump
administration has demonstrated little interest in addressing corporate
wrongdoing, “enforcement personnel and resources are being channeled toward
punishing immigrants, activists, and perceived political opponents.”
“Restoring the rule of law will be a
challenge for the future,” wrote Claypool, “and the path forward will require a
rebalance of priorities that ensures that corporations and the powerful cannot
pay to protect themselves from federal enforcement that holds them accountable
when they break the law.”
