Nothing under the sun is new, but we do currently live in a time with unprecedented levels of open corruption where nobody seems to feel the slightest amount of guilt for clearly immoral behavior as long as they get away with it.
And even in cases where what you do is explicitly illegal legal enforcement is largely contingent on whether or not whatever corrupt thing you did made you rich enough to pay the Get Out of Jail tax.
Historically speaking, current levels of corruption in most of the world are either low, or completely precedented.
In the US specifically, corruption may be higher the last decade than in the couple of decades precloud, but certainly is not as high as 120 years ago.
There was some goings on related to foreign territories and annexation that I don't well recall, but to this day Grant's degree of involvement is debated - he tolerated much corruption from his personal secretary, defended him, and steered corruption investigations away until eventually removing Babcock(?) from his post.
Much pressure was exerted during this period, I hazard some of that pressure was via threats to persons, their assets, and perhaps their families.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandals_of_the_Grant_administ...
The general amount of corruption in local politics was also greater pre-depression than now.