President Joe Biden and son Hunter Biden
Part of the confusion stems from the media’s refusal to ever put big numbers in context. They all know that the vast majority of their audience is not clear on the distinction between millions, billions, and trillions, and have no idea how large the federal budget is, but they refuse to take the ten seconds and ten words that would be needed to give readers a clearer sense of what is at stake.The other source of confusion is that the Republicans spent four years endlessly hyping the “Biden crime family.” They used Congressional hearings, as well as thousands of appearances on TV news shows, to yell (often literally) about Biden family corruption.
And it’s clear it was not zero. Hunter Biden, while struggling with drug addiction, openly traded on his family name to land a well-paying perch with a Ukrainian energy company. He also managed to sell his artwork, which is not obviously of great value, for $50k a painting.
Joe’s younger brother, James, also seems to have traded on the family name, but the sums involved appear to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and mostly during the years 2017-2019, when Joe Biden was not even in public office.
It is a bad practice for family members to profit from their ties to a vice-president or president, but there is zero evidence that Joe Biden ever did anything to directly benefit his son or brothers in their business dealings. We can be pretty certain of this fact because Republicans in Congress and the White House, both in Trump’s first term and his current term, have left no stone unturned in trying to show Biden’s corruption. (Trump’s first impeachment was over his effort to extort Ukraine’s president to lie about Biden’s corruption.)
While it is difficult to get clear numbers on the extent of the corruption of Trump and his family in his current term, since they disclose as little as possible, and no one can accept what they do disclose at face value, we can try to put some numbers on it. At the very least, it should be totally clear that Trump’s corruption, by any measure, is in a totally different universe from even the worst imaginable story that can be told about Joe Biden and his family.
The list below is far from exhaustive. We will probably not know all the ways that Trump put money into his and his family’s pockets until long after his presidency, and maybe not even then. But this should be a good start.
Venezuela’s Oil -- $13 billion
Trump has repeatedly said that “we” got $13 billion from selling Venezuela’s oil. This is after he kidnapped Venezuela’s president, Nicholas Maduro, and put his vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez, in charge of the country. According to Trump, she is taking her orders from Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Any money that the U.S. gets from selling Venezuela’s oil is essentially stolen from Venezuela. It is their oil. But to make matters worse, there is literally zero accounting of this money. Under the law, any money obtained from Venezuela should go to the U.S. Treasury. Any spending from this money should be approved by Congress.
Instead, Trump has sent the money to an account in Qatar, and it is unclear what is happening with it. Until it can be shown otherwise, it is reasonable to assume that Trump has personally pocketed it. If that is not the case, Trump should be able to document what has happened to this money any day of the week. Until he does show what happened to the money, we might as well assume it went into Donald Trump’s pockets.
Trump Family Crypto -- $1.4 billion
Trump created his own crypto coin, $Trump, which people could buy as a way of currying favor with Trump. Melania Trump also made a crypto coin, $MELANIA. His crypto company, World Liberty Financial, has also put out a crypto coin. In addition to making money from selling the coins directly, Trump also profits from transactions in the coins, since they pay him a fee.
Trump’s “Gift” Plane from Qatar -- $1.1 billion
A gift to the president, while they are in office, is a gift to the United States government. Nonetheless, Trump plans to take the plane that Qatar gave him back to Mar-a-Lago when he leaves office in less than two and a half years. The plane itself was worth $400 million. In addition, the Pentagon is spending between $400 million and $1 billion to install protective equipment which was already in place for the two existing versions of Air Force 1. I have included the middle figure of $700 million.
Trump Truth Social Insider Trading Sales -- $1.2 billion
Donald Trump recently announced that he will sell a special subscription service, where for $100,000 a month, investors could get advance notice of Truth Social posts that are likely to move markets. We don’t know how many investors will ultimately pay for the opportunity to trade on inside information. But if it ends up being 1,000, Trump will pocket $1.2 billion a year from this scam.
