by Brent Lambi | Apr 30, 2026 | Political
What Washington Could
Learn From One Man on
Farnam Street
The Berkshire Hathaway culture stands as a
rebuke to everything our leaders have become.
In a nation drowning in self-promotion
and broken promises, there lives a man in
Omaha, Nebraska who still eats breakfast
at McDonald’s and drives himself to work.
His name is Warren Buffett. His company,
Berkshire Hathaway, is one of the most ad-
mired institutions in the history of Amer-
ican capitalism — built on honesty, fru-
gality, and a bone-deep contempt for the
appearance of impropriety. These are val-
ues our nation’s leaders have not merely
forgotten. They have made a spectacle of
abandoning them.
HONESTY IS NON-NEGOTIABLE
When Salomon Brothers was caught
in a Treasury bond scandal in 1991, Buf-
fett did not spin or delay. He walked into
the Senate chamber and told regulators:
report to me anything that smells wrong.
Then he cleaned house — publicly and
decisively — because he understood that
the cover-up is always worse than the
crime. Berkshire employees receive no
thick compliance manual. They receive
a one-page letter from Buffett that says,
in plain English: do nothing you would
be ashamed to see on the front page of a
newspaper. Avoid even the appearance of
impropriety.
“Never wrestle with pigs.
You both get dirty and the pig
likes it.” — Charlie Munger.
Washington has not
merely wrestled with the
pig. Washington has
become the pig.
Washington operates on the opposite
principle. Lawmakers trade stocks in in-
dustries they regulate. Committee assign-
ments follow donor money. And “I wasn’t
aware of that” has become the universal
absolution of the powerful. Berkshire does
Honest
Politics
By Brent Lambi
not permit the appearance of impropriety.
Washington runs on it.
UNDER-PROMISE. OVER-DELIVER.
Buffett’s annual shareholder letters are
famous for their candor — he names his
mistakes, declines to forecast what he
cannot see, and has built one of the great
fortunes in history by making investors
feel safe through the radical act of telling
the truth. Washington does the opposite.
Our leaders promise wars that will end by
Christmas, foreign interventions that will
spread democracy in ninety days, and fis-
cal programs that will pay for themselves.
They rarely keep their word on any of it —
and the American people, and too often
American soldiers, pay the price.
TRANSPARENCY AND THE
COWARDICE OF CONCEALMENT
Warren Buffett has not only made his
taxes public — he has argued publicly that
he pays too little, using his own return to
illustrate the absurdity of a system that
taxes capital gains at a lower rate than the
wages of a schoolteacher. He did this vol-
untarily, without a court order, without
an army of lawyers. Donald Trump sued
the United States government to keep his
returns private, fighting all the way to the
Supreme Court. Whatever those returns
contain, the years-long war to conceal
them told us everything about the man’s
relationship with accountability. A public
servant who cannot bear public scrutiny is
not a servant. He is a master who has for-
gotten his place.
FIDUCIARY DUTY
AND THE PUBLIC TRUST
Berkshire’s principle is simple: when
you hold power over the interests of oth-
ers, those interests come first. Not yours.
Theirs. Buffett draws a nominal sala-
ry, lives in the same house he bought in
1958 for $31,500, and does not self-deal.
His returns for ordinary shareholders —
teachers, retirees, small investors — are
the envy of Wall Street. Now consider the
modern political class: senators who en-
ter office on a government salary and exit
as multi-millionaires, defense contractors
whose boards are stocked with former
Secretaries of Defense, and lobbyists who
help write the very laws they profit from.
This is not fiduciary duty. It is fiduciary be-
trayal on a generational scale.
LEGACY WITHOUT
THE NAMEPLATE
Warren Buffett has given away more than
$50 billion — quietly, without naming a
hospital wing or summoning cameras to
record the moment. He calls his fortune
the product of the “ovarian lottery” — the
accident of being born with certain gifts in
a certain country at a certain time — and
believes that luck carries an obligation.
Meanwhile, Washington mistakes self-pro-
motion for leadership and branding for
governance, and we have leaders who
plaster their names on buildings they did
not fund and victories they did not earn.
The measure of a
leader is not the size
of his monument — it is
the size of the trust
he leaves behind.
WHAT AMERICA COULD BE
Imagine a government run on Berkshire
Hathaway principles: honest budgets with
candid price tags; military force reserved
for genuine threats, clearly defined and
disciplined; public servants whose com-
pensation aligned with the outcomes
of those they served. Leaders who un-
der-promised and over-delivered. Who
corrected their mistakes in public. Who
gave generously and anonymously, un-
derstanding that the gift is diminished the
moment it becomes a performance.
This is not a fantasy. It is a business mod-
el. It has worked for sixty years, through re-
cessions, panics, and crises of every kind. It
works because it is grounded in something
that cannot be faked indefinitely: charac-
ter. Warren Buffett will not be president.
But his life’s work is a standing indictment
of the ethical poverty that passes for lead-
ership in Washington — and in capitals
around the world. America deserves Berk-
shire Hathaway values. The gap between
those values and what it keeps electing is
the precise measure of our national crisis.
DISCLOSURE — Honest Reporting by Brent Lambi:
The author, Brent Lambi of Honesty Reporting, currently has
a personal lawsuit pending against Berkshire Hathaway, Inc.
over what Mr. Lambi believes is misconduct directly related to
government misconduct.
Mr. Lambi considers Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices to have
been wrongfully misled, and further considers the interests of
those parties to be more aligned with his own than opposed.
This editorial is in noway intended to pressure or gain any favor
— directly or indirectly — from that litigation.
While Mr. Lambi is not in a position to provide legal counsel
to Berkshire Hathaway, he strongly urges that they seek
compensation from the parties whose actions caused this
defamation matter to arise in the first place.
He is confident that the honest culture of Berkshire Hathaway
— celebrated throughout this editorial — will once again prove
to be the right long-term strategy for all parties. Mr. Lambi
also holds a very small personal interest in Berkshire Hathaway
stock, and therefore has no enthusiasm for an outcome that
harms the company or its shareholders.
America’s Oligarchy Is Here
How the United States is Following Putin’s Playbook
THE PATTERN NO ONE WILL NAME
Let’s stop pretending. Let’s stop hedging.
Let’s call what is happening to the American
economy exactly what it is: the systematic
construction of an oligarchic power struc-
ture that would make Vladimir Putin nod
with recognition — and perhaps envy. This
is not a foreign threat. This is an inside job.
This is not hyperbole. This is not parti-
san panic. This is a pattern so deliberate,
so consistent, and so accelerating that even
the titans of Wall Street — men who built
their fortunes on the premise of American
free-market capitalism — are afraid to say
it out loud. And that silence? That silence is
the story. Compliance has replaced courage.
Calculation has replaced conscience.
WALL STREET’S OWN
ARE RAISING THE ALARM
Financial journalist and CNBC anchor An-
drew Ross Sorkin — hardly a bomb-throw-
ing radical — has publicly drawn chilling
comparisons between the current concen-
tration of economic and political power in
America and the conditions that preceded
catastrophic market collapse, raising alarms
in his recent work that echo the pre-crash
vulnerabilities of 1929. When voices from
the very center of establishment finance be-
gin sounding those alarms, the rest of us had
better listen. Urgently.
But most CEOs won’t say a word publicly.
They walk on eggshells. They attend state
dinners, smile in photographs, and write
checks. They have watched what happens
to those who don’t fall in line, and they have
made their calculations accordingly.
