Trump's Commerce Secretary Faces Massive Corruption Investigation

It's no secret that Donald Trump's entire cabinet, his administration, the agency heads that he's put in place, they all reek of corruption. Wilbur Ross is no exception. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discuss this issue.

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Hi, I'm Farron Cousins, and this is "Ring of Fire". You know, it's no secret that Donald Trump's entire cabinet, his administration, the agency heads that he's put in place, they all reek of corruption, but so far most of that coverage of the corruption has focused on Scott Pruitt, who's since resined, Tom Price, who had since resigned, Ryan Zinke, Betsy DeVos, Ben Carson, all of whom are actually currently under different investigations at the moment for their corruption. One person that's actually managed to kind of skate by is Wilbur Ross, the Commerce Secretary that Donald Trump put in power.

Wilbur Ross himself is actually a billionaire, much like Betsy DeVos. Just like Betsy DeVos, his entire career with the Trump Administration has been riddled with conflicts of interest, most of which border on illegal. According to a new complaint filed by the Campaign Legal Center this week, Wilbur Ross has been using his office and his power within the Federal Government to basically advise himself on stock trades, which is a massive conflict of interest that, yes, is 100% illegal.

Here's what the Campaign Legal Center has to say. First and foremost, Wilbur Ross promised upon taking office that he was going to divest from all of his personal finances. He wasn't going to be involved with it. He had no say over any of it. He was just going to do his job at the Commerce Department. His stocks were going to do their own thing with whoever he trusts them with. That didn't happen. He did not divest. There's no evidence to suggest he divest, and furthermore there's actually plenty of evidence to suggest that he did not in fact divest from any of his financial holdings.

Again, this man is a billionaire, a billionaire. More money than he knows what to do with, but like so many other billionaires in this country, it's never enough. According the complaint by Campaign Legal Center, Wilbur Ross has on multiple different occasions shorted his own stocks that he owns, sells them for less than they're worth, in order to dump them, usually a day or two before massive news comes out that would end up hurting those stocks. Specially, the stocks they name are Air Lease, Sun Bancorp, and a major holding a Chinese steel company that obviously was effected greatly by Donald Trump's tariffs. He dumped those stocks with insider knowledge so that he didn't lose money.

You know, if that sounds familiar, it should, because that is literally the exact same thing that Chris Collins got popped for last week, arrested for, when he held stock in a pharmaceutical company. He knew that the FDA did not approve their latest drug and that it would hurt the stocks, so he called his son told him to dump the stock the day before the announcement was made. They ended up not losing $750,000 that everybody else lost basically because the stock fell I think 90%.

Nonetheless, Wilbur Ross is doing the same thing on a fairly regular basis as the Secretary of Commerce here in the United States. While the Campaign Legal Center is not suing him per se for these conflicts of interest, they're calling on the Inspector General's Office at the Commerce Department to investigate him to figure this out, to find out if this man is in fact using his office to either make himself richer or avoid major financial losses. Both of those are completely illegal, but according to the evidence it looks pretty much like we can guarantee Wilbur Ross has been doing this since he came into power.

It's not just the Commerce Secretary. It's not just the staffers. Let's not forget how corrupt and incompetent Donald Trump himself is. A few days ago, he was in New York, and he was stumping for republican representative Claudia Tenney. During his little stump speech, he kind of went on a tangent a bit about taxes in New York State.