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Recent Posts
- Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” Is a Grotesque Giveaway to Fossil Fuel Billionaires While Adding $3.3 Trillion to Nation’s Debt
- Senator Chris Murphy Charges that Trump “Has Opened a Channel for Bribery”
- Congressman Casten: Trump’s Assault on the Rule of Law Is Causing Capital Flight Out of U.S. by Foreign Investors
- Trump’s Approval Rating Drops to 80-Year Low; IMF Says U.S. Tariffs Now Exceed the Highs During the Great Depression
- Nasdaq Has Lost More than 3,000 Points Since Trump’s First Full Day in Office in 2025; the Pain Has Barely Begun
- The Bond Crisis Last Week Was a Global No-Confidence Vote in U. S. President Donald Trump
- Trump’s Tariff Plan Guts $5 Trillion in Stock Value in Two Days; Senator Warren Calls for Emergency Action Before Markets Open on Monday
- Trump’s Attacks on Big Law, Universities, and the Media Have a Common Goal: Silence Dissent Against Authoritarian Rule
- Trump Administration Gives All Clear to Laundering Money through Shell Companies and Bribing Foreign Officials
- Four Megabanks on Wall Street Hold $3.2 Trillion in Uninsured Deposits – Which May Explain Senator Schumer’s Pivot to the GOP to Stop a Government Shutdown
- Here’s What Came Crashing Down Yesterday for Trump’s “Genius” Guy, Elon Musk: Tesla Stock, Access to Twitter (X), His Years of Secret Calls with Putin
- After Banning the Associated Press, Trump Is Now Targeting Specific Journalists That He Wants to See Fired
- Closely Watched Atlanta Fed Model Predicts Negative U.S. Growth in First Quarter
- Trump’s Gangster Diplomacy Makes Front Page Headlines Around the Globe
- Who Benefits Alongside Elon Musk If He Succeeds in Killing the CFPB: the Megabanks on Wall Street that Underwrite His Tesla Stock Offerings
- In Trump 1.0, the State Department Used Taxpayer Money to Publish a Book Elevating Elon Musk to a Superhero; It Was Funded by USAID, the Agency Musk Wants to Quickly Shut Down
- News Host Joy Reid Raises Threat of Trump Selling U.S. to Putin; Ten Days Later Her Show Is Cancelled
- Elon Musk’s DOGE Appears to Be Violating a Court Order; It Has Taken Down Hundreds of YouTube Videos that Educate Americans on How to Avoid Being Swindled
- Barron’s Releases Audio of Jamie Dimon Cursing Out His Workers at a Town Hall, as Dimon Plans to Dump Another One Million JPM Shares
- There’s One Federal Investigative Agency that Neither Trump nor Elon Musk Can Touch: It Just Opened an Investigation into DOGE
- Elon Musk’s Companies Were Under Investigation by Five Inspectors General When the Trump Administration Fired Them and Made Musk the Investigator
- Donald Trump Gives the Greenlight to Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase to Return to Bribing Foreign Officials
- After Tech Geeks Built a Back Door to Loot Billions from FTX, Republicans Refuse to Investigate What Elon Musk’s Tech-Squad Did Inside the U.S. Treasury’s Payment System
- Former Prosecutor, Now U.S. Senator, Informs Tesla That CEO Musk May Be Violating Federal Law and to “Preserve All Records”
- Trump’s Hedge Fund Guy Is Now Overseeing the U.S. Treasury, IRS, OCC, U.S. Mint, FinCEN, F-SOC, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
- As Elon Musk Begins Shutting Down Payments to Federal Contractors, a Strange Money Trail Emerges to His Operatives Inside the U.S. Treasury’s Payment System
- JPMorgan Chase Charged by Yet Another Internal Whistleblower with Cooking the Books
- We Asked Google’s AI Search Model, Gemini, Questions About the Fed and Wall Street Megabanks: It Got the Answers Dead Wrong
- With Trump and Melania’s Crypto Coins Likely to Raise Legal Challenges, Why Didn’t Trump Fire the SEC’s Inspector General in His Purge of IGs?
