Trump Crime Family to Open Bank – The Monday AM Quickie 8/17/26
I finally saw the Odyssey. My favorite parts were the big comfy chair and the AC. -Whitney
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THE BIG NEWS
Trump Crime Family to Open Bank
Say you’re a crime boss. Say you’re getting a little older, a little tired. Say you still want to satisfy your rapacious appetite for other people’s money, but just don’t have the same juice as when you were running around Studio 54 and trading secret notes with your BFF Jeffrey Epstein and stiffing your contractors. Don’t worry. I have good news. There’s a solution. You can get the marks to come to you. Open a bank.
According to Common Dreams, Politico and the Wall Street Journal, that’s exactly what the Trump crime family is doing. Their World Liberty Financial crypto grift has “conditional approval” from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to turn itself into a federally chartered national trust bank. What does that mean? Well, it means that as long as the company meets “a list of conditions” and gets final approval from OCC Comptroller Jonathan V. Gould, a Trump appointee, it is good to go. I’m bullish on Gould's permission, especially since he said in March that “I take a broad view of what banks are about.”
Under the charter, World Liberty will be allowed to “ issue, redeem and safeguard USD1,” its stablecoin that’s pegged to the dollar. USD1 has a current market value of roughly $4 billion. As The American Prospect reporter Eleanor Davis-Diver wrote and talked to Sam about last week, stablecoins are notoriously unstable and constantly losing their pegs. A run on a stablecoin would ripple out into the rest of the market, meaning that even those who do not own the coin will still get hurt in a crash. But that doesn’t matter to the Trump crime family, and that’s what’s important. At the same time, Trump is doing everything he can to protect fellow criminals, as he did last week when he made it easier to launder money by ruling that companies are no longer required to say who owns them and deleting such information from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.
Per the Journal:
The White House has said previously that “neither the President nor his family has ever engaged—or will ever engage—in conflicts of interest.”
Zach Witkoff, chief executive of World Liberty Financial and chairman of World Liberty Trust Company, said the firm submitted “probably one of the most thoroughly reviewed applications in the history of the OCC.”
“We answered all of the regulator’s questions, and we accepted the significant obligations and ongoing scrutiny that come with the national charter,” Witkoff said in an interview. “If we were looking for less oversight, we would not have chosen federal supervision.”
Zach Witkoff is the son of Steve Witkoff, the president’s friend and Middle East envoy.
World Liberty Trust said it would be governed by a five-member board that includes Zach Witkoff, his father’s brother Robert Witkoff, who is a former co-chief investment officer of The Chubb Corp., and Scott Alper, who is president and chief investment officer of his father’s real-estate firm, Witkoff Group.
The other two members are Jeffrey Weiner, former chairman and chief executive of accounting and advisory firm Marcum LLP, and Erin Baskett, member of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority board of governors and founder of brokerage firm Sine Qua Non Capital.
MORE STORIES TO WATCH
War Profiteer General Dynamics Got $533 Million in Tax Funding to Produce Nothing
Speaking of grifts: War machine maker General Dynamics took more than half a billion dollars out of taxpayers’ pockets in 2024 for an allegedly high-tech factory meant to produce artillery shells for Ukraine and instead produced nothing at all, ProPublica found. Then, instead of trying to get any of that money back, the US Army continued to hand over more money to General Dynamics, giving them another $2.5 billion to waste.
The pointless factory was a shambles that caught on fire so frequently that workers began to consider it “almost normal.” Per ProPublica:
Instead of producing shells in an efficient and streamlined fashion, the pricey machines kept failing in bizarre ways. The robot arms would swing out of control, smashing into carefully calibrated equipment, and sometimes they would unexpectedly drop hunks of steel 5 feet down to the floor. The factory’s signature device, meant to precisely stretch the steel for the artillery shells, instead often cracked it beyond repair. Then there were the giant press machines, which required regular pounding with a sledgehammer to function properly but still botched the shaping of nearly every shell. “We really didn’t have any standardized practice,” said Quantel White, a former employee. “It was just a bunch of guys taking turns going at the machine with a sledgehammer every night.” To workers, even the factory buildings themselves came to feel doomed, with acrid smoke hanging in 100-degree heat over foundations seemingly sinking into the earth.
The situation never improved. The U.S. Army, which funded the factory, ordered work halted on two of its three production lines in August 2025. By then, General Dynamics had blown eight deadlines. Work on the third production line continued, but the facility never produced a single usable shell, according to a report fromthe Department of Defense’s inspector general in July.