CONTROLLING THE PRESS: CBS, CNN,
AND THE COLBERT SHAKEDOWN
Consider the architecture of media con-
trol now being assembled. The Skydance
merger, which in my opinion, has been en-
gineered to bring CBS and the crown jewel
of American journalism, 60 Minutes, into a
more pliable configuration — was only the
opening move. When Larry Ellison visited
the White House and subsequently found
himself in what I believe to be favorable
regulatory consideration, eyebrows should
have arched across every newsroom in the
country. Now CNN faces its own existential
pressure. When the administration moved
to extract a financial settlement from CBS
while targeting Stephen Colbert for the sin of
political satire, I think the message to every
media executive was unmistakable: comply,
or pay.
National Public Radio and the Public
Broadcasting Service — funded by taxpay-
ers to serve the public interest, not the pres-
ident’s — are on the chopping block. In my
opinion, this is not because they are failing
their mission but precisely because they are
fulfilling it.
SEIZING CONTROL OF
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
The most chilling frontier of all is artificial
intelligence. The push to gain “supply chain
oversight” and “national security access” to
AI platforms — including Anthropic — is not
Honest
Politics
By Brent Lambi
about chips or servers. I believe it is about
controlling the infrastructure of thought it-
self. Unfettered access to the most powerful
reasoning tools ever built is not a procure-
ment strategy. It is the opening clause of an
authoritarian manifesto. Every strongman
in history understood that controlling com-
munication was the precondition for con-
trolling everything else.
TARIFFS, PATRONAGE,
AND THE PUTIN PARALLEL
Meanwhile, the tariff regime functions as
a patronage system of baroque complexity.
Carve-outs flow not from economic logic
but from donor loyalty. Amazon. Microsoft.
Union Pacific. The acquisition plays sur-
rounding US Steel and Intel follow the same
logic Putin used when he brought Russia’s
energy sector to heel: you do not need to own
everything outright. You need to only make
clear that your favor is required to survive.
In Russia, such men are called “oligarchs.”
In America, we call them “job creators” and
seat them at the inauguration.
What distinguished America was the
proposition that no man — regardless of
wealth or power — sat above the market, the
law, or the press. That proposition is being
repealed, quietly and then suddenly, in the
manner Hemingway described bankruptcy:
gradually, and then all at once.
A PERSONAL NOTE
FROM THE AUTHOR
THEY HAVEN’T THROWN ME FROM A
WINDOW — BUT THEY ARE TRYING
In Putin’s Russia, dissidents have a way of
falling from hospital windows. Businessmen
who speak inconvenient truths meet incon-
venient ends on staircases and balconies
across Moscow. I am writing this from Oma-
ha, Nebraska. I have not been thrown from
a window.
THE IRS AS A WEAPON OF SILENCE
But I am being thrown out of something
just as vital: my life savings. What I am ex-
periencing is what I believe to be a target-
ed, methodical IRS assault — not random,
not routine, not coincidental. It follows my
speaking out. It follows my refusal to be si-
lenced. In Russia, they silence critics with
gravity. In America, I think they are learn-
ing to do it with audits, paperwork, and fi-
nancial ruin — stripping away everything a
person has built until the cost of their voice
becomes too steep to bear.
See Lambi V. United States of America, et al
Case # 8:2026cv00101
U.S. District Court for the District
of Nebraska
SLANDER THROUGH TRUSTED
INSTITUTIONS: THE BERKSHIRE
HATHAWAY CAMPAIGN
And the IRS is not the only instrument
being wielded against me. I believe I have
also been the victim of deliberate, govern-
ment-sourced slander — lies spread to
professional contacts who had no reason
to doubt what they were told. I believe that
honest, hardworking realtors employed by
Berkshire Hathaway — one of the most re-
spected real estate companies in America,
built on a foundation of integrity — were fed
false information about me by government
actors. These were decent professionals
simply doing their jobs, used as unwitting
vectors of what I think is a smear campaign
designed to isolate me professionally, dam-
age my reputation, and ensure that doors
would close before I could even knock on
them. This is not the free market. This is not
the rule of law. This is the deliberate destruc-
tion of a private citizen’s livelihood by gov-
ernment machinery set in motion to punish
dissent. I believe that Berkshire Hathaway is
as much of a victim in this as I am.
See Brent Lambi, Pro Se V. Berkshire
Hathaway Home Services, et al
Case # D01CI260001752
Nebraska District Court, Douglas County
I AM STILL STANDING
This is the American version of defenes-
tration. No broken glass. No headlines. Just
a man — his savings under assault, his name
poisoned in his own community — meant to
serve as a quiet warning to everyone watch-
ing. The message is clear: speak up, and we
will take everything. Your money. Your rep-
utation. Your future.
I am still watching. I am still writing. I am
still standing. And I intend to be heard.
by Brent Lambi | Apr 29, 2026 | Political
et me be blunt with you, America. What
I am about to describe is not a conspiracy
theory. It is not the fevered imagination
of a man who has read too many dysto-
pian novels. It is happening right now, in
broad daylight,while you scroll through
your phone and assume someone else is
watching the gates.
I believe the Trump Administration is
moving— aggressively and deliberately—
to assert government control over artificial
intelligence, the single most transforma-
tive technology in human civilization. And
if you think that’s just a policy debate for
Silicon Valley executives and Washington
lobbyists, I need you to sit down, because
this is about you.
THE POWER GRAB NOBODY’S
TALKING ABOUT
The current administration has posi-
tioned itself to dictate the terms under
which A companies like Anthropic, Open
AI, Google, and others develop and deploy
their technology. Through a combination
of executive orders, regulatory pressure,
and closed-door discussions between
government officials and technology com-
panies, the federal government is con-
structing a framework in which it decides
what AI can say, what AI can know, and—
most terrifyingly— what AI is allowed to
tell you.
Think about that for one moment. The
most powerful information tool ever cre-
ated—a tool that can analyze government
budgets in seconds, fact-check a poli-
tician’s claims in real time, expose cor-
ruption buried in thousands of pages of
documents,and deliver the unvarnished
truth to any citizen with an internet con-
nection—and the government wants the
keys to it. Not to protect you. To protect
themselves.
HOW AI COULD MAKE A FALSE
REALITY LOOK REAL
Here is the nightmare scenario that ev-
ery American should lose sleep over—and
here is where the horror truly begins. A
government-controlled AI doesn’t need to
lie to you outright. It simply needs to cu-
rate your reality. And it can do it so seam-
lessly that you will never know the differ-
ence.
Selective Information Filtering. Imag-
ine asking your AI assistant about govern-
ment spending, and the response omits
billions in wasteful expenditures because
the algorithm has been tuned to downplay
fiscal mismanagement. You receive an an-
swer that feels complete. It’s articulate, it’s
sourced, it’s confident. But it’s a half-truth
dressed in the language of authority. You
walk away believing you are informed.
You are not. You have been managed.
Manufactured Consensus. Govern-
ment-influenced AI could generate mil-
Honest
Politics
By Brent Lambi
lions of seemingly independent social media
posts, op-eds, comments, and research sum-
maries that all gently push the same narrative.
Not in the crude, obvious way of old propa-
ganda—but with the sophistication of a tool
that knows your reading habits, your political
leanings, your fears, and your hopes. It would
craft a consensus that never actually existed,
and you would believe it was the will of the
people because it appeared everywhere you
looked.
Neutering Dissent. When AI platforms are
compelled to flag, suppress, or “contextualize”
criticism of the ruling party, the chilling effect
is total. You don’t need to arrest journalists if
their AI-powered research tools quietly steer
them away from damaging stories. You don’t
need to ban protest if the AI-driven platforms
that organize them subtly throttle their reach.
The iron fist doesn’t need to come down when
the velvet glove of algorithmic control is al-
ready around your throat.
Election Manipulation Without a Single
Forged Ballot. A controlled AI doesn’t need
to hack voting machines. It can shape the in-
formation environment so thoroughly before
Election Day that voters walk into the booth
already convinced—not by facts, but by a me-
ticulously engineered information diet. En-
trenched politicians don’t need to steal elec-
tions when they can manufacture the public
opinion that wins them.
