Top Pentagon Official Contracted Personal Lawyer to Handle Minerals Deal
prospect.org
prospect.org
I think the first one is the whole story anyway.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/29/whats-behind-the-us...
Oof. This guy is a top lawyer, and this is how he responds to a journalist asking about conflict of interests?
Obviously a very smart man and very trustworthy. /s
We are truly living in a kleptocracy.
Edited: Two seconds of google: https://www.cerberus.com/media/cerberus-acquires-controlling... Yep, no possibility of conflicts of interest here.
I don't know what bothers me more, the corruption, or the fact that they're both so stupid and open about it.
After spending the past 20 years screaming as loud as they can about how corrupt everything supposedly was. Seems their only actual complaint was which rich person was getting richer.
Americans were conditioned decades ago to be a quite docile. they work in their cubicles and have their families and their little house in the suburbs… America has been a beige, thoughtless landscape for the majority of people for decades.
The only thing needed was to consolidate the media to create enough fear and control to drive enough people to give away their rights, which I’m sure the rich and powerful will point out that the people aren’t even using!
Obama himself has repeatedly come out and said that if people want change then they need to go out and vote. Vote? It’s crickets instead.
If you actually go out and meet enough people, you begin to realize that the real reality of America is far different than this Internet supposition. People have wanted a strong man authoritarian for a very long time. They are exhausted. They don’t care about their country , their community, their culture… capitalism has worn them down so much that all they really care about is getting to each weekend and having enough to pay for housing and some food. Subtle propaganda helps take care of the rest.
America hasn’t been able to think for itself in decades. The people at the top know this, and they have a lot of disdain for the fact that the majority of people just go home and watch sportsball on Sundays. So they finally decided to see how much they could get away with, and it looks like it’s going to be the entire pie!
We can come back from this, but some people need to spend a significant amount of their lives in prison.
Oubliette [1^]: The dungeon you throw people in that you want to forget.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dungeon#/media/Fi...
Short of rewriting the constitution, that just isn't going to happen. The president is immune to prosecution for any crime committed in office and has unlimited power to pardon anyone else of any federal crimes.
And if the Democrats even attempt to do anything of the sort, people will just consider it a partisan witchhunt. It will be litigated all the way to a SCOTUS that's stacked with Trumpist ideologues.
It's majority conservative, but that's not the same thing as what you're claiming here.
It has 3 members appointed by Trump, but even that doesn't make them Trumpist ideologues.
Quite a perfect storm.
Not a conspiracy theory, this is an open discussion topic among federal judges within their own conferences.
> The president is immune to prosecution for any crime committed in office
That's a misreading of the SC decision. If he walks down the street and murders someone, unless he can make a case that it was an official act, then he wouldn't have immunity. He'd need to demonstrate that he has the Constitutional authority to murder people on the street, and he doesn't, so it wouldn't be an official act and he wouldn't have any immunity.
whether or not you believe this is a pass from the Supreme Court, it opens up a whole new unexplored space of lack of culpability.
If Trump continues to have enough influence in the SCOTUS after he's done being president, then yes, you could imagine they contort any action into an official act. But that'd be a failure of the next government to first establish a less biased SCOTUS (either by packing it or removing existing justices).
then a new constitution it is!
(The UK has the opportunity to do this before the fash get into power, but we can watch it being fumbled in real time)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Political_Surviva...
With lots of examples of contrary , where multi party system has not devolved in one man shit show.
China's history is more complicated, but is also the product of military conflict following colonial imposition by Japan. To suggest that either country's political system is the outcome of inherent structural weaknesses in multi-party democracy is absurd.
Please note that the comment I replied to has been substantially modified since I posted.
Get rid of money, punish lying, decrease the power of the Executive branch…
Lots to do, but getting rid of the two party system is a pipe dream.
It's not nature, it's the strategic actions of members of those parties to create and protect that system. For example, look at laws in states that make it very difficult for 3rd parties to get on ballots, participate in debates, and then the expensive lawfare against them if they show any signs of life.
> getting rid of the two party system is a pipe dream
It certainly won't happen tomorrow, but the best time to start such things is today.
As we seem to be seeing, the Democratic Party in the U.S. is in fact, internally, two parties. As populations age out, we'll likely see the party itself evolve.
It’s not just the two party system. You have to get the money out out of politics before anything else can positively move back toward democracy.
Reagan followed a fairly positively stated agenda. Clinton pursued a fairly positive agenda. George the 2nd followed a fairly positive, if misguided, agenda. And then it became a reactive shitshow.
You're right that Reagan did a lot that was negative, but it's a significant difference from current leaders who openly disdain positive things and encourage people to embrace hatred, violence, warfare, corruption, oppression, etc.
I'm saying graft isn't the only explanation at this point.
There is a potential COI mentioned below, for which Feinberg agreed to donate the profits to charity, if such a settlement happens. The guy is from a Whiteshoe law firm anyways, the allocated funds are tiny, and this seems pretty above board.
Much ado about nothing!
> In a statement to the Prospect, the Department of Defense wrote that the arrangement was aboveboard. “OSC [DOD’s Office of Strategic Capital, which leads the Pentagon’s rare earths investments] maintains a rigorous, multi-layered ethics framework that includes a detailed screening process and operates in full compliance with all federal ethics laws and regulations,” the statement said. The DOD did not comment on whether Waldenberg is involved in other Pentagon activities, or specify its ethics protocols. Waldenberg’s firm, according to the federal government’s public contracting database, has a contract with the DOD worth $1.5 million that runs through August 31, 2026.
> The DOD has said that “any profit [Feinberg] may receive from a potential Ligado settlement will go to a charity to support America’s veterans,” though a spokesperson declined to say which charity would receive the prospective donation. The Capitol Forum recently reported that Ligado is hoping to receive $5 billion from the feds, citing sources familiar with the case. That would surpass the federal government’s 2010 $3.4 billion settlement with Native American tribes, compensating them for the centuries-old confiscation of tribal lands.
However, I think this story brings up two important topics:
1. It is important that high level government officials avoid not just actual conflicts of interest but also the APPEARANCE of a conflict of interest.
2. The Trump administration has taken a much more liberal approach to conflicts of interest than most admins, and this has undermined trust in government. The fact that this story got people so riled up is a great illustration of it. This is not good for the country!
First it will signal to all the lower level officials that corruption is ok. The next step isn't just corruption is ok, but it is expected. No corruption means you won't get far in your career.