The corruption is endless. [Cartoon by Mike Luckovich]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN August 4, 2026 Heather Cox Richardson Aug 05, 2026 On Friday night, a court filing from Capital One denied there was any political motivation behind the closure of more than 380 bank accounts in the names of Donald Trump and the Trump Organization. Instead, it stated, the accounts were closed “for anti-money laundering reasons.” It said “transaction patterns” had triggered the review. President Donald J. Trump has maintained that banks refused to do business with him after January 6, 2021, for political reasons. As Allison Morrow of CNN reported yesterday, Trump and his supporters, including cryptocurrency ventures, have used the idea that they were being “debanked” because of their political beliefs to claim they are victims. Last year, Trump and the Trump Organization sued Capital One in federal court in Florida, saying they had sustained “considerable financial harm” after the bank closed about 385 of their accounts. Observers note that the story of Trump wanting immunity from IRS audits and the revelation that his bank activity mirrored that of money launderers might well be the same story. That story recalls the work of national security specialist Natasha Bertrand in 2018, when she reported in  The Atlantic  that Trump’s rabid attacks on FBI and Justice Department officials centered on those with extensive experience in investigating money laundering and organized crime, particularly as they interfaced with Russia. Trump went after officials he claimed were “Democrats” who were part of a “witch hunt” against him as they examined the ties of his 2016 campaign to Russian operatives. But Bertrand pointed out that his primary targets—Bruce Ohr, Lisa Page, Andrew Weissmann, Andrew McCabe—all specialized in investigations into organized crime and money laundering. She noted that the probe into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russian operatives was primarily a counterintelligence investigation and that Russia’s criminal syndicates and…