Dem PAC Spending $7 Million to Fight Ohio Rep./Domestic Abuser Max Millier
The Ohio congressman is going ahead with his reelection campaign despite accusations of domestic violence by his ex-wife Emily Moreno, who is suing him after he “recklessly published” a naked image of their 2-year-old daughter online, and the investigation that the House Ethics Committee opened into him. So the Democratic House Majority super PAC is increasing its advertisement campaign against him by $6 million, raising the total campaign to about $7 million, according to the AP. At the same time, the House Democrats’ campaigning group moved Miller’s Democratic challenger, Brian Poindexter, onto its list of priority candidates.
QUICKEST QUICKIES
- 7.7 Earthquake Rocks Indonesia, Levels Buildings, Kills at Least 53 At least 235 aftershocks hit, including one with a magnitude of 6.2; people rushed to higher land in fear of a tsunami. via the AP, Reuters and the Guardian.
- Extraordinarily Hot June Causes 16,000 More to Die in Europe Most of the deaths were in Belgium, France and Germany, northern countries that are not used to the heat and have struggled to cope. via the NYT.
- US Navy Plans Aircraft Carrier Redesign to Suit Trump’s Aesthetic Whims The unnecessary project to make the vessels look more like those used during World War II will cost taxpayers an estimated $220 billion. via the HuffPost and the Washington Post.
- Iran Asks Trump to ‘Accept the Reality of Defeat and Stop Indulging in Delusions’ The nation’s deputy foreign minister made the request after the aging dotard in the White House said he might make the Strait of Hormuz a “territory of the United States,” which is not going to happen. via NBC News.
SOME NUMBER
2482
That’s the flight number mistakenly assigned to two American Airline jets simultaneously on Friday, which could have caused them to crash. Air traffic instructions are issued by flight number, so the pilots on each could have both thought the controller's instructions for 2482 were for them. The controller figured out the issue and was able to keep them a safe distance apart, but told the AP that “it could have been disastrous.” Stories over the weekend did not say how the double assignment happened. If I had been covering it, I would have asked if it was because of staff shortages or artificial intelligence.
ON THE SHOW TODAY
8/17: Sam and Emma are in the studio today, and their guests are Daniel Bessner, historian, journalist, and associate professor of American foreign policy at the University of Washington, on to discuss his new book, Imperialist Realism: Politics and Culture at the End of the American Century; and Elijah Manley, Democrat challenger to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz in the primary for Florida’s 20th Congressional District.
DON'T MISS MR CLIPS
ICE Has Insane New 'Electric Shock Gloves' To Terrorize People With
Compliant Technologies is the company that makes the gloves; they also make shock collars, shock vests, and a crowd-suppression device that targets your nervous system.
This Should Be Illegal
Check out Jeffrey Winters’ book, The Blind Spot: How Oligarchs Dominate Our Democracy.
PARTING WORDS
“After years of enduring severe pain from a broken back, navigating the obstacles of the health insurance system and witnessing similar experiences of countless others, I learned that United Healthcare would be holding its annual investor conference in New York City on December 4, 2024, although the specific location was not publicly disclosed.
I then researched the event online. I observed that the annual conference of America’s largest health care organization with the stated mission to make health — excuse me — with the stated mission to make the health system work better for everyone, would be attended by company executives, the board of directors, and hundreds of investors, not doctors, nurses, and patients.
In November of 2024, I traveled from outside of New York State to Manhattan. I then emailed UnitedHealthcare leadership posing as an investor at a firm managing over $50 billion in assets and requesting information about the conference. Unlike my previous interactions with insurers, I received an immediate response within an hour.
Before traveling to New York, I used a 3-D printer to make part of a gun, and I equipped the gun with the silencer and magazine. My travel to New York and email to UnitedHealthcare was with the intent to shoot Brian Thompson.”
On the morning of December 4, 2024, I shot Mr. Thompson in Manhattan and he died. When I did so, I understood that my actions would place him in fear of death or serious bodily injury. I knew what I was doing was illegal.”
– Luigi Mangione, in a statement on Friday, when he pleaded guilty in federal court to stalking and fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Immediately afterwards, Mangione’s lawyers filed a motion saying that the state’s charges of murder and multiple firearms counts should be thrown out under New York’s double jeopardy law. Manhattan US Attorney Jamie McDonald said he is still seeking a life sentence. Jury selection is scheduled to begin in Manhattan Supreme Court in September. The federal trial is expected to begin in January.
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