Transparency My Ass

The Trump administration is trying to convince you that it's the most transparent administration in history. Nothing could be further from the truth.

"You know what's better than saying ‘Trust me’? It's just full transparency.” That’s what Donald Trump told Sean Hannity on Fox news a couple months ago. So let’s take a look at his record of “transparency”, because it’s about as opaque as a nuclear reactor shield.

Let’s start with Trump firing all but two inspectors general the same week he touted transparency on Hannity. American Oversight said “The late-night purge was both illegal and an alarming show of contempt for independent oversight.” The only two Trump left in place were the exceedingly corrupt Joseph Cuffari, who oversaw the deletion of Secret Service January 6th text messages, his refusal to review use of force during the peaceful Black Lives Matter protests, his cover-up of sexual misconduct in DHS, and his refusal to publish a report detailing the inability to track separated migrant families. Add to that the fact that he lied to congress about investigations into his own conduct, and was asked to resign multiple times by members of multiple House committees. And only the transparentiest of transparent guys would sue to shut down the IG Integrity Committee, calling it unconstitutional.

The other inspector general that got to keep his job is none other than DoJ’s Mike Horowitz - a partisan hack who investigated whatever Trump told him to investigate. But every other inspector general was shitcanned by the guy who loves to “investigate the investigators” in what can only be described as the biggest attack on transparency since Trump silenced inspectors general during his first term.

Next, let’s talk about the Trump regime’s attack on the Freedom of Information Act. There have been so many federal jobs lost that one might have missed the fact that Trump has gutted FOIA staff at multiple agencies so drastically that it caused Rep Connolly to fire off to send letters to 24 agencies demanding an explanation.

But that’s not the only attack on FOIA. Trump slid DOGE into the former USDS slot up under the Executive Office of the President to avoid FOIA requests altogether. It would seem to me that if someone were trying to champion transparency, they wouldn’t pull the plug on the freedom to access information in government. It’s so ridiculous that I sued DOGE about it.

Next up, if you’re so gung ho about transparency, why would you authorize your cabinet members to use Signal and set disappearing messages? Seems clear to me you don’t want a paper trail of communications. And it would have been a super-great idea if your incompetent National Security Advisor hadn’t accidentally added a journalist, or if your cracker jack of a Secretary of Defense hadn’t walked three of his chattiest buddies out of the pentagon. And speaking of that, I’m not sure that administering polygraph tests to your staff across multiple agencies to root out leakers is really in the interest of transparency, either. Seems to me if you’re proud of what you’re doing, and touting openness about it, that you wouldn’t need to shake down your own people to find the turncoats. Just my two cents.

Something else you can chalk up in the anti-transparency column is the clandestine removal of people without due process under the Alien Enemies Act. First, if you’re certain of your evidence, you wouldn’t try to avoid due process. That’s why it’s there. So you can put your accusations to a jury. The only reason to skirt due process is to cover up your total lack of evidence. Not to mention changing the call signs for the flights that disappear people in a failed effort to prevent people from tracking your planes. Top that off with the arguments the regime has made in court to justify their refusal to follow due process which include:

1. State Secrets Privilege

2. Work Product Privilege

3. Attorney Client Privilege

4. Deliberative Process Privilege

5. The entirely made-up “Governmental Privilege”

They have also refused to share the agreement the government made with Bukele because that would prove the US has constructive custody over the people they disappeared to El Salvador and therefore have the power to bring them back to receive the due process the regime is desperately trying to avoid. Policy dictates that agreement should be published on the State Department website, yet they’re doing everything they can to hide it from the world.

Additionally, if you’re a transparency super-fan and 100% confident in the lawfulness of your actions, you wouldn’t be stonewalling discovery and inventing privileges to hide what you’re doing. But it’s not just the Abrego Garcia case in which the regime is refusing to participate in discovery. They have also asked to halt discovery in the Democratic Attorneys General case against DOGE, among others. They sure do love to sue; all the way up to the point they have to provide documents and testimony in depositions. Funny, that.

Ok, let’s talk about something called the Corporate Transparency Act. Now there’s something that a pro-transparency regime can get behind, right? I mean, it’s right there in the name!

Yeah, no.

The Trump regime has halted enforcement of the Corporate Transparency Act, which requires certain corporations to declare the names of their owners. As the Bureau of Investigative Journalism put it:

Knowing who owns a company isn’t just a matter of corporate admin. It can serve as a vital tool against dictatorships, which build their power on global networks of financial secrecy. It’s key to tackling money-laundering and fraud. Trump’s actions pull the rug out from international efforts to reveal this hidden world. Autocrats and major criminals around the world will be celebrating.

And what transparent administration doesn’t love non-disclosure agreements? As the old saying goes: NDAs are the key to transparency! Trump uses NDAs so often they might as well put it on his tombstone. He’s using NDAs at pretty much all government agencies now, especially for those participating in Reduction in Force talks. There are also NDAs in place at the FAA for anyone involved in the Musk Starlink contracts. Why so secretive?

NDAs, polygraph tests, gutting independent watchdogs, stonewalling discovery, flouting FOIA, disappearing Signal chats, citing non-existent privileges, hiding planes and corporation owners… These are just the examples I can think of off the top of my head. I know there are dozens more, so feel free to link to your favorite anti-transparency Trump regime story in the comments.

~AG

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