WATCH: Padilla, Schumer Introduce Landmark New Legislation to Crack Down on Trump Corruption

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) joined Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) in introducing the Anti-Corruption Bureau Creation Act, landmark new legislation in the wake of the unprecedented corruption of the second Trump Administration.

The major new bill would establish a private right of action for the public and state Attorneys General to sue for recoveries and forfeitures from certain federal officials, including the President and Vice President, to get Americans money back that's been taken by corruption. The Anti-Corruption Bureau Creation Act would also create the nation's first independent federal agency dedicated to rooting out corruption across the executive branch and stopping presidents from turning public power into private profit.

The Senators announced the legislation at the Public Citizen "Combatting Corruption" forum. Since returning to office in 2025, Trump has taken in more than $2 billion, while his family has made more than $4 billion. At the same time, his signature "Big, Ugly Bill" delivered massive handouts to corporations and special interests while leaving working families to foot the bill.

"When a president uses the office for personal profit, that is not 'just the way it is,' despite what Trump wants you to believe," said Senator Padilla. "With Trump, there's clearly no effort to hide the corruption. That's why I'm joining Leader Schumer on this new bill, empowering everyday Americans and state Attorneys General to be able to sue to take back every corrupt dollar that the president and the vice president or any future president or vice president makes through corruption while in office."

"Trump has turned the presidency into the most profitable scam of his life, and Republicans have helped him cash every check-all while working families struggle to afford groceries, gas, housing, and healthcare," said Leader Schumer. "While Republicans seem all too eager to cosign his behavior, Senate Democrats are committed to holding this country to a higher standard. Senate Democrats are fighting to create the first-ever independent Anti-Corruption Bureau with the power to follow the money, expose the corruption and claw back corrupt profits. No president should ever be allowed to treat the White House like a personal ATM."

The new Anti-Corruption Bureau would have sweeping investigative, subpoena, oversight and enforcement powers to follow the money, expose corruption and hold even the most powerful public officials accountable. Its leadership, structure and financing would be insulated from presidential interference, ensuring that no administration could defund it, disable it or fire its leaders and leave it powerless. The legislation would also empower Americans and state Attorneys General to sue to recover money obtained through presidential corruption.

Specifically, the Anti-Corruption Bureau Creation Act would:

• Create the nation's first independent Anti-Corruption Bureau: Establish a new federal bureau led by a seven-member, Senate-confirmed board with fixed terms, strict independence protections and partisan-balance requirements.
• Give the Bureau real teeth: Equip the Bureau with sweeping investigative, subpoena, oversight, enforcement and public-reporting powers.
• Claw back money obtained through corruption: Allow private plaintiffs, including state attorneys general, to sue in the name of the United States to recover money obtained through corruption by presidents, senior officials, key campaign figures and major government contractors.
• Bring federal anti-corruption enforcement under one roof: Consolidate the Federal Election Commission, Office of Government Ethics and Office of Special Counsel within the new Bureau.
• Prevent a president from disabling the watchdog: Establish a special three-judge division of the D.C. Circuit empowered to appoint temporary Bureau members when vacancies, obstruction or crises threaten its continued operation-ensuring that a president cannot render it powerless by removing its leaders or refusing to fill vacancies.
• Protect its funding from presidential retaliation: Create the Freedom From Influence Fund as a dedicated, self-financing source of revenue, preventing a president from using the budget process to starve the Bureau into submission.

In addition to Padilla and Schumer, the legislation is co-sponsored by Senators Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Andy Kim (D-N.J.). It is endorsed by Public Citizen, Common Cause, Campaign Legal Center, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washing (CREW), Protect Democracy, and Defend the Vote Action Fund.

