Pratap Chatterjee on Trump’s World of Crypto Czars Tech Titans and Prison Profiteers

Last month, CorpWatch put out a report titled – MAGA Inc.: A Guide to Trump’s World of Crypto Czars, Tech Titans and Prison Profiteers. It’s a deep dive into the companies that have bankrolled and benefitted the most from the ‘Make America Great Again’ movement launched by President Donald Trump.

“Trump has promised his followers that he can build them a stairway to heaven if they vote for him and his agenda,” says Pratap Chatterjee, executive director of CorpWatch. “But the truth of the matter is that we are all being taken for a ride by his cronies – the Crypto Czars, Tech Titans and Prison Profiteers.”

The Crypto Czars are digital currency companies like Tether and World Liberty Financial, who have helped double Trump’s fortune. 

The Tech Titans are companies like Oracle, OpenAI and Palantir who have backed Trump’s support for a new gold rush by building a swath of new data centers. 

These Silicon Valley companies are being bankrolled by Wall Street firms like Cantor Fitzgerald and powered by gas pipeline companies like Energy Transfer, two of Trump’s biggest supporters.

“Making America Great Again should mean protecting the health and well-being of local communities, not sacrificing their air, water, and land,” says Oriane Burke, a researcher at CorpWatch. “Instead Energy Transfer’s aggressive expansion of gas pipelines and gutting of environmental regulations for datacenter profits is doing the exact opposite.”

Meanwhile, the biggest winners of federal dollars under Trump are companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group who are running massive detention centers like Delaney Hall in New Jersey, as well as companies like CSI Aviation that are deporting people en masse.

“These Prison Profiteers are making a windfall off of ICE’s reign of terror on migrants. They are exploiting the most vulnerable working class people – the backbone of America – and subjecting them to appalling conditions to increase their bottom line,” says Aya Dardari, a researcher at CorpWatch. “But communities from around the country are responding in solidarity with a message of their own: humanity is not up for sale.”

The new report also provides a guide to these communities that are slowly, but surely, pushing back against the Crypto Czars, Tech Titans and Prison Profiteers.

MAGA Inc. follows up on a series of CorpWatch reports over the last two decades that have exposed companies that profited out of the War on Terror such as Afghanistan Inc., and Drone Inc. as well as books like Iraq Inc., Halliburton’s Army and Verax.

Why isn’t public corruption becoming a political issue in the United States?

“One reason is that both the Democrats and Republicans are both involved in this kind of corruption,” Chatterjee told Corporate Crime Reporter in an interview last week. “This is not unique to Trump. The money that flows and the favors that come back – it happens with both parties. Trump has personally profited while in office, which is unusual in the United States, but not in other countries.” 

“The reason both parties turn a blind eye to corruption is because they engage in it themselves.”

We say that corporate crime and violence inflicts far more damage on society than all street crime combined. But it doesn’t stick in the public mind the way street crime does. 

“The American public doesn’t fully understand. And they are much more worried about how to pay their mortgage and their gas bills and grocery bills. Go back to the days of Lyndon Johnson and Brown & Root in Texas. They were literally handing over bags of money to finance Johnson’s election campaigns.”

“If you look at the last three Presidential elections, the numbers of votes that Trump received increased each time.” 

“By the last election, Trump was getting more votes than Obama ever did. Many Americans believe Trump and they want to believe him. They are desperate for some kind of change. They see a man who claims to be a billionaire and they want to be like him.”

“Let’s remember that in the first election cycle, Trump said – I can walk down Fifth Avenue in New York and shoot somebody and people would still vote for me. And a million people bought these Trump coins even though they knew they wouldn’t be worth anything. They wanted to ride these coattails. People want to believe.” 

“But things might be changing. Trump has gone too far. The Republicans will not get the support they have in the past. This is blatant corruption.”

One section on your report is on the tech industry, which has been tight with both the Republican and Democratic parties. What has Trump done with the tech industry that the Democrats didn’t do?

“The tech boom has been going on for twenty plus years. The artificial intelligence boom is stunning. I think a third of the stock market is made up of these AI related companies.” 

“Howard Lutnick is the Secretary of Commerce. He was head of Cantor Fitzgerald. And Cantor Fitzgerald put its money behind data centers. Trump is very close to Lutnick. They have known each other for decades. Lutnick was on his show The Apprentice. Lutnick wised Trump up on the opportunities in the tech industry. The day after Trump was inaugurated, he brings a Japanese banker in. And Sam Altman and Larry Ellison to promote a new era of wealth.” 

“Two others are important. Kelcy Warren runs a company called Energy Transfer, which is not liked at all by communities in places like North Dakota and Texas. But they hold the key to data centers with their natural gas pipelines.”

“And then there is Larry Ellison of Oracle, a database company. But Ellison is buying up media companies. He bought an island in Hawaii. He wants to build a surveillance company that will follow everybody all the time. And they will be able to create a safe world for the future.”

