Given what we know about the family's propensity to use secret offshore accounts to funnel money with "mysterious" origins around, the idea they weren't profiting from Russian involvement in a government initiative is just not credible.
https://www.vanityfair.com/story/jared-kushner-hacked-phone-secret-negotiations
While I agree with Laurence Freedman's argument that "kompromat" isn't that effective with Trump in this excellent essay, I'm not sure that Trump is simply motivated by admiration of Putin. I suspect it's more about lust for Russian money than a dictator love-in.
Either way, what we have here is the biggest example in US history of treachery, on a scale that dwarfs anything else I can think of. Trump must, of course, know this. Which is why we can expect a lot more of this before he leaves the presidency behind.
He knows that if he can limp through the next couple of years, he can pardon himself and everyone around him pre-emptively before he leaves office. Of course, he knows if he did it would head to the Supreme Court, who would effectively have to rule that any president was above Federal Law.
But in Trump v. United States (2024), the Court treated pardons as a core presidential power that Congress cannot regulate. A textualist court might be more receptive to a self-pardon than the academic consensus implies.
And this current SCOTUS has already given the President a lot of leeway. The current court has shown willingness to depart from academic consensus on presidential power in favour of treating executive power as absolute.
Trump could also -- and this is definitely possible -- step aside a few months before leaving office in favour of Vance, who very definitely *could* pardon him for anything done in office.
Either way, it is clear that the US Constitution now has enough holes in it for Trump-style corruption to potentially wriggle through. As I've said several times lately, the American Century is over -- as is America itself.
@ianbetteridge highly unlikely they'd do anything without massive benefits to themselves