With all the justifiably righteous anger aimed at this administration*’s crimes against humanity in Texas, and the newly ignited rage at the administration*’s lying and quibbling about what it’s actually doing, it’s possible that we might lose sight of the fact that this is still an administration* that is grifters all the way down.

Lucky for us, though, Forbes’s Dan Alexander is here to remind us that, while the administration* is demolishing those things that are precious about America, its crew of bounders and fakers is also busy grabbing everything else of value while doing business with some very shady international characters. Come on down, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.

Set-up.

And unlike his boss, Ross promised to divest from almost all his holdings upon entering government, drawing bipartisan praise en route to an easy confirmation. “You have really made a very personal sacrifice,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut. “Your service has resulted in your divesting yourself of literally hundreds of millions of dollars.” In November 2017, Ross confirmed in writing to the federal Office of Government Ethics that he had divested everything he promised.

Punchline.

But that was not true.

No kidding.



· For most of last year, Ross served as secretary of commerce while maintaining stakes in companies co-owned by the Chinese government, a shipping firm tied to Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, a Cypriot bank reportedly caught up in the Robert Mueller investigation and a huge player in an industry Ross is now investigating. It’s hard to imagine a more radioactive portfolio for a cabinet member.



· To this day, Ross’ family apparently continues to have an interest in these toxic holdings. Rather than dump them all, the commerce secretary sold some of his interests to Goldman Sachs – and, according to Ross himself, put others in a trust for his family members. He continued to deal with China, Russia and others while evidently knowing that his family’s interests were tied to those countries.



· In addition, five days before reports surfaced last fall that Ross was connected to cronies of Vladimir Putin, through a shipping firm called Navigator Holdings, the secretary of commerce, who likely knew about the reporting, shorted stock in the Kremlin-linked company, positioning himself to make money on the investment when share prices dropped.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. Getty Images

So why might this be a problem, you ask.



Wilbur Ross is not known for telling the truth.

Whoa.



On a Sunday afternoon last fall, just back from a trip to Asia, Ross called Forbes to lie about his personal fortune. Forbes had listed the commerce secretary on its billionaires rankings for years, but his financial disclosure report revealed less than $700 million in assets. When pressed about the discrepancy, Ross calmly cited more than $2 billion in undisclosed assets, saying he had shifted a chunk of his fortune to a trust for his family.



Those billions apparently did not exist, but when six senators demanded an investigation, Ross insisted his statements contained a kernel of truth. “At the time of my conversation with the reporter, I was in the process of creating a trust as a mechanism to divest my assets in order to comply with my ethics agreement.” But Ross’ ethics agreement required him to divest, either by selling his assets or giving them away. Simply parking them in a trust was not enough.

It turns out the only beneficiaries of this shadowy arrangement are members of the extended Ross family. Alexander finds this…curious.



The ethics filing does not say who its beneficiaries are, but Ross apparently let that slip in his October phone call to Forbes, the only known occasion that he has ever publicly discussed a trust that he used to comply with his ethics agreement. “I am not the beneficiary,” he said when asked about the trust. “That’s the point. This is set up for children and things like that.”



Was anyone outside of Ross’ own family a beneficiary?



“No,” he said.



So according to Ross, he complied with his ethics agreement in part by handing assets over to his own family members, which technically counts as a divestiture, but left the Ross family with a handful of interests alongside the same motley actors that Secretary Ross is supposed to be getting tough with.

My dear young man, you simply don’t know how things are done. Nevertheless, you’d have thought that, just according to the Law of Large Numbers, at least one completely honest and competent person would have slipped through the rigorous vetting process by which this president* staffed the government. It’s entirely possible that we may never clean up our politics until we clean up American business. (Read Alexander's full piece here.) Happy Monday!

Respond to this post on the Esquire Politics Facebook page here.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io