type: timeline_event
On March 17, 2026, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) president Donald Sherman testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee that President Trump's second term had been "marked by conflicts of interest and corruption that weaken the government's ability to stop waste, fraud and abuse and put U.S. national security at risk." The testimony represented the most comprehensive accounting to date of the scale and scope of presidential corruption in the current administration.
Sherman's testimony was built on a staggering accumulation of documented facts. Trump had rescinded his own ethics executive order on Day 1 of his second term, signaling that self-dealing would face no internal restraint. He had fired 17 inspectors general — the independent watchdogs tasked with rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse across the federal government — effectively dismantling the infrastructure of accountability. The firings left vast swaths of federal spending and executive action without meaningful oversight.
The personal enrichment data was equally damning. CREW documented 198 visits to Trump-owned properties during his second term, along with 116 golf outings at his own courses — each visit funneling taxpayer and political dollars into the president's private businesses. At least 60 foreign officials had visited Trump properties, creating opportunities for influence-seeking that traditional ethics safeguards were designed to prevent. Globally, 24 Trump-branded real estate and hospitality projects were active, offering foreign governments and business interests a direct channel for enriching the president.
The testimony underscored how the erosion of ethics infrastructure had created a self-reinforcing cycle: without inspectors general to investigate, without an ethics pledge to violate, and without meaningful congressional oversight capacity, the administration could engage in escalating conflicts of interest with diminishing risk of accountability. Sherman argued that the corruption was not merely an ethical concern but a concrete national security threat, as foreign actors could leverage Trump's financial interests to influence American policy.