- Fossil Fuel Industry Could End Up Paying Tens of Billions for LA Wildfires and Deceiving the Public on Climate Change for Decades
- It’s Being Called the Biggest Grift by a President in U.S. History: Trump and First Lady Launch their Own Crypto Coins
- Trump Plans to Install a Fracking CEO to Head the Energy Department and Declare a National Emergency on Energy to Gain Vast Powers
- Fossil Fuel Money Played a Role in the Los Angeles Fires and the Push to Install Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense
- When It Comes to Wealth Retention in Retirement, Concrete May Be the New Gold
- Wall Street Watchdog Warns “Clock Is Ticking on a Coming Catastrophic Financial Crash”
- Wall Street Is Sending the Same Message to Americans on Fossil Fuel Financing that It Sent on Cigarettes: Drop Dead
- In a Six-Week Span, this Dark Pool with a Curious Past Traded 3.7 Billion Shares
- Wall Street’s Lobby Firm Hired Eugene Scalia of Gibson Dunn to Sue the Fed for Jamie Dimon
- Postmaster General Louis DeJoy Made $561,051 in Compensation in 2024, as Mail Costs Spiked and Delivery Deteriorated
- Fed Chair Jay Powell Sends a Bold Message to Trump and Tanks the Dow by 1123 Points
- The Head of Fixed Income at T. Rowe Price Makes the Scary Case for the 10-Year Treasury to Spike to 6 Percent
- $663 Billion in Cash Assets Have Gone Poof at the Largest U.S. Banks
- Donald Trump to Ring Bell at New York Stock Exchange Today as Hit List Posters Appear in Manhattan Targeting Wall Street CEOs
- Trump Has a Slush Fund to Prop Up the Dollar – Will He Use It to Prop Up Bitcoin Instead?
- A CEO Assassination; a Billionaire Heiress/NYPD Commissioner; a Secret Wall Street Spy Center – Here’s How They’re Connected
- Despite More than 1600 Tech Scientists Signing a Letter Calling Crypto a Sham, Trump Names a Crypto Cheerleader for SEC Chair
- The Fed Rings a Warning Bell: Hedge Funds and Life Insurers Are Reporting Historic Leverage
- Trump’s Nominee for FBI Director, Kash Patel, Has Businesses Financially Intertwined with Trump
- Donald Trump Is at Risk of Getting Named in a Fossil Fuels Conspiracy Lawsuit
- Trump Is Having Difficulty Getting a Lawyer to Accept the Nomination for SEC Chair: Here’s Why
Search Results for: koch
The Dark Money Behind Trump’s Supreme Court Pick

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 10, 2018 ~ There is something revoltingly un-American about a man who stands with his wife and two young daughters to accept the nomination for the highest court in America, talks about feeding the homeless and coaching girls’ basketball – all the while knowing that a lot of very dirty corporate money lurks in the shadows of his nomination. We’re talking about the fact that Trump made his Supreme Court nominee selection of Brett Kavanaugh from a list that was pre-approved by the Federalist Society – a receptacle for the dark money that flows from the billionaire Charles Koch’s network of corporate polluters and democracy-killing front groups that got the Supreme Court to rubber stamp unlimited corporate money in political campaigns via the Citizens United decision in 2010. According to the Desmog, using data compiled by the Conservative Transparency project, Donors Trust and Donors … Continue reading
America Has Reason to Hope: Leslie Cockburn Is Running for Congress

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 25, 2018 ~ On May 5 Leslie Cockburn, a former prize-winning 60 Minutes producer and journalist with no prior political credentials, won the Democratic nomination for Virginia’s 5th Congressional District. Two qualities sum up how Cockburn has come this far this fast: she is willing to work twice as hard as the average politician and she is sincere in her desire to do the people’s work in what Americans previously called the People’s House – until it became the lapdog of Koch money and corporate interests. What would have been a major obstacle to most new candidates became an edge for Cockburn. Virginia’s 5th District is huge – it’s larger than New Jersey with 440,000 voters spread across 308 precincts. For a candidate willing to spend 7 days a week traveling the District from end to end, genuinely listening to the concerns of … Continue reading
Supreme Court Justice’s Wife Paid by Right-Wing Outlet that Outed FBI Informant Stefan Halper

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 22, 2018 ~ The name of a confidential FBI informant, Stefan A. Halper, was revealed by a right-wing news website known as the Daily Caller News Foundation on Saturday. Curiously, Virginia (Ginni) Thomas, wife of the sitting U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has been collecting an undisclosed amount of compensation from the same nonprofit and its anonymous right-wing donors for years. At 9:35 a.m. this past Saturday morning, the Daily Caller ran this headline: “Cambridge Professor Spied On Trump Campaign Advisers.” The very next day, President Donald Trump Tweeted the following: “I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes — and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!” Yesterday the Justice Department agreed to … Continue reading
Trump and Clarence Thomas Financial Disclosures Prove U.S. Is Officially a Kleptocracy

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 20, 2018 ~ According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, a kleptocracy is “a society whose leaders make themselves rich and powerful by stealing from the rest of the people.” Stealing can also be interpreted as a public official depriving citizens of their right to honest services, as defined under 18 U.S.C. § 1346. Two men serving in the highest offices of the United States, one man black and one man white, are now the poster children for a government that more closely resembles a kleptocracy than a democracy. The two men also have three other things in common: they are both shameless in flaunting their disregard for conflicts of interest; their previous Federal financial disclosure reports contained serious falsehoods; and neither has been removed from their high office. Last week Donald Trump, the President of the United States, released his financial disclosure form … Continue reading
Trump and Brexit: Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower Gives Bombshell Testimony to British Lawmakers