Selling pardons – $10 million
Reuters did an investigation of Trump’s pardons, noting that 96% did not follow the normal procedure. They noted that just ten prominent pardon recipients contributed over $10 million to Trump campaign funds. The full amount given by all the people receiving pardons is surely considerably larger. The New York Times had an excellent piece back in March on the pardon industry that has arisen around Trump.
Melania Trump’s 'Documentary' -- $28 million
Melania Trump was given a contract by Amazon for rights to a documentary on her. According to the Wall Street Journal, her take was $28 million. The film grossed $16 million.
Jared Kushner Hedge Fund Investments -- $5.4 billion
Shortly after leaving the White House following Trump’s first term, first son-in-law Jared Kushner started a hedge fund, Affinity Partners, that quickly drew billions of dollars of investments from Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries. While Kushner cannot directly put this money into his pocket, he is certainly positioned to get hundreds of millions in fees from the fund, especially if his proximity to Trump allows for his investments to have large payoffs.
Trump Sons’ Military Contracts -- $315 million
Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have recently taken an interest in several companies that are now getting contracts from the military. The Washington Post puts the value of the current and likely future contracts for these companies at $6.3 billion. If we say five percent will go to the Trump kids, this comes to $315 million.
While this list hopefully captures the biggest windfalls that Trump and his family are receiving from the presidency, it is certainly not a complete list of Trump family corruption. For example, Donald Trump Jr. is a paid advisor to the Kalshi betting market and an investor in Polymarket. The Trump administration has worked aggressively to block regulation of these markets that might hurt their profits.
Donald Trump also trades stock frequently, often buying shares in companies just before they get a major government contract. The Trump family business has been blessed with favorable treatment of hotel and resort projects in countries seeking lower tariff rates on their exports to the United States. And the Trump family openly hawks their merchandise at the White House and on official websites. But most of these items would likely to be small potatoes compared to the graft listed here.
The Biden Crime Family’s Haul
As with the Trump numbers, these are crude guesses. People can also decide for themselves the extent to which they represent presidential corruption. For example, when Hunter Biden gets payments from shady Chinese businesspeople in a period where Joe Biden is a private citizen, is that presidential corruption?
Anyhow, here is what I get.
Hunter Biden Burisma Payments -- $4.0 million
These were payments made to Hunter Biden for serving on the Board of Burisma, a large Ukrainian energy firm. Hunter Biden served on Burisma’s board, starting in 2014, when Joe Biden was vice-president, and remained on the board until 2019, leaving before Joe Biden’s term as president.
Hunter Biden Payment from Chinese Businesses -- $2.6 million
Hunter received $2.6 million in payments in 2017 and 2018 from Chinese business owners with dubious business practices. These were years when Joe Biden was a private citizen, his term as vice-president having ended and more than two years before his term as president began.
Hunter Biden Art Sales -- $1.5 million
Hunter sold 27 paintings between 2021 and 2023 that netted him approximately $1.5 million. Demand for his artwork has fallen considerably after his father left the White House.
James Biden Payment from Chinese Businesses -- $500,000
It seems that some of the money from Hunter Biden’s business associates may have also gone to his uncle and Joe Biden’s brother James. It’s not clear how much this might have been, but as with the payments to Hunter Biden, this was a period where Joe Biden was a private citizen.
If anyone is wondering, I did not forget to put the Biden numbers on the graph. They are just too small to be visible next to the Trump graft numbers.
The point here should be obvious to everyone. Joe Biden’s family members, or at least Hunter Biden, behaved in ways that most of us would likely view as unethical. But even if we blame President Biden for actions in which he had no direct involvement, his corruption is not anywhere near the level of corruption of the Trump administration.
Trump and his family seem to view the government as a massive candy store from which they can take whatever they want as long as Donald Trump is in the White House. And as long as Republicans control Congress and the Supreme Court, they might be right.
Dean Baker is a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the author of the 2016 book Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer. Please consider subscribing to his Substack.
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