Rick Claypool on Pay to Play Corporate Crime Enforcement

Corporations that have benefitted from the Trump administration’s cancellation of federal enforcement actions have given $210.5 million in contributions and pledges to MAGA Inc., and other Trump-aligned Super PACs.

That’s according to a new report from Public Citizen’s Rick Claypool.

The new analysis documents the Trump administration’s cancellation of 212 federal enforcement actions involving 205 corporations, including 80 investigations, 67 dismissed enforcement lawsuits and 54 canceled accountability measures involving alleged corporate misconduct. 

The largest contributors, including corporations, executives, and investors include:

Elon Musk, whose companies Tesla and SpaceX benefitted from at least eight canceled enforcement actions, pledged to spend $100 million to help elect Republicans in the 2026 midterms, largely through America PAC which he controls, and gave $5 million to MAGA Inc.. Both Tesla and SpaceX benefitted from four canceled actions each.

Crypto.com, which profited from the Securities and Exchange Commissions’ (SEC) cancellation of an investigation into allegations that the crypto platform traded unregistered securities, gave $35 million to MAGA Inc., and another $2 million to Keep America Great, both Trump-aligned Super PACs.

Gemini, similarly profited from a dropped SEC investigation into allegations of trading unregistered securities, gave $20 million to MAGA Inc. Its co-founders, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, personally gave an additional $10 million each to MAGA Inc.

Andreessen Horowitz, along with co-founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, gave $12 million to MAGA Inc.. Nine corporations that benefit from canceled actions are a part of the firm’s investment portfolio. 

“Corporations and ultra-wealthy executives with enormous financial interests before the federal government are pouring extraordinary sums into the president’s political operation,” said Robert Weissman, Public Citizen co-president. “Once the check is cashed, the administration is pulling back enforcement actions meant to punish corporate misconduct. It’s a great deal for the corporate wrongdoers –at the expense of their victims and the American people.”

“The potential is limitless when companies and the wealthy people behind them can give millions of dollars to Trump-aligned political groups,” said Claypool. “The scale of these contributions raises fundamental questions about what corporations are expecting when they invest heavily in a political operation, especially when it involves the President of the United States.”

How did you find the enforcement cases that were halted?

“There were a number of ways,” Claypool told Corporate Crime Reporter in an interview last week. “We’re talking about cases that have been filed and are actively being litigated, and so they can be looked up, and we can see the administration in these public filings filing for dismissal of these cases.”

The majority of cases in this database, 233, are canceled. What do you mean by cancelled?

“They’re done, it’s over, it’s not going to resume again. It can mean dropping investigations right at the investigation stage. Sometimes that is announced within a company’s SEC filings or in some other way. They sort of make a statement that the case is going away. In some cases, it’s a prior investigation previously disclosed in those federal filings that is just not being mentioned anymore.” 

“So that was the case with the Pfizer cases where there were prior enforcement actions that had been resolved, and then the administration reaches back and says – well, okay, we’re actually not going to require the company to pay the penalty. Or in other cases, it says – if they were bound by an FTC consent decree, okay, we’re going to open that up and set it aside. We’re not going to do that anymore. In some cases, it’s leniency deals, the deferred and non-prosecution agreements, which they’re letting companies get out of early.”

“From the report, the 212 canceled enforcement actions against 205 corporations include 80 closed investigations, including 10 criminal investigations, 67 dismissed enforcement lawsuits the federal agencies were actively litigating, including 10 criminal cases, and 54 canceled consequences in which the Trump administration terminated or reversed enforcement actions that were resolved before Trump’s second term, including 14 pardons of corporations and executives and five canceled corporate leniency deals.”

Your database does not include weak settlements?

“That’s also a huge category, probably bigger than canceled, where you have these non-prosecution agreements or weak deferred prosecution agreements with no penalty.”

But you don’t include those in your report?

“No, that’s harder to quantify. But we do include Boeing, which is considered a cancelled prosecution.”

“Of course there are judgment calls here, and we try to make our best efforts at a fair assessment. Here are some sort of enforcement actions that were being carried out by the federal government, and the administration has decided that they’re not going to do that anymore.”

In your report, you include a chart of fifty corporations that made payments benefitting Trump, and then they had enforcement actions canceled. There’s got to be some kind of law prohibiting this somehow. I guess public funding of campaigns might do it.

“It’s not just elections. You have donations to the Trump inaugural, to the construction of a golden ballroom, corporate sponsorships of the Easter egg roll. I know it’s not surprising anymore, but it is striking how much the whole big tech universe, which has been at the crosshairs of enforcement, and rightly so, is showing up in all these opportunities to spend money to support Trump’s priorities in an apparent effort to ingratiate themselves with the administration.”

The mainstream media didn’t touch your recent report on corporate crime under Trump. Why not?

“It might be a timing thing – with it being right in the middle of the midterm elections. The mainstream media now has real capacity challenges, with cuts to staff.”

All a reporter has to do is pick up the phone and give you a call.

“For sure, but there are fewer of those reporters around than there were five years ago. And five years ago there were fewer than there were ten years ago. We did get some reporting out of Bloomberg on this about a week ago.”

[For the complete q/a format Interview with Rick Claypool, see 40 Corporate Crime Reporter 40(12), October 19, 2026, print edition only.]