A frequent hallmark of great ideas is that they look so obvious in retrospect.
casually dropped one of those insight bombs into our livestream yesterday. You can watch it in the embedded video above, or watch/listen via the Spotify player here (Greg’s head-turner comes at the 41 minute mark):His point was something that sounds almost embarrassingly apparent when you say it aloud. It’s so important, and yet so easy to forget amid the firehouse of outrage that is constantly pummeling our faces. Frankly, it’s something that should have been in our minds upon the death of Robert Redford last week, thinking of All the President’s Men:
To understand anything having to do with Trump, always follow the money.
On the classic TV series Law and Order, the opening voiceover intoned: “In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police, who investigate crime; and the district attorneys, who prosecute the offenders.”
So, follow the money. What you’ll find is that President Donald Trump has covered his bases by putting people who are completely financially dependent on him in charge of both roles.
The police side: FBI Director Kash Patel is essentially a professional Trumper. About a third of his $6 million net worth came from consulting contracts mostly for Trump Media & Technology Group (the parent company of Truth Social) and Trump’s PAC.1
Much of the rest came via a consulting contract with a Cayman Islands-based company that turns out to be the parent company for the controversial Chinese “fast fashion” company Shein, according to Wired.2 That contract started in April 2024, and came with a grant of stock worth between $1 and $5 million [note: a multi-million dollar grant of stock obscured inside a consulting contract from a holding company obscuring the real company behind it and headquartered in the Cayman Islands obscuring the real country of origin…sounds legit].
Coincidentally, that contract / stock grant came one month before Shein’s parent company also retained the services of the lobbying firm that employed now-Attorney General Pam Bondi and now-Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.
The prosecutor side: Bondi has gone from low-paid career public servant to being worth $12.2 million in just 6 years, and most of that newfound wealth comes from working for offshoots of the Trump universe, especially lobbying on contracts that come from Trump access.
In addition, a full third of it comes from a grant of stock that Trump directly gave her in his Truth Social company.3 And by what is either a blatant act of insider trading or another fascinating coincidence, Bondi sold at least some of those shares on Trump’s “Liberation Day”—i.e., right before they declined 13% in value along with the rest of the Trump-induced stock market tank.4 That earned her between $1 and $5 million on the spot.
Another coincidence: as reported by CNN, in one of her first acts on the job Bondi announced that she was “limiting criminal enforcement of a foreign agents registration law that’s been used to investigate or prosecute Trump donors and allies and disbanding a foreign election interference task force that’s identified foreign meddling in US elections, including in Trump’s favor.”5
Yet another coincidence—as I wrote about back in May, Bondi’s Justice Department also eliminated the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces responsible for transnational crime at the same time that Trump’s sons were on a multi-country tour trying to shake loose money from Eastern European sources with Russian oligarch ties:
It’s one thing to worry about Trump putting “yes-men” in key positions, and thereby removing some of the guardrails that existed in his first term. Hiring suck-ups is nothing new; neither is hiring people who might eventually make some money as lobbyists.
But what Greg is reminding us is that what’s happening now is something different. Trump’s key enforcers of the law—his top police and prosecutor—aren’t just sycophants. They’re remoras. They haven’t just gotten sustenance from him in the past. Their future depends on his financial success.6 Indeed, beyond money, the more embedded they are with Trump’s corrupt sources of wealth, the more they need to protect him—or obey him because they might eventually need to rely on his presidential pardon power.
In that regard, Trump’s recent demands for investigations, free-speech clampdowns, prosecutions, and his administration killing investigations into his people7 takes on a more sinister cast. How can these thoroughly compromised people refuse?
I hope you enjoy the entire livestream recording, which covered much more on Trump corruption, as well as the critical question of whether there is a big opportunity opening up to fight back against it. And thank you , , and many others for tuning in live!
https://www.investopedia.com/kash-patel-net-worth-here-s-how-trump-s-fbi-director-made-his-money-11687334
https://www.wired.com/story/kash-patel-elite-depot-shein/
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/trump-ag-pick-bondi-discloses-3-million-in-truth-social-stock
https://www.propublica.org/article/pam-bondi-trump-media-stock-tariffs
https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/06/politics/bondi-trump-election-fara-justice/index.html
While Bondi accepted and profited from Trump’s gift of Truth Social stock, Patel has apparently refused the grant worth $800,000 that Trump offered him. But it’s worth noting that the offer came in January, 2025, and hence it served as a reminder of future riches that could await Patel if, and only if, he stays utterly loyal.
https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/news/tom-homan-cash-contracts-trump-doj-investigation-rcna232568