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 27, 2018 Christopher Wylie, the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower who has thus far exposed how Steve Bannon and his money-backer, billionaire hedge fund manager Robert Mercer, created Cambridge Analytica, which harvested private data from 50 million Facebook users to help Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, testified for almost four hours this morning before British lawmakers in the Commons Culture Committee. His testimony was explosive at times. Wylie is testifying before the British lawmakers because the same people and companies involved in the social media data mining and micro-targeting for Trump’s presidential campaign were also involved in the June 23, 2016 Brexit vote in the U.K. where citizens voted in a referendum to take the U.K. out of the European Union. Wylie testified that a Canadian company, AggregateIQ (AIQ), developed the software for Cambridge Analytica, describing it as a “proxy” firm and “money laundering operation.” He … Continue reading
Trump’s Rise to the White House: Cambridge Analytica Targeted “Inner Demons”
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 19, 2018 According to news reports last Friday and over the weekend, Facebook has landed squarely in the middle of the next explosive leg of the Trump-Russia scandal. According to the Guardian’s Observer newspaper in the U.K., a digital data mining company known as Cambridge Analytica collected private information from approximately 50 million Facebook users in order to support Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016. Trump’s campaign hired Cambridge Analytica in the spring of 2016 and “paid it more than $6.2 million,” according to a Reuters report. A Cambridge Analytica whistleblower, Christopher Wylie, told the Observer that “We exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people’s profiles. And built models to exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons. That was the basis that the entire company was built on.” According to the reports, the “inner demons” were unleashed through personalized … Continue reading
Meet Don and Shannon McGahn: Trump’s Regulatory Chainsaw Couple
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 23, 2018 President Donald Trump’s White House Counsel, Don McGahn, has a long history of gutting campaign finance laws to the benefit of corporations. His wife, Shannon McGahn, also an attorney, has a long history in efforts to roll back financial regulations on Wall Street. They have become corporate America’s favorite power couple in Washington. We’ll get to the details in a moment but first some necessary background on how campaign finance law was brazenly corrupted at the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2011, half of our research team (Pam Martens) filed an explosive exclusive with CounterPunch (which we now carry in our archives at Wall Street On Parade). The article revealed that a sitting justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas, had been entertained by billionaire Charles Koch and his wife, Elizabeth, at their lavish private club, the Vintage Club, in Indian … Continue reading
Federal Reserve Reform Upstaged by Trump’s Potty Mouth
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 12, 2018 On Wednesday, the House Financial Services Committee held a hearing on a topic of critical importance to all Americans: restructuring the Federal Reserve into a modern day central bank instead of a captured regulator controlled by the very banks it purports to supervise. Dean Baker, the Senior Economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, presented an important assessment of reforms needed at the Fed but you will be hard pressed to find any mainstream media coverage of his testimony. Instead, President Trump’s characterization yesterday of Haiti and African nations as “sh**hole countries” is dominating the news. How much critical work is falling by the wayside because mainstream media, dependent on ratings, elects to pursue only the most sensational stories – which they have no shortage of finding under President Trump. Congress began its latest push to reform the Federal … Continue reading
Nobel Laureate Stiglitz Says Bitcoin Should Be “Outlawed”
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 30, 2017 Bitcoin has soared this year by more than ten-fold, defying all of the Wall Street veterans who have compared it to the Tulip Bubble and/or a Ponzi scheme. That doesn’t mean that Bitcoin is a legitimate investment; it just means that bubbles have no set expiration date. The Nobel laureate economist, Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University, appeared on Bloomberg television yesterday and had this to say about Bitcoin: “One of the main functions of government is to create currency. And Bitcoin is successful only because of its potential for circumvention, lack of oversight. So it seems to me it ought to be outlawed. It doesn’t serve any socially useful function.” Consider the remarks Stiglitz made yesterday to our more detailed assessment along the same lines back in 2014. We wrote: “The business writers at Reuters are also dead wrong on Bitcoin … Continue reading
Trump & Company Channel Ayn Rand
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 31, 2017 Ayn Rand made her mark by writing and lecturing on a philosophy called Objectivism. It’s a philosophy that flips upside down everything that most Americans hold dear. Under Objectivism, greed is good, selfishness is noble, helping one’s fellow human beings is for suckers and an outright evil. The philosophy also holds that big government is bad and obscenely rich corporate titans are the real heroes of society. (See related articles below.) The Koch brothers’ network of billionaires has been financing the proliferation of Rand’s books into high schools and colleges for decades. Trump is the personification of the Ayn Rand creed and his elevation from reality TV host to the Oval Office is valid proof that the Kochs and their ilk have spent their money wisely. Trump’s gilded mansions and lifestyle are also mother’s milk to the one percenters he has … Continue reading