Senator Padilla has fought back against the Trump Administration's corruption. Earlier this month, he joined Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) in launching a new Senate Democratic anti-corruption initiative to expose how Trump's rampant self-dealing is costing American families and to develop legislation that would prevent future presidents from using public office for personal profit. Padilla also led efforts to kill the Department of Justice's (DOJ) "anti-weaponization" slush fund, and introduced the No Rewards for January 6 Rioters Act to prohibit use of federal funds to financially award them. Last year, Padilla demanded an independent investigation by the DOJ's Inspector General into the Attorney General and the Department of Justice's involvement in President Trump's unconstitutional acquisition of a $400 million luxury plane from the Qatari government. Padilla and Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) introduced the Protecting Our Democracy Act to curb presidential abuses of power, strengthen checks and balances on the Executive Branch, and add additional guardrails to better protect American democracy.

A summary of the legislation can be found here. The full text of the legislation can be found here.

Video of Padilla's remarks at the Public Citizen "Combatting Corruption" forum is available here.

Transcript of Padilla's remarks is available below:

Thank you to Public Citizen for your relentless advocacy. It is necessary, it is appreciated, it is impactful. Thank you co-President Lisa Gilbert.

And as I reflect on what remarks to share, what thoughts to share, I couldn't help but recall Watergate. Because for a long time, Watergate stood as the example of corruption in government. Right, it's the one story that most people can remember and what most people know was significant. It was a scandal that, at the time, led to the resignation of a president. Right? The political headwinds were so strong as a result of Watergate being exposed that a president of the United States resigned for fear of being impeached. That was huge. You know what else was huge? It shook Congress into bipartisan action in response to Watergate. Among other things, campaign finance laws were strengthened.

Flash forward to today. A lot of those very laws and those that followed have been gutted over the years to the point that the Federal Election Commission has been unable to function now for the better part of a year. I know a lot of you care about the FEC and look forward to nomination hearings after the upcoming recess, but here's the thing: Watergate was about a president trying to hide corrupt activity. We're living now in a time where the vice president of the United States, J.D. Vance, is describing the corruption about Donald Trump in a very different way. He now refers to Watergate as, what would be today, just a 12-hour news story.

Donald Trump isn't trying to hide his corruption, like Richard Nixon was. Far worse, he's normalizing it or trying to, anyway. He and the people around him are trying to convince the American public that this is just the way it is. When a president uses the office for personal profit, that is not "just the way it is," despite what Trump wants you to believe. Which is why gatherings like this, which is why the work of Public Citizen is so important, and it's why I'm proud to join the efforts with my Senate colleagues.

You heard from Leader Schumer earlier, the Senate Democrats Anti-Corruption Working Group. Why this work matters so much, because corruption needs to be called out for starters, but also to be responded to. So much of the work that we've done over the last 18 months, even more so than Trump's first term. How do we resist the corruption? How do we resist the bad stuff that's going on? We exercise every legislative tool we have. Tough when you're in the minority, but we have to. We have to continue.

Of course, there's the courts working with attorneys general around the country, other leaders to litigate when we have to, which is a lot. And we're winning a lot. And of course, there's organizing, right? Educating the public, not just our personal friends and personal networks, but the general public. For them to understand what's going on, to call them into action. And the action can take the form of a No King's protest. It can take the form of writing to your representatives, and it especially needs to take the form of making a plan to vote and voting in the midterm elections.

Because of where we are today, one of the things that I want to emphasize is that corruption isn't just about someone breaking the rules. What I see is an effort, a corrupt effort, to change the very purpose of government itself. That's what I've been watching over the last 18 months, and I think we've all been seeing that over the last 18 months. We've seen a president of the United States leverage the position to make over $2 billion since returning to office, at a time when hardworking Americans are struggling to make ends meet-to pay the bills. You see the cost of everything going up: cost of housing, cost of health care, cost of groceries. While Donald Trump is brazenly using the presidency for personal profit.

