When the FBI formed a fake company and attempted to bribe members of Congress
Gather ’round, children, and hear of a tale from long ago, when accepting bribes as an American government official was a bad thing!
I’m writing this in the aftermath of George Stephanopoulos’ clash with couch pervert JD Vance on the subject of the Trump Administration’s border Tsar Tom Homan. Homan was caught on tape by the FBI accepting a $50,000 bribe from undercover agents posing as business executives. This is yet another blatant example of the corruption at the heart of the Trump administration, one of the hundreds we’ve seen over this weeping cock-sore of a decade, and yet nothing is going to happen.
Now, let’s be clear here, it is satisfying it is to watch Stephanopoulos cut to a commercial despite the protestations of Trump’s vapid dogsbody of a VP. God knows that we’ve got to find the light in all this, cos the dark will suffocate you otherwise. Let’s be real here, that is the only thing resembling a consequence that will come from a United States government official being caught on camera accepting a bribe to influence their behaviour in office.
The thing is, it’s easy to be cynical about all this. Cynicism does seem to be the only response to all this after all. However, what is even more galling about watching these fascists slash the throat of American democracy and gloat in our faces is the fact that all this happened 40 years ago, during the Reagan administration of all things, and it didn’t just end with lost jobs, it ended with people convicted for crimes. Y’know, that thing that a government official is doing when they accept money to influence their behaviour in office.
How did this FBI sting operation go?
In 1978, John F Good put together a sting operation called ‘Abscam’. Good teamed up with convicted con artist Melvin Weinberg and his girlfriend Evelyn Knight to put a fake Arab company together called Abdul Enterprises. At first, this company was intended to investigate causes of theft, forgery and stolen art, but the grift was so convincing that the FBI redirected Abscam’s efforts towards a much more important target, corrupt political figures.
Posing as executives for Abdul Enterprises, Good’s team would organise meetings with high-ranking government officials, saying that they wanted to buy permits and licenses to build casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The unfortunate thing, so they’d say, is that they’d need Saudi Arabian nationals to enter the country and start buying and selling property as quickly as possible. They’d ask the people they were scamming whether that was anything that could be bought for a price, and no less than 12 government officials fell for it.
This story was actually dramatised and adapted into David O Russell’s 2013 caper flick American Hustle, and the truth is, a fictionalised account of all this is probably the only way to see anything like this happening again. It’s certainly not going to happen again any time soon with a Trump-fellating lapdog like Kash Patel in charge of the FBI. Homan will be fine. The Trump Administration will do some other atrocity, and we’ll have to move on to that one. The circle of life continues.