Raising the Cost of Corruption

The following is an article drafted by Brendan Ballou, a former federal prosecutor and worked as special counsel for private equity in the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division. We are publishing this article with his permission.

Over the last year, the administration has largely dismantled the Department of Justice’s infrastructure for prosecuting white collar crime.

It gutted the Department’s Public Integrity Section, disbanded its KleptoCapture Task Force, and dismantled the Tax Division. At the same time, the administration has granted extraordinary favors to allies, dropping prosecutions of donors, and pardoning those already convicted.

As I argued in a recent New York Times essay, the brazenness of this approach is supposed to make us feel helpless, and that nothing can be done.

But we are not helpless.

We have the legal tools to fight corruption - we just need to use them.

That is why today, our new firm, the Public Integrity Project, filed a lawsuit against President Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi for illegally approving the sale of TikTok’s U.S. assets to administration allies.

The lawsuit seeks to hold the government responsible for approving a corrupt deal that has enriched the President’s allies and increases the risk of antidemocratic censorship.

According to the lawsuit, in 2024, out of concern that TikTok’s Chinese parent company could push propaganda in the United States, Congress passed a law requiring TikTok’s parent ByteDance to sell its U.S. assets or face hundreds of billions of dollars in fines.

The law was clear, but it was never followed.

After returning to office, President Trump illegally extended the deadline for TikTok to divest, and directed his Attorney General specifically not to enforce the law. TikTok even gave a shout out to Trump in the short time it was down, saying Trump would reinstate the app once he was in office. In the subsequent months, President Trump issued four more extensions, all contrary to the plain text of the law, and all directing the Attorney General – also contrary to the statute – to conduct no investigation into the law’s violation.

Ultimately, the President approved a deal to sell TikTok’s assets to administration allies, including Oracle (whose chairman, Larry Ellison, is buying up other media assets like Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery), MGX (an U.A.E. investment fund that previously bought $2 billion in Trump family cryptocurrency), and Susquehanna (likely largest shareholder in the company that merged with Donald Trump’s media company, and whose founder donated $16 million to Trump’s Super PAC).

Under the deal the president approved, these companies bought TikTok U.S. for a fraction of its worth: one analyst called it “daylight robbery.”

Because the deal allows TikTok’s Chinese parent to remain involved in the company, all of this was in obvious violation of the law Congress passed. Most importantly, it results in the worst of all worlds, in which Chinese-allied Bytedance can censor the content it does not like, and Trump-allied Oracle can censor the content it does not like.

By filing this lawsuit, we aren’t seeking to have TikTok banned from the U.S. We just want to make sure that any finalized deal actually complies with the law.

For the law to mean something, it must be followed, even – perhaps especially – by the President.

We are seeking to have the government follow the law and rescind its endorsement of an illegal deal, so that a legal one can replace it. And we are also seeking to ensure any deal does not put administration allies in a position to censor political content on one of the world’s most popular media platforms.

This lawsuit is the first in a series of cases that the Public Integrity Project will bring to raise the legal and reputational cost of corruption in America.

Such lawsuits bring sustained attention to stories of bribery and graft that might ordinarily be lost in the rush of news. They make stories clear, create narratives, reveal new facts, and invite ongoing coverage of what might be a single story.

This is important, because while there are many incentives for people and companies to engage in corruption, there are few forces on the other side discouraging them from pursuing it - especially when the federal government has all but abandoned its role in rooting out corruption.

Fortunately, we have a range of legal tools that private citizens can use to help fill the void left by the indifference of Justice Department leadership.

We just need to use those tools aggressively.

Because fighting corruption matters.

When corruption infects our economy, businesses succeed or fail not on their merits, but on their proximity to power. When that same corruption infects our politics, leaders no longer represent the will of the voters, but the will of the rich elite.

In short, corruption destroys democracy. And by fighting corruption, we are fighting to protect democracy.

For those who want to follow this case and others, please visit https://www.publicintegrityproject.com/.

Brendan Ballou is a former federal prosecutor, and for two years prosecuted rioters who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021. He previously served as special counsel for private equity in the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division.