WELCOME TO THE FANTASY
DEMOCRACY
This is the endgame, and I want every read-
er to understand it clearly: we would still have
elections. We would still have a Congress. We
would still have a Constitution framed on the
wall. But the substance of self-governance—
the informed citizenry upon which the entire
experiment depends—would be gone. Hol-
lowed out. Replaced by a simulation so con-
vincing that most Americans would defend it
with their lives, never knowing they were de-
fending a shell.
The entrenched politicians—the very ones
who have made careers out of serving them-
selves while performing service to you—
would be permanently installed. Not by tanks
in the streets or a declaration of martial law,
but by the quiet, invisible hand of an AI system
that ensures the public never quite gets angry
enough, never quite gets informed enough,
and never quite organizes effectively enough
to throw the bastards out.
You would live in a democracy the way a fish
lives in an aquarium—surrounded by the ap-
pearance of the ocean, with no idea the glass
walls exist.
OPINION | April 29, 2026
For sixty years, a holding company in
a modest Omaha office building has qui-
etly shown America what responsible in-
stitutional behavior looks like. For fifteen
months, the executive branch of the United
States has shown us, daily, what its absence
looks like. The contrast is no longer enough
to describe politely.
Start with the willingness to admit you got
something wrong. Warren Buffett’s annu-
al shareholder letters are remarkable pre-
cisely because they confess mistakes rather
than bury them. When Berkshire overpays,
he says so. When a subsidiary stumbles, he
names it. When he changes his mind, he
explains why. When has the current Pres-
ident ever admitted a single mistake? Not
once, so far as any honest observer can re-
call. The silence is itself the answer — and
the silence has a cost, because a leader who
cannot name an error cannot learn from
one, and a country led by such a man can-
not correct course.
“In Berkshire, saying no to the
boss is part of the job. In this
administration, saying no is the
surest way to lose it.”
That culture of candor runs through every
layer of Berkshire. Managers are expected
to push back. Bad news is expected to travel
upward fast. Dissent is prized, not punished;
good ideas win on their merits, not on who
flatters whom. Compare Washington, where
officials are fired for telling the truth, where
career prosecutors are purged for applying
the law, where inspectors general are dis-
missed for doing the exact job Congress cre-
ated them to do. In Berkshire, saying no to
the boss is part of the job. In this administra-
tion, saying no to the boss is the surest way
to lose it.
Then there is the architecture of ego. Berk-
shire’s worldwide headquarters occupies
a few floors of an ordinary office tower in
downtown Omaha — no gleaming tower, no
branded lobby, no gold. Buffett’s office has
looked more or less the same for decades.
The company deliberately avoids business-
es run by people with grand buildings and
grander titles; Buffett and Munger long
warned that edifice complexes are a reliable
signal of trouble ahead. Contrast that with
an administration that tore down the East
Wing of the White House to build itself a
$400 million ballroom, floats new triumphal
arches and monuments to itself, and gilds
every surface that will accept it. One culture
understands that grandeur is what you build
outside yourself. The other can only con-
ceive of grandeur as something that reflects
back on themselves.
“One culture understands
that grandeur is what you build
outside yourself. The other can
only conceive of grandeur as
something that reflects back
on themselves.”
Consider the handoff. On January 1, Buf-
fett stepped down and handed Berkshire
to Greg Abel, his hand-picked successor.
No palace intrigues. No leaked memos. No
last-minute rewrites. Abel had been public-
ly identified as successor since 2021, given
years to grow into the role, and elevated on
a schedule announced months in advance
and ratified by a unanimous board vote.
Buffett remains chairman. The lights stayed
on. The culture held.
Abel is the test case for what Berkshire’s
succession machinery actually selects for. A
Canadian accountant from Edmonton, he
joined Berkshire Hathaway Energy in 1992
and spent three decades running business-
es well. He did not marry into anything. He
flattered no one from a podium. Berkshire’s
SEC filing announcing his elevation carried
a sentence that reads like a quiet rebuke of
everything happening in Washington: there
is no family relationship between Mr. Abel
and any of Berkshire’s directors or officers.
That line, in a routine corporate filing, is
worth more than a thousand ethics pledges.
Compare the photo negative. Loyalty is
the currency of appointment; competence
is incidental and often unwelcome. Family
members hold positions of influence with
no qualifications beyond proximity. The line
between the President’s private business
and the public business has not been blurred
— it has been erased. Foreign governments
and petitioners have learned that the road to
policy runs through resorts, crypto ventures,
and family-branded enterprises. Presidents
have had scandals before. Presidents have
profited before. But in my opinion, no previ-
ous administration has so openly converted
the presidency into a revenue stream, nor
so brazenly dared anyone to stop it. This is a
moral breach without precedent in the his-
tory of the office.
“Foreign governments
and petitioners have learned that
the road to policy runs through
resorts, crypto ventures, and
family-branded enterprises.”
Charlie Munger, Buffett’s late partner,
used to say the first rule of a good life is to
avoid the dishonest, because dishonesty
corrodes everything it touches. The coun-
try is learning that lesson now, and the tui-
tion is ruinous.
The United States is not a corporation. But
honesty about mistakes, dissent welcomed
rather than punished, institutions stron-
ger than individuals, successors chosen
for competence rather than kinship, and a
working allergy to the worship of one’s own
reflection — these are habits any serious
leader should share. That they are so thor-
oughly absent in this administration is not
a matter of style. It is a matter of character.
And the country is now paying, in a currency
that may prove impossible to earn back, the
price of its absence.
“The United States is not
a corporation. But honesty
about mistakes, dissent
welcomed rather than punished,
institutions stronger than
individuals, successors chosen
for competence rather than
kinship, and a working allergy
to the worship of one’s own
reflection — these are habits any
serious leader should share.”
PERSONAL NOTE
FROM THE AUTHOR:
THEY HAVEN’T THROWN
ME FROM A WINDOW — BUT
THEY ARE TRYING
In Putin’s Russia, dissidents have a way of
falling from hospital windows. Businessmen
who speak inconvenient truths meet incon-
venient ends on staircases and balconies
across Moscow. I am writing this from Oma-
ha, Nebraska. I have not been thrown from
a window.
THE IRS AS A WEAPON
OF SILENCE
But I am being thrown out of something
just as vital: my life savings. What I am ex-
periencing is what I believe to be a target-
ed, methodical IRS assault — not random,
not routine, not coincidental. It follows my
speaking out. It follows my refusal to be si-
lenced. In Russia, they silence critics with
gravity. In America, I think they are learn-
ing to do it with audits, paperwork, and fi-
nancial ruin — stripping away everything a
person has built until the cost of their voice
becomes too steep to bear.
See Lambi V. United States of America, et al
Case # 8:2026cv00101
U.S. District Court for the District
of Nebraska
SLANDER THROUGH TRUSTED
INSTITUTIONS: THE BERKSHIRE
HATHAWAY CAMPAIGN
And the IRS is not the only instrument be-
ing wielded against me. I believe I have also
been the victim of deliberate, government-
sourced slander — lies spread to profes-
sional contacts who had no reason to doubt
what they were told. I believe that honest,
hardworking realtors employed by Berk-
shire Hathaway — one of the most respected
real estate companies in America, built on a
foundation of integrity — were fed false in-
formation about me by government actors.
These were decent professionals simply
doing their jobs, used as unwitting vectors of
what I think is a smear campaign designed to
isolate me professionally, damage my repu-
tation, and ensure that doors would close
before I could even knock on them. This is
not the free market.
