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Days ago, Capital One told a federal court in Miami why it closed more than three hundred accounts tied to Trump, his family, and his businesses in March 2021. Its financial-crimes unit reviewed them for months and found patterns regulators instruct banks to flag.
Spending months on Trump’s accounts, that same desk exists to catch cartel money and sanctions evasion.
Reuters broke the story on Saturday, August 1, and NPR, Bloomberg, and Al Jazeera followed within the day, noting that the bank (mostly known for its free checking accounts) had said nothing for five years. It has only spoken now because Trump sued for punitive damages, claiming he was debanked for his politics.
Having dropped a $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, Trump received from acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, once his own defense lawyer, a single page dated May 19, 2026, declaring the government “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED” from pursuing tax claims against him, his family, and his businesses.
Thirty-five former federal judges called the deal “a fraud on the court.” Judge Kathleen Williams reopened the case. John Koskinen, who ran the IRS under two presidents, called it “breathtakingly improper.”
The fact that a bank’s compliance department did what the IRS is now forbidden to do was lost on no one.
E. Jean Carroll took the stand at seventy-nine and described the dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, and two friends she telephoned in 1996 came to court and described what she told them then.
Unanimously, nine jurors found on May 9, 2023 that Trump sexually abused her.
His lawyers went back to court to argue for less money on the grounds that the jury had never said rape. Judge Lewis Kaplan put it in writing on July 19, 2023. The jury found that Trump forced his fingers inside her. New York law files that under sexual abuse. Every dictionary, most states, and federal law call it rape.
Then he fought three years to keep money he had already deposited. The Supreme Court declined to hear him in June. After years of fighting the court gave her $5,625,005.48, just last month.
On a recorded line on January 2, 2021, he leaned on Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, to “find” him 11,780 votes, one more than he needed.
Released under a law he signed himself, three and a half million pages of Epstein files carry his name upward of three thousand times. One batch released March 6, 2026, holds FBI notes from a woman who says he assaulted her in the 1980s, when she was a minor.
The files “absolve” him, he told reporters.
Michael Fanone was pulled from the police line into the crowd, beaten with a flagpole, and shocked twice in the back of the neck. He had a heart attack. Albuquerque Head, who dragged him in, got seven and a half years. Daniel Rodriguez, who held the stun gun, got twelve and a half.
Hours into his return to office on January 20, 2025, Trump pardoned roughly 1,500 people charged over January 6, and both men went home.
Then the plane. Qatar’s Boeing 747, appraised at $400 million, its belly repainted navy, the presidential seal stamped onto the seatbelts. “You can low-key it, or you can show it,” Trump told reporters. It passes to his library the day he leaves.
Three months after the plane was announced, Trump signed an executive order pledging American military force against any armed attack on Qatar, with no Senate vote. Its wealth fund promised $500 billion here, his sons a golf resort there.
People say that any one of these would have ended any other presidency in history. But it should be remembered that any one of these crimes should end this one. Ten years of getting away with things has taught the country to call it normal.
For decades, and the years between them, the crimes have accumulated. Trump has gotten thirty-four felony counts and a sentence of zero years. Much of it from crypto, he has made billions in office. The corruption is so brazenly naked it would make the Gilded Age robber barons blush.
We might look back to Jimmy Carter for a reminder of normal. Peanuts. He dried and shelled them, then sold them, out of a warehouse in Plains, Georgia. His father had bought it in 1953 and he took over the farm supply business at twenty-eight after his father died.
Then, in January 1977, before leaving for Washington to take office, he signed the warehouse and the cotton gin over to a trustee under terms that kept him from learning whether the business earned a dollar or lost one, to avoid any conflict of interest.
Back home in Plains in 1981, at fifty-six, he was met with terrible news. Drought and bad management had sunk him more than a million dollars into debt. “We thought we were going to lose everything,” Rosalynn told the Washington Post.
The Carters sold the warehouse that March. He had no job and a million dollars in debt, so he wrote a book about the White House to pay it off.
Bantam published it in 1982 and he called it Keeping Faith. Outside the crimson red stitched MAGA hat wearing crowd, everyone can see what a decade of this has cost. Carter paid a million dollars to avoid the appearance of it.
Thanks for reading! I didn’t put this behind a paywall because I want it to stay open for anyone who needs it. But if you want this newsletter to continue, become a paid subscriber at $8 a month or $80 a year. Your support keeps the lights on and allows me to keep finding the stories from history you won’t find anywhere else.
Notes & Sources
Reuters on the August 1 filing tying the closures to an anti-money-laundering review.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/capital-one-says-closed-trump-231856774.htmlNPR quotes the filing on months of analysis by the bank’s financial-crimes team.
https://www.npr.org/2026/08/02/g-s1-136834/capital-one-trump-bank-anti-money-launderingBloomberg dates the filing to late Friday, July 31, in the motion to dismiss.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-01/capital-one-cites-money-laundering-review-in-trump-related-suitAl Jazeera notes the bank has never accused the Trump Organization of illegal laundering.
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/8/2/capital-one-cites-anti-money-laundering-concerns-in-trump-organization-caseReason details the May 19, 2026 addendum signed by Blanche and its capitalized language.
https://reason.com/2026/07/30/todd-blanches-nomination-is-in-trouble-it-should-have-been-doomed-from-the-beginning/ABC News on the thirty-five former judges, the reopened case, and the former IRS officials.
https://abcnews.com/Politics/former-irs-officials-call-judge-scrutinize-trumps-breathtakingly/story?id=134109449Forbes on Judge Williams ruling that Trump and the IRS were never adverse parties.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2026/07/21/blanche-claims-trumps-irs-immunity-deal-still-in-effect-after-court-essentially-voids-it/Justia summarizes Kaplan’s July 19, 2023 opinion on the narrow New York definition.
https://news.justia.com/president-donald-j-trump-loses-request-for-new-trial-in-e-jean-carroll-sexual-abuse-caseCNN on the Supreme Court declining the appeal, June 29, 2026.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/29/politics/e-jean-carroll-trump-supreme-courtNPR on the $5,625,005.48 payment, three years after the verdict.
https://www.npr.org/2026/07/14/nx-s1-5893598/e-jean-carroll-trump-sexual-abuse-defamationPBS on the money sitting in escrow since 2023 and the denied motion to block it.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/e-jean-carroll-has-been-paid-5-8-million-three-years-after-trump-sex-abuse-and-defamation-verdictCNBC on the first flight July 1, the $400 million valuation, and the navy repaint.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/01/retrofitted-qatari-jet-flight-air-force-one-trump.htmlThe text of Executive Order 14353, Assuring the Security of the State of Qatar, September 29, 2025.
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/DCPD-202500967/pdf/DCPD-202500967.pdfAl Jazeera on the order pledging American military action if Qatar is attacked.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/10/1/new-trump-executive-order-guarantees-qatar-security-after-israeli-attackCSIS on the order as an explicit security guarantee outside any treaty.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/why-trumps-executive-order-qatar-marks-historic-shiftCNBC on Carter’s business, the blind trust, and the $1 million debt he came home to.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/17/when-jimmy-carter-left-office-his-peanut-business-was-deep-in-debt.htmlSnopes on Kirbo informing the Carters of the debt after three years of drought.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/carter-sell-peanut-farm/The Mitchell Republic on the January 1977 conflict-of-interest plan and the March 1981 sale.
https://www.mitchellrepublic.com/opinion/commentary-story-of-jimmy-carters-peanut-farm-is-more-complicated-than-you-may-have-heard
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