By Chris Satullo

Follow the money.

In 1972, Mark Felt (AKA “Deep Throat”) maybe said those words to Bob Woodward, perhaps in a Washington, D.C., parking garage. More likely, it was only Hal Holbrook who uttered them to Robert Redford in All the President’s Men.

Either way, the phrase has been part of the national lexicon ever since. It’s become a guidepost for unraveling scandal, for spotting the motive beneath the bombast.

Deep Throat’s advice is cousin to the Latin legal term cui bono? – who benefits?

Every cop knows: Who’s the likeliest culprit? Whoever benefits most from the crime.

These are helpful rules of thumb when trying to decipher what an inveterate shyster like Donald Trump is up to.

Trump haunted Christmas with his dark threats to veto two huge bills that Congress passed in a rare display of bipartisan urgency – the stimulus/omnibus spending package and the National Defense Authorization Act.

He folded on the stimulus last weekend, amid a blizzard of lies. That rightfully got the bulk of news coverage, given how badly millions of Americans need even the scant relief that measure will provide.

But he actually did veto the $741-billion NDAA, an annual exercise in funding the Pentagon whose approval is usually as automatic as LeBron James making the NBA playoffs.

Why? Trump has offered two reasons:

• The law calls for the renaming of military bases that currently honor traitors who fought for the Confederacy. (A nerdy Civil War aside: Braxton Bragg, after whom the most famous of the bases is named, was a thorough incompetent who did as much as any officer in gray to lose the war for the South.)
• Congress failed to tuck into the law a thoroughly unrelated provision that would strip social media companies of some protection from being sued.  

It’s obvious why Trump waved his arms over these two things.  He’s been carrying on for months about the toppling of Confederate statues – clearly a racist dog whistle to his MAGA base. He’s just as clearly enraged at Facebook, Twitter et al. for their recent, belated practice of labeling the screaming lies he tells about voter fraud as, well, lies.

So, points scored; his base’s insatiable appetite for grievance, fed.

Yet, as usual, Trump did none of the hard work of bending the legislative process to his will when he should have – while the defense bill was being marked up. He was too busy losing the election, then pursuing his Clown Coup.

Now, what political benefit can emerge from vetoing a bill that upholds such a sacred Republican goal as providing for the national defense, including a pay raise for “our brave fighting men and women”? Preserving Fort Bragg’s name and poking a finger in Mark Zuckerberg’s eye surely pale in comparison, no?

So why veto? Why risk the nearly certain humiliation (so much losing…) of a veto override – joined by a horde of GOP lawmakers who don’t want a failure to support military families and home-district bases on their resumes? Indeed, the Democrat-led House voted 322-87 on Monday to override, and the Republican-led Senate followed suit on Friday with another overwhelmingly bipartisan rebuke.

Why, oh, why?

Follow the money. Cui bono?

That way, you can glimpse a deeper logic to Trump’s frantic hatred of this bill. Like the two-bit magician he is, he’s gesticulating about Confederate generals to disguise his bigger concern:

Meet the Corporate Transparency Act, an important reform measure tucked into the larger defense bill.

The way Congress works – particularly a polarized one like this – any sure thing like this defense bill is prone to the “Christmas tree effect.” Lawmakers seek to deck out sacred cows with all manner of baubles they’ll have trouble getting passed as standalones.

This is not always as bad as cynics make it sound. Sure, some pork gets passed this way, but popular bills like this can also serve as vehicles to enact useful reforms that, when standing solo, might get ground into dust by special interest lobbying.

Those include reforms such as the Corporate Transparency Act, the earliest version of which U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D., N.Y.) introduced in 2009. She’s kept plugging ever since, honing and advocating until the measure was backed this session by organizations as diverse as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Main Street Alliance, Human Rights Watch and AFSCME. 

What will it do?  Let Maloney explain in her own words (via a media release):

“The Corporate Transparency Act is the most important anti-money laundering and anti-corruption bill in 20 years, and it will make our country substantially safer. Anonymous shell companies have become the vehicle of choice for terrorist financing, money laundering, and organized crime – and unfortunately, the U.S. is one of the easiest places in the world to set up these shell companies. The Corporate Transparency Act solves this by requiring companies to disclose [to the U.S. Treasury Department] their true, beneficial owners at the time the company is formed. This will make it harder for terrorists, criminals, and kleptocrats to finance their operations and move their money.”

So, this measure actually fits more comfortably inside a defense bill than it might seem. Shell companies are favorite devices not just of mob bosses, but also people such as weapons merchants, terrorists and human traffickers.

Not to mention Russian oligarchs.

And, what do you know, also Donald Trump and Jared Kushner.

When Trump needed to pay hush money to a porn star mid-election in 2016, his fixer Michael Cohen hustled a shell company into existence to do the deed. (Cohen did so via the state of Delaware, where swift, easy business incorporation is a huge part of the economy and state budget. Yes, Delaware, home state of soon-to-be-President Biden. I’m just preparing you for the what-about-ism ripostes likely to come from MAGA-land should this law prove as potent in helping unravel Trump’s corrupt schemes as I suspect it will be.)

A central mystery of Trump’s tenure has been his relentless toadying to Vladimir Putin. One explanation often offered, based on bits of smoke that so far have not led back to any visibly raging fire, is this: What rescued the Trump Organization after its incompetence made it unwelcome at most banks in the West? Could it have been a gusher of funds from Russian oligarchs? These kleptocratic buds of Putin were looking to park some of their gains off-shore, safe from prying eyes – and any sudden loss of Putin’s favor. Real estate owned by mysterious American shell companies would be a swell place to launder and hide some of that dough.

But “no collusion!”  I can already hear the outraged cry from the right.

Sigh.

First, the Mueller report didn’t say there was no collusion; only Bill Barr and Donald Trump did. Mueller just explained that his team couldn’t prove collusion, thanks in part to the obstruction of justice detailed in his report’s second half. 

What’s more, Mueller, ever the Boy Scout, complied with a Justice Department directive telling him not to follow the money – back to Russia or anywhere else.  Ever wonder why Mueller was required to ignore a central tenet of any thorough investigation? 

Any future probe of possible money laundering by Trump shell companies, as well as other, related allegations of bank or tax fraud, could be aided in a big way by the provisions of the Corporate Transparency Act.

So if his veto had worked…cui bono? Those shell company mavens, Donald and Jared, that’s who.

Now, fairness demands I mention that the White House issued a statement in favor of the transparency bill when it was being considered in Congress this year. 

Thoroughness, however, requires that I also mention Trump’s lazy habit of ignoring key details of legislation his administration supposedly favors – then exploding in rage when he belatedly discovers (usually via Fox News) what his staff did in his name. (Case in point: Some of the “pork” that he is now blustering about excising from the omnibus spending bill was part of his own federal budget proposal.)

The transparency law isn’t all it might have been. The machinations Donald and his minions have executed over the years might be easier to expose if this law didn’t limit the public’s access to the new information. That was a compromise needed to get the support of players such as (irony alert) Delaware’s secretary of state. Still, law enforcement will be able to see and use the data.

Overall, the Corporate Transparency Act stands as a holiday gift to America – and the world – from Capitol Hill. It might just help curb some of the misery spawned by terrorism, black-market weapons and human trafficking.

With a nice side benefit: It enhances the chance that, one fine day, the Orange One – and/or his android son-in-law – might get fitted for an orange jumpsuit.

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Chris Satullo, a civic engagement consultant, is a former editorial page editor/columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a former vice president/news at WHYY public media in Philadelphia.