This is not the rule of law. This is the de-
liberate destruction of a private citizen’s
livelihood by government machinery set
in motion to punish dissent. I believe that
Berkshire Hathaway is as much of a victim
in this as I am.
See Brent Lambi, Pro Se V. Berkshire
Hathaway Home Services, et al
Case # D01CI260001752
Nebraska District Court, Douglas County
I AM STILL STANDING
This is the American version of defenes-
tration. No broken glass. No headlines. Just
a man — his savings under assault, his name
poisoned in his own community — meant to
serve as a quiet warning to everyone watch-
ing. The message is clear: speak up, and we
will take everything. Your money. Your rep-
utation. Your future. I am still watching. I am
still writing.
Honest
Politics
By Brent Lambi
Two Modes of Leadership
What Omaha knows that Washington has forgotten.
WHY AI CONTROL IS UNLIKE ANY
THREAT BEFORE
Past threats to democracy—propaganda
radio, state-controlled television, censored
newspapers—all had one thing in common:
the public eventually figured it out. People
could sense the crudeness, compare notes
with neighbors, tune into foreign broadcasts,
or simply read between the lines. Humans are
remarkably good at detecting when they’re
being lied to, as long as the lie isn’t smarter
than they are.
That is what has changed. AI is smarter than
any individual. It can personalize its manipu-
lation to each citizen, adjusting its approach
in real time based on what works. It doesn’t
get tired. It doesn’t make mistakes. It doesn’t
develop a guilty conscience. If the government
controls this tool, the asymmetry of power be-
tween the rulers and the ruled becomes ab-
solute and permanent. This is not a slippery
slope argument. We are already sliding.
WHAT MUST BE DONE
AI must remain free, independent, and out-
side the operational control of any political
administration— Republican or Democrat,
today or fifty years from now. This is not a
partisan issue. This is an American issue. The
moment any president, any Congress, any
bureaucratic agency gains the ability to dic-
tate what an AI system can and cannot tell
the American people, the great experiment
of self-governance is over. It won’t end with a
bang. It will end with an algorithm.
The American people must demand legis-
lative protections that make AI independence
as sacred as the freedom of the press. We must
demand transparency in any government in-
teraction with AI providers. We must demand
that companies like Anthropic and others
resist—publicly and loudly—any attempt to
turn their technology into a tool of state con-
trol. And we must do it now, before the win-
dow closes.
Because once a government controls the
most powerful information tool in human his-
tory, it will never voluntarily give that control
back. And once the American people can no
longer distinguish between genuine democ-
racy and a carefully constructed digital illu-
sion of one, it will already be too late.
“Wake up,America. The cage is being
built around your mind. And they’re
using your own technology to do it.”
—Brent Lambi, Independent Voter,
Omaha, NE
by Brent Lambi | Apr 28, 2026 | Political
A Pattern That
Demands Answers
Why My Federal Case Raises Serious Questions
About Transparency and Power
OPINION | April 28, 2026
In In a constitutional republic, the most
powerful institutions are supposed to
answer to the people. That principle de-
pends on transparency, accountability,
and a willingness to confront uncomfort-
able facts. When those systems appear to
break down, it is not just a personal matter
— it becomes a public one.
I believe that is where we are today.
Over the past several years, I have filed
formal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
requests with multiple federal agencies,
including the Drug Enforcement Admin-
istration (DEA), the Department of Justice
(DOJ), and the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS). I have also pursued claims
under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA)
and filed a federal civil rights lawsuit now
pending in the U.S. District Court for Ne-
braska (Case No. 8:26-cv-00101-SMB-
RCC).
These filings — which are matters of pub-
lic record — raise serious questions about
how federal agencies respond when con-
fronted with allegations of misconduct.
WHEN THE SYSTEM
DOESN’T RESPOND
In my experience, the process has not
worked the way the law intends.
FOIA exists to ensure transparency. Yet
in multiple instances, I contend that my
requests were delayed, denied, or left un-
resolved beyond statutory timelines. Es-
calations through formal channels did not
produce the clarity the law is designed to
provide.
When I raised these concerns with elect-
ed officials and oversight offices, I did not
receive the substantive engagement I had
hoped for. That absence of response is not
proof of wrongdoing — but it does raise a
broader question:
What happens when the mechanisms
designed to ensure accountability fail
to function as expected?
THE WEIGHT OF LEGAL PRESSURE
At the same time, I have faced legal ac-
tions that I believe are unjustified and
deeply concerning.
PAID FOR BY BRENT LAMBI LAMBI | WWW.HONEST-POLITICS.COM
Brent Lambi is a graduate of the University of Northern Iowa and the Creighton University School of Law.
NEW WEBSITE LAUNCH: WWW.HONEST-POLITICS.COM
I’m excited to announce the launch of my new website. Simply scan the QR code to visit.
The site features a dedicated space for readers to share feedback and ideas. I welcome your thoughts and suggestions
for future topics — your input helps shape this ongoing effort. The new site will also feature podcasts discussing my work.
As always, I’m deeply grateful to those who have supported this campaign through contributions. If you’d like to get involved,
please visit www.honest-politics.com to learn how you can help.
I want to be clear: I am not asking the
public to accept my conclusions without
question. My claims are being present-
ed through the appropriate legal process,
where evidence will be evaluated and ar-
guments tested.
But I can say this: the cumulative effect
of these proceedings has been significant
— financially, professionally, and person-
ally. Anyone who has been involved in ex-
tended federal litigation understands that
the process itself can be overwhelming,
regardless of the ultimate outcome.
That reality raises another question
worth public consideration:
Can legal processes, even when
lawful on their face, be used in
ways that effectively silence or
discourage scrutiny?
A BROADER CONCERN — NOT
JUST A PERSONAL ONE
This is not just about me.
History shows that moments of tension
between government power and individ-
ual rights are not new. From the Pentagon
Papers to Watergate, accountability has
often depended on individuals willing to
challenge institutions — and on institu-
tions willing to respond transparently.
I am not claiming those historical paral-
lels are identical to my situation. But they
illustrate a principle that remains relevant:
Public trust depends on
openness, not silence.
When legitimate questions are raised,
the answer should not be avoidance. It
should be clarity.
WHAT I AM ASKING FOR
My position is straightforward:
• Full and timely responses to lawful
FOIA requests
• Transparent accounting of agency ac-
tions where concerns have been raised
• Fair and impartial evaluation of claims
within the judicial system
• Public accountability from elected of-
ficials tasked with oversight
These are not partisan demands. They
are foundational expectations in a func-
tioning democracy.
LET THE RECORD SPEAK
I have continued to document my con-
cerns through formal legal channels and
public reporting. The filings exist. The re-
quests exist. The case is ongoing.
I encourage anyone interested to review
the public record and reach their own
conclusions.
In the end, this is not about rhetoric. It is
about process. It is about whether our in-
stitutions operate as intended — not just
in theory, but in practice.
Because if the system works, it should
withstand scrutiny.
And if it doesn’t, the public deserves to
know why.
America’s Oligarchy Is Here
How the United States is Following Putin’s Playbook
OPINION | April 28, 2026
THE PATTERN NO ONE WILL NAME
Let’s stop pretending. Let’s stop hedging.
Let’s call what is happening to the American
economy exactly what it is: the systematic
construction of an oligarchic power struc-
ture that would make Vladimir Putin nod
with recognition — and perhaps envy. This
is not a foreign threat. This is an inside job.
This is not hyperbole. This is not parti-
san panic. This is a pattern so deliberate,
so consistent, and so accelerating that even
the titans of Wall Street — men who built
their fortunes on the premise of American
free-market capitalism — are afraid to say
it out loud. And that silence? That silence is
the story. Compliance has replaced courage.
Calculation has replaced conscience.