“So these men – Howard Lutnick, with his data centers. Larry Ellison, with his deep and long standing knowledge of the world of databases. And Kelcy Warren who is supporting the gas to support these industries. They convinced Trump that this was going to be the next golden era. He believes that he could make America richer and at the same time make America great again.” 

“Remember, many of the tech companies were opposed to Trump the first time around. So literally within 24 hours after Trump was inaugurated, he brought in the founder of Oracle, the CEO of OpenAI together to say – this is what is going to make America great again. Data centers crucially need uninterrupted power. And what Energy Transfer promised to do was to provide natural gas.”

Polls show overwhelming opposition to data centers in the United States. A Gallup poll reported that seven out of ten Americans oppose data centers in their communities. But the political class is bought off. 

“There was an op-ed in the New York Times a few weeks ago that said that if you are Democrat and you want to get elected, the best thing you can do is oppose data centers. Not even just AI, the data centers. It’s a non partisan issue. States and municipalities are banning them across the country. People are afraid for their jobs, they can’t afford anything. People are upset because they see AI as destroying their economic well being. Surprisingly, even a lot of Republicans are opposed.” 

“It’s like the Gaza issue. Many Democrats are opposed to the Israeli genocide in Gaza. And yet they rarely move in Congress to cut off aid to Israel. I’m a bit puzzled that there are not more Democratic candidates standing up and speaking out both on Gaza and data centers.”

“Why the Democratic Party doesn’t want to capitalize on this is a mystery to me.”

The last part of your report looks at the prison industry.

“Yes. We look at the three largest players in the industry. GEO Group, CoreCivic and SCI Aviation. These are not names commonly known by the American public.” 

“CSI Aviation is the least well known. It is an air charter company. They rent private planes and contract them to ICE and to the U.S. government to move people between prisons and deport them from the country. Perhaps the largest spigot of federal funds since Trump was elected is going to this company. They have been able to change the very nature of how flights are tracked.”

“During the Bush administration, activists were able to track the transport of prisoners simply by looking at plane tail numbers. This has changed under Trump. The plane tail numbers are now being covered up. This business of transporting prisoners is now operating invisibly. The man behind CSI Aviation is another Trump supporter – Allen Weh. He owns CSI Aviation.” 

“Once the prisoners are taken off the streets and brought to prison, the two companies that profit most off the prisoners are CoreCivic and GEO Group. Together they have maybe eighty percent of the market. They take a fee for every day a prisoner is held in their facilities. They feed them poorly. They don’t provide prisoners with proper food or healthcare.” 

“These companies rose to prominence first under the Obama administration and then under the Biden administration, where a lot of prison facilities that were shut down were reopened by these private prison companies. They were kept outside of public purview.”

Why should there be private prisons at all?

“I don’t think there should be private prisons. These private prisons were expanded greatly by the Obama and Biden administrations.” 

Fewer than ten percent of prisoners are in under private prisons. But how is the corruption in this area of private prisons different under Trump than under Obama or Biden?

“The Democrats were very much behind the expansion of the prison industrial complex, not least of all Obama. But Trump has taken advantage of the expansion of private prisons to fill these prisons with the immigrants he wants to deport – 140,000 last year. The prisons were opened and expanded under the Democratic administrations, but Trump has taken advantage of that expansion. And it’s easiest to do it with private prisons, because there is no political oversight.”

“Look at the CoreCivic facility Delaney Hall in New Jersey. The Mayor of Newark opposed the expansion of the facility. The Governor opposed the expansion of the facility. And Senator Andy Kim has opposed it. The Trump administration has taken advantage of the fact that these companies answer to no one.” 

“If you are a member of Congress, you have a right to show up unannounced at a public prison and inspect it. And the private prisons have just completely stonewalled members of Congress. They have become completely off limits to any kind of oversight. That’s a Trump administration initiative.”

How has Trump benefitted from the expansion of private prisons?

“He benefits politically. I don’t know that he benefits financially from the prison industry. But it helps him fulfill the promise he made. A few months before he was elected, he went to a fundraiser in New Mexico hosted by Allen Weh, and Trump said – we are going to sweep up more people than you ever imagined.” 

“This is a man who has all of his golf courses, his casinos, his building projects built and staffed by migrants. He understands the value of low paid labor. But he understands even more that his political base is hungry for a scapegoat. He uses the private prison industrial complex to boost himself domestically. He points the finger at immigrant crime to divert attention from his own corruption.”

Give us the one paragraph nutshell of what you want people to take away from your report?

“Resistance is growing. People are pushing back. More important than the fact that this is a deeply corrupt administration is the fact that across America, people are rising up, going to town halls, speaking up, and effectively slowing down detention at ICE detention centers, they are slowing down the opening of prisons, they are staging hunger strikes, showing up at town halls and shutting down new data centers. People are finally pushing back.” 

[For the complete q/a format Interview with Pratap Chatterjee, 40 Corporate Crime Reporter 29(12), July 20, 2026, print edition only.]