Wayne Barrett Project

The Wayne Barrett Project honors Wayne’s legacy by supporting ambitious investigative reporting projects focused on politics and corruption in both New York City and on the national stage.

Investigations

How One Company Is Making Millions Off Trump’s War on the Poor

President Trump plans to make the poor work for Medicaid and food stamps. That’s highly lucrative for companies like Maximus.

The LLC Loophole

In New York, where an LLC is legally a person, companies can use the vehicles to blast through campaign finance limits.

Political Corruption and the Art of the Deal

How Trump's business partnerships in India are creating conflicts of interest in the White House and corrupting the presidency.

Former Indian Official: Trump Jr. Pushed “Blatantly Illegal” Project

A look at the Trumps’ years-long work in India, where corruption in the real estate industry is endemic.

The Many Red Flags of Trump’s Partners in India

The Trump Organization has five active projects in India, where real estate corruption is common.

Backstories

The Backstory: Anjali Kamat

Kamat discusses her months of reporting in India, investigating the Trump Organization’s lucrative real estate deals in the country, valued at an estimated $1.5 billion.

Blog posts

Announcing the Wayne Barrett Project

The goal of the project is to support ambitious reporting that builds on Wayne's journalistic legacy and focuses on politics and corruption in New York City and on the national stage.

Available contracts between Maximus and government bodies in the U.S. show an increase from $94 million in 2008 to nearly $1.7 billion in 2018, much of it in means-tested programs like Medicaid and CHIP.
The Trump administration’s plans to expand work requirements across the safety net may open up the largest market of all for Maximus.
Since becoming a vehicle for campaign donations in the late 1990s, the LLC mechanism has generated at least $188 million in donations.
Political action committees and party committees receive huge amounts of LLC money. Among the top 35 recipients of such money since 1999, PACs took in more than candidates.
Andrew Cuomo's LLC haul is greater than that of the next 13 candidates put together. Over this current cycle, LLC donations have comprised 22 percent of Cuomo’s fundraising, or $7.9 million out of his $35.6 million haul.
The Trumps’ India partners have a long history of facing lawsuits, police inquiries, and government investigations that contain evidence of potential bribery, fraud, intimidation, illegal land acquisition, tax evasion, and money laundering.
On the first deal for a Trump Tower in Mumbai, approvals were granted that were in such blatant violation of regulations that they were later revoked. A former state lawmaker told us he was “absolutely certain that bribes were paid” to secure the approvals.
Donald Trump, Jr., traveled to meet with the highest elected official in the state in an apparent effort to reinstate the revoked permits; the official refused, saying the approvals were “blatantly illegal.”