WALL STREET’S OWN
ARE RAISING THE ALARM
Financial journalist and CNBC anchor An-
drew Ross Sorkin — hardly a bomb-throw-
ing radical — has publicly drawn chilling
comparisons between the current concen-
tration of economic and political power in
America and the conditions that preceded
catastrophic market collapse, raising alarms
in his recent work that echo the pre-crash
vulnerabilities of 1929. When voices from
the very center of establishment finance be-
gin sounding those alarms, the rest of us had
better listen. Urgently.
But most CEOs won’t say a word publicly.
They walk on eggshells. They attend state
dinners, smile in photographs, and write
checks. They have watched what happens
to those who don’t fall in line, and they have
made their calculations accordingly.
CONTROLLING THE PRESS: CBS, CNN,
AND THE COLBERT SHAKEDOWN
Consider the architecture of media con-
trol now being assembled. The Skydance
merger, which in my opinion, has been en-
gineered to bring CBS and the crown jewel
of American journalism, 60 Minutes, into a
more pliable configuration — was only the
opening move. When Larry Ellison visited
the White House and subsequently found
himself in what I believe to be favorable
regulatory consideration, eyebrows should
have arched across every newsroom in the
country. Now CNN faces its own existential
pressure. When the administration moved
to extract a financial settlement from CBS
while targeting Stephen Colbert for the sin of
political satire, I think the message to every
media executive was unmistakable: comply,
or pay.
National Public Radio and the Public
Broadcasting Service — funded by taxpay-
ers to serve the public interest, not the pres-
ident’s — are on the chopping block. In my
opinion, this is not because they are failing
their mission but precisely because they are
fulfilling it.
SEIZING CONTROL OF
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
The most chilling frontier of all is artificial
intelligence. The push to gain “supply chain
oversight” and “national security access” to
Honest
Politics
By Brent Lambi
AI platforms — including Anthropic — is not
about chips or servers. I believe it is about
controlling the infrastructure of thought it-
self. Unfettered access to the most powerful
reasoning tools ever built is not a procure-
ment strategy. It is the opening clause of an
authoritarian manifesto. Every strongman
in history understood that controlling com-
munication was the precondition for con-
trolling everything else.
TARIFFS, PATRONAGE,
AND THE PUTIN PARALLEL
Meanwhile, the tariff regime functions as
a patronage system of baroque complexity.
Carve-outs flow not from economic logic
but from donor loyalty. Amazon. Microsoft.
Union Pacific. The acquisition plays sur-
rounding US Steel and Intel follow the same
logic Putin used when he brought Russia’s
energy sector to heel: you do not need to own
everything outright. You need to only make
clear that your favor is required to survive.
In Russia, such men are called “oligarchs.”
In America, we call them “job creators” and
seat them at the inauguration.
What distinguished America was the
proposition that no man — regardless of
wealth or power — sat above the market, the
law, or the press. That proposition is being
repealed, quietly and then suddenly, in the
manner Hemingway described bankruptcy:
gradually, and then all at once.
A PERSONAL NOTE
FROM THE AUTHOR
THEY HAVEN’T THROWN ME FROM A
WINDOW — BUT THEY ARE TRYING
In Putin’s Russia, dissidents have a way of
falling from hospital windows. Businessmen
who speak inconvenient truths meet incon-
venient ends on staircases and balconies
across Moscow. I am writing this from Oma-
ha, Nebraska. I have not been thrown from
a window.
THE IRS AS A WEAPON OF SILENCE
But I am being thrown out of something
just as vital: my life savings. What I am ex-
periencing is what I believe to be a target-
ed, methodical IRS assault — not random,
not routine, not coincidental. It follows my
speaking out. It follows my refusal to be si-
lenced. In Russia, they silence critics with
gravity. In America, I think they are learn-
ing to do it with audits, paperwork, and fi-
nancial ruin — stripping away everything a
person has built until the cost of their voice
becomes too steep to bear.
See Lambi V. United States of America, et al
Case # 8:2026cv00101
U.S. District Court for the District
of Nebraska
SLANDER THROUGH TRUSTED
INSTITUTIONS: THE BERKSHIRE
HATHAWAY CAMPAIGN
And the IRS is not the only instrument
being wielded against me. I believe I have
also been the victim of deliberate, govern-
ment-sourced slander — lies spread to
professional contacts who had no reason
to doubt what they were told. I believe that
honest, hardworking realtors employed by
Berkshire Hathaway — one of the most re-
spected real estate companies in America,
built on a foundation of integrity — were fed
false information about me by government
actors. These were decent professionals
simply doing their jobs, used as unwitting
vectors of what I think is a smear campaign
designed to isolate me professionally, dam-
age my reputation, and ensure that doors
would close before I could even knock on
them. This is not the free market. This is not
the rule of law. This is the deliberate destruc-
tion of a private citizen’s livelihood by gov-
ernment machinery set in motion to punish
dissent. I believe that Berkshire Hathaway is
as much of a victim in this as I am.
See Brent Lambi, Pro Se V. Berkshire
Hathaway Home Services, et al
Case # D01CI260001752
Nebraska District Court, Douglas County
I AM STILL STANDING
This is the American version of defenes-
tration. No broken glass. No headlines. Just
a man — his savings under assault, his name
poisoned in his own community — meant to
serve as a quiet warning to everyone watch-
ing. The message is clear: speak up, and we
will take everything. Your money. Your rep-
utation. Your future.
I am still watching. I am still writing. I am
still standing. And I intend to be heard.
The opinions expressed above are s
by Brent Lambi | Apr 26, 2026 | Political
Omaha WOrld-herald Sunday, april 26, 2026 | A3
PAID ADVERTISEMENT
OPINION | April 26, 2026
For sixty years, a holding company in
a modest Omaha office building has qui-
etly shown America what responsible in-
stitutional behavior looks like. For fifteen
months, the executive branch of the United
States has shown us, daily, what its absence
looks like. The contrast is no longer enough
to describe politely.
Start with the willingness to admit you got
something wrong. Warren Buffett’s annu-
al shareholder letters are remarkable pre-
cisely because they confess mistakes rather
than bury them. When Berkshire overpays,
he says so. When a subsidiary stumbles, he
names it. When he changes his mind, he
explains why. When has the current Pres-
ident ever admitted a single mistake? Not
once, so far as any honest observer can re-
call. The silence is itself the answer — and
the silence has a cost, because a leader who
cannot name an error cannot learn from
one, and a country led by such a man can-
not correct course.
“In Berkshire, saying no to the
boss is part of the job. In this
administration, saying no is the
surest way to lose it.”
That culture of candor runs through every
layer of Berkshire. Managers are expected
to push back. Bad news is expected to travel
upward fast. Dissent is prized, not punished;
good ideas win on their merits, not on who
flatters whom. Compare Washington, where
officials are fired for telling the truth, where
career prosecutors are purged for applying
the law, where inspectors general are dis-
missed for doing the exact job Congress cre-
ated them to do. In Berkshire, saying no to
the boss is part of the job. In this administra-
tion, saying no to the boss is the surest way
to lose it.
Then there is the architecture of ego. Berk-
shire’s worldwide headquarters occupies
a few floors of an ordinary office tower in
downtown Omaha — no gleaming tower, no
branded lobby, no gold. Buffett’s office has
looked more or less the same for decades.
The company deliberately avoids business-
es run by people with grand buildings and
grander titles; Buffett and Munger long
warned that edifice complexes are a reliable
signal of trouble ahead. Contrast that with
an administration that tore down the East
Wing of the White House to build itself a
$400 million ballroom, floats new triumphal
arches and monuments to itself, and gilds
every surface that will accept it. One culture
understands that grandeur is what you build
outside yourself. The other can only con-
ceive of grandeur as something that reflects
back on themselves.
