DRAIN THE SWAMP?

Official-Corruption Prosecutions Drop Under Trump: Data

Nearly 42 percent fewer than there were five years ago.

Prosecutions for official corruption have dropped drastically under President Trump, according to data from the Justice Department cited Monday by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). TRAC notes that during the first 11 months of fiscal year 2018 (which began in October 2017), the government has reported 340 corruption prosecutions. If that rate holds, the department will have reported approximately 371 by the end of the fiscal year. That estimate is 23.5 percent lower than 2017, in which there were 485 prosecutions. And it’s nearly 42 percent lower than 2013, in which there were 636. The data shows a steady decline in recent decades—but the two years under President Trump have recorded the fewest prosecutions in the past 20 years. The most common type of prosecution in 2018 was theft or bribery in programs receiving federal funds—and unsurprisingly, the most prosecutions per capita occurred in Washington D.C.