That's not a coincidence. Whether it's the billions that his family has made and the crypto ventures that they've invested in, the illegal acceptance of a luxury jet from a foreign government for his personal use long after he's out of the White House, selling early access to inside information on his own social media platform. Do you guys hear about this? He's offering early access, $100,000 a month for the low, low price of $100,000 a month. Inside information on his announcements, because this is where he makes his official announcements to those willing to pay. Meanwhile, he's made 21,000 stock trades, and counting in the last year. Promoting the very companies that he's investing in. That averages, by the way, to 85 trades a day. That's a lot. Does that sound like somebody who's singularly focused on bringing down the costs for American families? I don't think so. It's the opposite.

So, with Trump, there's clearly no effort to hide the corruption. Corruption is his governing philosophy, and it doesn't-it's not just him and his family. Includes others around him willing to help enrich him, donors receiving influence, billionaires receiving government contracts, political allies receiving appointments, loyalists receiving pardons. Just look at Elon Musk. Elon Musk thought it was going to be a great return on investment when he spent $300 million to help elect Donald Trump back to the White House. And then he was given unprecedented powers for a non-federal government employee. The DOGE experiment, the data-not just of so many federal employees, but so many of the American people-while his companies pursued billions in federal contracts. I can go on and on, but I also want to be clear that rewarding your friends is only part of the story.

Another dangerous part of the Trump corruption story is punishing perceived enemies. The list of names, you know it all too well. Let me just add to that long list of the punishing your enemy side of it, with, if you missed the story just the other day, court documents confirmed what many of us knew already. That this Administration is making decisions on a purely partisan political basis. Almost from the first days of the second Trump Administration, I was hearing from constituents from local cities, counties, transportation agencies, water agencies- you name it, about the cancellation of grants in places like California, places like Rhode Island, but not in places in states that voted for Trump. They canceled, among other areas, more than $7 billion in clean energy projects-whether it's the wind projects that Senator Whitehouse just referenced, or in California, one of the larger projects was a $1.2 billion investment in a hydrogen hub. For all the same reasons. You know, hydrogen is cleaner than fossil fuel when done right. It's the wave of the future for heavy uses of energy. I suspected what was going on, and I asked Secretary Wright under oath when he was in committee in front of the Senate if this was true. And he looked us in the eye and he said no, that the decisions were made on the merits of a project or not had nothing to do with political considerations, and now we have the court documents, the Department of Energy, in court, saying otherwise.

So we have the proof: Secretary Wright lied. But that's what corruption does. Friends get rewarded, your critics get punished. That's why it's all so dangerous. Because it also sends a message to federal employees, public servants, that integrity matters less than loyalty.

So yes, if we care about preserving our democracy for future generations, corruption must not just be called out; it must be met with action. Which is why we need an independent investigation into the Attorney Generals and the Department of Justice's role in the negotiation and acceptance of this luxury jet. It's why we have called and put so much pressure that even Republicans are calling the Administration to abandon the $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund, as they call it, that represents potential payouts to the January 6 rioters. There's a reason I was able to get here on time today. That Senator Whitehouse is here on time today because Judiciary Committee has been postponed. Todd Blanch doesn't have the votes at this time because they refused to put in writing that they're going to give up on this weaponization fund. And it's why I'm joining Leader Schumer on this new bill, empowering everyday Americans and state Attorney Generals to be able to sue to take back every corrupt dollar that the president and the vice president or any future president or vice president makes through corruption while in office.

52 years ago, America learned through Watergate that no president is above the law. And it's a lesson that we shouldn't have to learn again, or at least learn again the hard way. Because again, the danger isn't that any single president will use the office to grow richer. It's the biggest danger is when Americans begin to think this is normal, and that's just the way it is. It is not. It is not how government works. It is not how government is supposed to work. The American people deserve better than that. We owe them a government where public office is a public trust, not a private enterprise. A government that serves and respects and upholds the Constitution, not personal interest. And that's the government and the country that I fight for, that I know you fight for, and that we will continue to fight for. Thank you very much.

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