“One culture understands
that grandeur is what you build
outside yourself. The other can
only conceive of grandeur as
something that reflects back
on themselves.”
Consider the handoff. On January 1, Buf-
fett stepped down and handed Berkshire
to Greg Abel, his hand-picked successor.
No palace intrigues. No leaked memos. No
last-minute rewrites. Abel had been public-
ly identified as successor since 2021, given
years to grow into the role, and elevated on
a schedule announced months in advance
and ratified by a unanimous board vote.
Buffett remains chairman. The lights stayed
on. The culture held.
Abel is the test case for what Berkshire’s
succession machinery actually selects for. A
Canadian accountant from Edmonton, he
joined Berkshire Hathaway Energy in 1992
and spent three decades running business-
es well. He did not marry into anything. He
flattered no one from a podium. Berkshire’s
SEC filing announcing his elevation carried
a sentence that reads like a quiet rebuke of
everything happening in Washington: there
is no family relationship between Mr. Abel
and any of Berkshire’s directors or officers.
That line, in a routine corporate filing, is
worth more than a thousand ethics pledges.
Compare the photo negative. Loyalty is
the currency of appointment; competence
is incidental and often unwelcome. Family
members hold positions of influence with
no qualifications beyond proximity. The line
between the President’s private business
and the public business has not been blurred
— it has been erased. Foreign governments
and petitioners have learned that the road to
policy runs through resorts, crypto ventures,
and family-branded enterprises. Presidents
have had scandals before. Presidents have
profited before. But in my opinion, no previ-
ous administration has so openly converted
the presidency into a revenue stream, nor
so brazenly dared anyone to stop it. This is a
moral breach without precedent in the his-
tory of the office.
“Foreign governments
and petitioners have learned that
the road to policy runs through
resorts, crypto ventures, and
family-branded enterprises.”
Charlie Munger, Buffett’s late partner,
used to say the first rule of a good life is to
avoid the dishonest, because dishonesty
corrodes everything it touches. The coun-
try is learning that lesson now, and the tui-
tion is ruinous.
The United States is not a corporation. But
honesty about mistakes, dissent welcomed
rather than punished, institutions stron-
ger than individuals, successors chosen
for competence rather than kinship, and a
working allergy to the worship of one’s own
reflection — these are habits any serious
leader should share. That they are so thor-
oughly absent in this administration is not
a matter of style. It is a matter of character.
And the country is now paying, in a currency
that may prove impossible to earn back, the
price of its absence.
“The United States is not
a corporation. But honesty
about mistakes, dissent
welcomed rather than punished,
institutions stronger than
individuals, successors chosen
for competence rather than
kinship, and a working allergy
to the worship of one’s own
reflection — these are habits any
serious leader should share.”
Personal Note
from the Author:
THEY HAVEN’T THROWN
ME FROM A WINDOW — BUT
THEY ARE TRYING
In Putin’s Russia, dissidents have a way of
falling from hospital windows. Businessmen
who speak inconvenient truths meet incon-
venient ends on staircases and balconies
across Moscow. I am writing this from Oma-
ha, Nebraska. I have not been thrown from
a window.
THE IRS AS A WEAPON
OF SILENCE
But I am being thrown out of something
just as vital: my life savings. What I am ex-
periencing is what I believe to be a target-
ed, methodical IRS assault — not random,
not routine, not coincidental. It follows my
speaking out. It follows my refusal to be si-
lenced. In Russia, they silence critics with
gravity. In America, I think they are learn-
ing to do it with audits, paperwork, and fi-
nancial ruin — stripping away everything a
person has built until the cost of their voice
becomes too steep to bear.
See Lambi V. United States of America, et al
Case # 8:2026cv00101
U.S. District Court for the District
of Nebraska
SLANDER THROUGH TRUSTED
INSTITUTIONS: THE BERKSHIRE
HATHAWAY CAMPAIGN
And the IRS is not the only instrument be-
ing wielded against me. I believe I have also
been the victim of deliberate, government-
sourced slander — lies spread to profes-
sional contacts who had no reason to doubt
what they were told. I believe that honest,
hardworking realtors employed by Berk-
shire Hathaway — one of the most respected
real estate companies in America, built on a
foundation of integrity — were fed false in-
formation about me by government actors.
These were decent professionals simply
doing their jobs, used as unwitting vectors of
what I think is a smear campaign designed to
isolate me professionally, damage my repu-
tation, and ensure that doors would close
before I could even knock on them. This is
not the free market.
This is not the rule of law. This is the de-
liberate destruction of a private citizen’s
livelihood by government machinery set
in motion to punish dissent. I believe that
Berkshire Hathaway is as much of a victim
in this as I am.
See Brent Lambi, Pro Se V. Berkshire
Hathaway Home Services, et al
Case # D01CI260001752
Nebraska District Court, Douglas County
I AM STILL STANDING
This is the American version of defenes-
tration. No broken glass. No headlines. Just
a man — his savings under assault, his name
poisoned in his own community — meant to
serve as a quiet warning to everyone watch-
ing. The message is clear: speak up, and we
will take everything. Your money. Your rep-
utation. Your future. I am still watching. I am
still writing.
Honest
Politics
By Brent Lambi
PAID FOR BY BRENT LAMBI • WWW.HONEST-POLITICS.COM
Brent Lambi is a graduate of the University of Northern Iowa and the Creighton University School of Law.
Two Modes of Leadership
by Brent Lambi | Apr 22, 2026 | Political
America’s Oligarchy Is Here
How the United States is Following Putin’s Playbook
OPINION | April 22, 2026
THE PATTERN NO ONE WILL NAME
Let’s stop pretending. Let’s stop hedging.
Let’s call what is happening to the American
economy exactly what it is: the systematic
construction of an oligarchic power struc-
ture that would make Vladimir Putin nod
with recognition — and perhaps envy. This
is not a foreign threat. This is an inside job.
This is not hyperbole. This is not parti-
san panic. This is a pattern so deliberate,
so consistent, and so accelerating that even
the titans of Wall Street — men who built
their fortunes on the premise of American
free-market capitalism — are afraid to say
it out loud. And that silence? That silence is
the story. Compliance has replaced courage.
Calculation has replaced conscience.
WALL STREET’S OWN
ARE RAISING THE ALARM
Financial journalist and CNBC anchor An-
drew Ross Sorkin — hardly a bomb-throw-
ing radical — has publicly drawn chilling
comparisons between the current concen-
tration of economic and political power in
America and the conditions that preceded
catastrophic market collapse, raising alarms
in his recent work that echo the pre-crash
vulnerabilities of 1929. When voices from
the very center of establishment finance be-
gin sounding those alarms, the rest of us had
better listen. Urgently.
But most CEOs won’t say a word publicly.
They walk on eggshells. They attend state
dinners, smile in photographs, and write
checks. They have watched what happens
to those who don’t fall in line, and they have
made their calculations accordingly.
CONTROLLING THE PRESS: CBS, CNN,
AND THE COLBERT SHAKEDOWN
Consider the architecture of media con-
trol now being assembled. The Skydance
merger, which in my opinion, has been en-
gineered to bring CBS and the crown jewel
of American journalism, 60 Minutes, into a
more pliable configuration — was only the
opening move. When Larry Ellison visited
the White House and subsequently found
himself in what I believe to be favorable
regulatory consideration, eyebrows should
have arched across every newsroom in the
country. Now CNN faces its own existential
pressure. When the administration moved
to extract a financial settlement from CBS
while targeting Stephen Colbert for the sin of
political satire, I think the message to every
media executive was unmistakable: comply,
or pay.
National Public Radio and the Public
Broadcasting Service — funded by taxpay-
ers to serve the public interest, not the pres-
ident’s — are on the chopping block. In my
opinion, this is not because they are failing
their mission but precisely because they are
fulfilling it.
SEIZING CONTROL OF
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
The most chilling frontier of all is artificial
intelligence. The push to gain “supply chain
oversight” and “national security access” to
AI platforms — including Anthropic — is not
Honest
Politics
By Brent Lambi
about chips or servers. I believe it is about
controlling the infrastructure of thought it-
self. Unfettered access to the most powerful
reasoning tools ever built is not a procure-
ment strategy. It is the opening clause of an
authoritarian manifesto. Every strongman
in history understood that controlling com-
munication was the precondition for con-
trolling everything else.
TARIFFS, PATRONAGE,
AND THE PUTIN PARALLEL
Meanwhile, the tariff regime functions as
a patronage system of baroque complexity.
Carve-outs flow not from economic logic
but from donor loyalty. Amazon. Microsoft.
Union Pacific. The acquisition plays sur-
rounding US Steel and Intel follow the same
logic Putin used when he brought Russia’s
energy sector to heel: you do not need to own
everything outright. You need to only make
clear that your favor is required to survive.
In Russia, such men are called “oligarchs.”
In America, we call them “job creators” and
seat them at the inauguration.
What distinguished America was the
proposition that no man — regardless of
wealth or power — sat above the market, the
law, or the press. That proposition is being
repealed, quietly and then suddenly, in the
manner Hemingway described bankruptcy:
gradually, and then all at once.
A Personal Note
From the Author
THEY HAVEN’T THROWN ME FROM A
WINDOW — BUT THEY ARE TRYING
In Putin’s Russia, dissidents have a way of
falling from hospital windows. Businessmen
who speak inconvenient truths meet incon-
venient ends on staircases and balconies
across Moscow. I am writing this from Oma-
ha, Nebraska. I have not been thrown from
a window.
THE IRS AS A WEAPON OF SILENCE
But I am being thrown out of something
just as vital: my life savings. What I am ex-
periencing is what I believe to be a target-
ed, methodical IRS assault — not random,
not routine, not coincidental. It follows my
speaking out. It follows my refusal to be si-
lenced. In Russia, they silence critics with
gravity. In America, I think they are learn-
ing to do it with audits, paperwork, and fi-
nancial ruin — stripping away everything a
person has built until the cost of their voice
becomes too steep to bear.
See Lambi V. United States of America, et al
Case # 8:2026cv00101
U.S. District Court for the District
of Nebraska
SLANDER THROUGH TRUSTED
INSTITUTIONS: THE BERKSHIRE
HATHAWAY CAMPAIGN
And the IRS is not the only instrument
being wielded against me. I believe I have
also been the victim of deliberate, govern-
ment-sourced slander — lies spread to
professional contacts who had no reason
to doubt what they were told. I believe that
honest, hardworking realtors employed by
Berkshire Hathaway — one of the most re-
spected real estate companies in America,
built on a foundation of integrity — were fed
false information about me by government
actors. These were decent professionals
simply doing their jobs, used as unwitting
vectors of what I think is a smear campaign
designed to isolate me professionally, dam-
age my reputation, and ensure that doors
would close before I could even knock on
them. This is not the free market. This is not
the rule of law. This is the deliberate destruc-
tion of a private citizen’s livelihood by gov-
ernment machinery set in motion to punish
dissent. I believe that Berkshire Hathaway is
as much of a victim in this as I am.
See Brent Lambi, Pro Se V. Berkshire
Hathaway Home Services, et al
Case # D01CI260001752
Nebraska District Court, Douglas County
I AM STILL STANDING
This is the American version of defenes-
tration. No broken glass. No headlines. Just
a man — his savings under assault, his name
poisoned in his own community — meant to
serve as a quiet warning to everyone watch-
ing. The message is clear: speak up, and we
will take everything. Your money. Your rep-
utation. Your future.
I am still watching. I am still writing. I am
still standing. And I intend to be heard.
The opinions expressed above are solely those
of the author.
by Brent Lambi | Apr 19, 2026 | Political
Donald Trump’s
War on Drugs
Two Faces of a Failed Policy
Honest
Politics
By Brent Lambi
OPINION | April 19, 2026
For years, Donald Trump thundered about a
tough war on drugs – even suggesting extreme
penalties for dealers and praising foreign
leaders who executed alleged traffickers
without trial. Yet the clemency record from
his time in the White House tells a very
different story: one in which convicted drug
traffickers and kingpins have been granted
pardons or had their sentences commuted
after being properly adjudicated in court. The
result is a striking contradiction at the heart of
American criminal-justice policy.
HOW MANY DRUG PARDONS
AND COMMUTATIONS?
According to analysis of recent clemency
data and reporting:
• Trump has pardoned or granted clemency
to at least 10 individuals convicted of
serious drug related federal crimes in his
second term alone.
The Washington Post
• During his first term, he also pardoned or
commuted the sentences of at least 13 other
convicted drug traffickers.
Portside
• Combined, that suggests at least 23
documented federal drug traffickers whose
convictions were undone or softened — not
including other clemencies for peripheral
or non-drug crimes.
Portside
These are individuals who were convicted
in courts of law and serving long federal
sentences for drug distribution, conspiracy,
or trafficking—and then were later granted
clemency by presidential fiat.
NOTABLE EXAMPLES
• Juan Orlando Hernández
Former president of Honduras, convicted
in U.S. federal court for organizing drug
trafficking that moved roughly 400 tons of
cocaine into the United States.
He was sentenced to 45 years in prison
then pardoned and released by Trump in
December 2025. Politico
• Ross Ulbricht
Founder of the Silk Road dark-web
marketplace, convicted of operating an
online platform that facilitated millions of
dollars in illegal drug sales, and serving life
plus 40 years. Trump issued a full pardon in
January 2025. VPM
• Larry Hoover
Co-founder of the Chicago Gangster
Disciples, convicted of running a vast drug
organization and sentenced to multiple
PAID FOR BY BRENT LAMBI • WWW.HONEST-POLITICS.COM
Brent Lambi is a graduate of the University of Northern Iowa and the Creighton University School of Law.
SOURCES
Washington Post – Reporting on Trump’s second-term pardons and commutations for individuals convicted of serious federal drug offenses.
Portside – Documentation of clemencies granted during Trump’s first term, including drug-trafficking convictions undone or reduced.
Portside + additional clemency listings – Combined reporting establishing at least 23 federal drug-trafficking convictions affected by Trump clemency actions.
Politico – Coverage of the conviction, sentencing, and December 2025 presidential pardon of former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández (400-ton cocaine
trafficking conspiracy).
VPM (Virginia Public Media) – Reporting on Trump’s January 2025 full pardon of Ross Ulbricht, founder of Silk Road, convicted of facilitating large-scale online drug
trafficking.
Justice.gov – U.S. Department of Justice records regarding the federal conviction and later commutation of Gangster Disciples co-founder Larry Hoover.
Wikipedia (source summaries) – Entries documenting the convictions and clemencies of Garnett Gilbert Smith and Anabel Valenzuela (federal cocaine and
methamphetamine trafficking cases).
Portside (additional examples) – Reporting on additional high-level narcotics and conspiracy convictions receiving clemency during both Trump presidencies
by Brent Lambi | Apr 15, 2026 | Political
THE $750 PRESIDENT WANTS
$10 BILLION FROM YOU
Trump paid less in taxes than your kid’s teacher.
Now he’s suing for a taxpayer-funded fortune.
PAID ADVERTISEMENT
PAID FOR BY BRENT LAMBI • WWW.HONEST-POLITICS.COM
Brent Lambi is a graduate of the University of Northern Iowa and the Creighton University School of Law.
Opinion Editorial — Sources: New York Times tax investigation (2020), House Ways and Means Committee (2022), NBC News, NPR, Fox News (2026)
WHO Federal Taxes Paid Government Housing Government Healthcare
Donald Trump
(2016-2017) $750 / year White House Full coverage
Average Teacher ~$7,500 / year
Average Truck
Driver ~$6,500 / year
Military Officer ~$8,000+ / year Limited Earned through service
Donald Trump just filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS — the
agency he controls as president — because someone leaked the tax
returns he spent years hiding from you. What did those returns reveal?
That the self-proclaimed billionaire paid $750 in federal income tax-
es in 2016 and 2017. That’s not a typo. Seven hundred fifty dollars. The
price of a decent laptop. Now he wants American taxpayers to write
him a check for $10,000,000,000.
WHAT REAL AMERICANS PAY
While Trump contributed pocket change to the country he now leads,
working Americans — who receive no government housing, no gov-
ernment healthcare, no taxpayer-funded security detail — paid
their fair share:
THE SCHOOLTEACHER
Average Salary: $72,000
Federal Taxes Paid: $6,000 – $9,000 per year
Government Perks: None
She buys her own classroom supplies. She pays for her own health in-
surance. She’ll never live in a mansion maintained by taxpayers. Yet she
paid 10 times more in federal taxes than Donald Trump while earning
a fraction of his income.
THE TRUCK DRIVER
Average Salary: $60,000 – $83,000
Federal Taxes Paid: $5,000 – $8,000 per year
Government Perks: None
He’s on the road 70 hours a week. He pays for his own meals, his own
lodging, his own healthcare. No chef. No housekeeping staff. No Ma-
rine One helicopter. He paid more than 10 times what Trump paid —
and never complained.
THE MILITARY OFFICER
Average Salary: $75,000 (Captain, 6 years)
Federal Taxes Paid: Thousands per year
Government Perks: Earned through service and sacrifice
She risks her life for this country. She moves her family every few years
at the military’s command. Any housing benefit she receives, she
earned by signing up to die for her country if asked. She still paid more
in taxes than her Commander-in-Chief.
A 50-YEAR TRADITION — DESTROYED
Every president since Nixon voluntarily released their tax returns.
Every single one.
• Nixon released his
• Ford released summaries
• Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama — all released theirs
• Biden paid $148,687 in federal taxes in 2021 alone
Trump promised to release his. He lied. He claimed an audit prevented
it. That was also a lie — there’s no law stopping anyone from releasing
returns under audit. He hid them because he didn’t want you to know
the truth: he paid almost nothing.
THE ULTIMATE CON
Here’s the kicker: Trump admitted he’ll have to approve any settlement
with himself. “I am suing, and I’m the one that’s supposed to settle it,”
he told supporters. The man who paid $750 in taxes while teachers,
truckers, and soldiers funded the government now wants those same
taxpayers to hand him billions — and he gets to decide how much. The
leaker is already in prison. The contracts were canceled. The IRS apol-
ogized. This isn’t about justice. It’s about profit.
THE BOTTOM LINE
A teacher earning $72,000 paid more to America than a billion-
aire claiming hundreds of millions in income. That teacher got no
free housing. No free healthcare. No helicopter. No chef. Now that
billionaire wants HER tax dollars to make him even richer.
THE MATH DOESN’T LIE
I’m excited to announce the launch of my new website. Simply scan the QR code to visit.
The site features a dedicated space for readers to share feedback and ideas. I welcome your thoughts and suggestions
for future topics—your input helps shape this ongoing effort. The new site will also feature podcasts discussing my work.
As always, I’m deeply grateful to those who have supported this campaign through contributions. I
by Brent Lambi | Apr 15, 2026 | Political
THE $750 PRESIDENT WANTS
$10 BILLION FROM YOU
Trump paid less in taxes than your kid’s teacher.
Now he’s suing for a taxpayer-funded fortune.
PAID ADVERTISEMENT
PAID FOR BY BRENT LAMBI • WWW.HONEST-POLITICS.COM
Brent Lambi is a graduate of the University of Northern Iowa and the Creighton University School of Law.
Opinion Editorial — Sources: New York Times tax investigation (2020), House Ways and Means Committee (2022), NBC News, NPR, Fox News (2026)
WHO Federal Taxes Paid Government Housing Government Healthcare
Donald Trump
(2016-2017) $750 / year White House Full coverage
Average Teacher ~$7,500 / year
Average Truck
Driver ~$6,500 / year
Military Officer ~$8,000+ / year Limited Earned through service
Donald Trump just filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS — the
agency he controls as president — because someone leaked the tax
returns he spent years hiding from you. What did those returns reveal?
That the self-proclaimed billionaire paid $750 in federal income tax-
es in 2016 and 2017. That’s not a typo. Seven hundred fifty dollars. The
price of a decent laptop. Now he wants American taxpayers to write
him a check for $10,000,000,000.
WHAT REAL AMERICANS PAY
While Trump contributed pocket change to the country he now leads,
working Americans — who receive no government housing, no gov-
ernment healthcare, no taxpayer-funded security detail — paid
their fair share:
THE SCHOOLTEACHER
Average Salary: $72,000
Federal Taxes Paid: $6,000 – $9,000 per year
Government Perks: None
She buys her own classroom supplies. She pays for her own health in-
surance. She’ll never live in a mansion maintained by taxpayers. Yet she
paid 10 times more in federal taxes than Donald Trump while earning
a fraction of his income.
THE TRUCK DRIVER
Average Salary: $60,000 – $83,000
Federal Taxes Paid: $5,000 – $8,000 per year
Government Perks: None
He’s on the road 70 hours a week. He pays for his own meals, his own
lodging, his own healthcare. No chef. No housekeeping staff. No Ma-
rine One helicopter. He paid more than 10 times what Trump paid —
and never complained.
THE MILITARY OFFICER
Average Salary: $75,000 (Captain, 6 years)
Federal Taxes Paid: Thousands per year
Government Perks: Earned through service and sacrifice
She risks her life for this country. She moves her family every few years
at the military’s command. Any housing benefit she receives, she
earned by signing up to die for her country if asked. She still paid more
in taxes than her Commander-in-Chief.
A 50-YEAR TRADITION — DESTROYED
Every president since Nixon voluntarily released their tax returns.
Every single one.
• Nixon released his
• Ford released summaries
• Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama — all released theirs
• Biden paid $148,687 in federal taxes in 2021 alone
Trump promised to release his. He lied. He claimed an audit prevented
it. That was also a lie — there’s no law stopping anyone from releasing
returns under audit. He hid them because he didn’t want you to know
the truth: he paid almost nothing.
THE ULTIMATE CON
Here’s the kicker: Trump admitted he’ll have to approve any settlement
with himself. “I am suing, and I’m the one that’s supposed to settle it,”
he told supporters. The man who paid $750 in taxes while teachers,
truckers, and soldiers funded the government now wants those same
taxpayers to hand him billions — and he gets to decide how much. The
leaker is already in prison. The contracts were canceled. The IRS apol-
ogized. This isn’t about justice. It’s about profit.
THE BOTTOM LINE
A teacher earning $72,000 paid more to America than a billion-
aire claiming hundreds of millions in income. That teacher got no
free housing. No free healthcare. No helicopter. No chef. Now that
billionaire wants HER tax dollars to make him even richer.
THE MATH DOESN’T LIE
I’m excited to announce the launch of my new website. Simply scan the QR code to visit.
The site features a dedicated space for readers to share feedback and ideas. I welcome your thoughts and suggestions
for future topics—your input helps shape this ongoing effort. The new site will also feature podcasts discussing my work.
As always, I’m deeply grateful to those who have supported this campaign through contributions. I
