On Monday, while laying out his case for impeaching Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie made the grave accusation that Hegseth was deploying the military not for national defense but for plunder. “I do have a message to the troops. This secretary has used our troops to go seize oil for large corporations in America. You shouldn’t be used like that. You signed up to pledge your life for this country if need be, and that obligation shouldn’t be diminished to stealing oil for big corporations,” Massie said.

On one level, this indictment seems hardly noteworthy; Donald Trump has repeatedly gushed about the riches the US is gaining from controlling Venezuelan oil since he kidnapped Prime Minister Nicolás Maduro at the start of this year. Speaking at the United Nations in September, Trump boasted that the United States had signed with Venezuela “the biggest oil deal in world history” guided by the philosophy “to the victor belongs the spoils.” 

Massie’s accusation of theft is merely an acknowledgement of Trump’s own words. What’s more notable is Massie’s reference to the accomplices in the theft—the big corporations. 

On Wednesday, Reuters published an explosive report offering more evidence of what Massie was talking about. The investigation focuses on the relationship between Vice President JD Vance and John Addison, an executive at the trading giant Vitol. 

Addison is a patron of both Vance and Trump. In 2020, he donated $300,00 to a Super PAC supporting Vance’s successful Senate run in Ohio. Two years later, Addison and his wife gave $7 million to PACs working to elect Trump and Vance to the White House. 

According to Reuters, Vance and Addison met at a resort in Montana on December 27, 2025, one week before the United States invaded Venezuela to kidnap Maduro. The news service reports:

Vance and Addison talked about Venezuela, according to the person, who was given an account of the meeting from Addison. Vance was particularly interested to know how ​quickly Venezuelan crude could be sold if the US hypothetically gained control of the country’s oil supplies, the person said. Addison assured Vance that Vitol was uniquely placed to do that job.

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Vance and Addison deny this meeting took place, although flight records show they were in Montana at the same time. Prior to the meeting, Vance had commended Addison to Energy Secretary Chris Wright. Reuters notes that Addison has confirmed “that on Jan. 5 – two days after the operation that unseated Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and killed up to 100 people – US Energy Secretary Chris Wright called him at his desk in Houston with an irresistible offer.” 

Wright circumvented normal rules for government contracts designed to ensure competitive bidding and transparency. Instead, according to Reuters, he quickly signed a sweetheart deal that gave “Vitol and its rival Trafigura…special licenses to sell Venezuela’s oil…the companies have since earned hundreds of millions of dollars marketing the crude.”

On the very day Reuters published this blockbuster report, Trump, displaying his characteristic freedom from shame, tasked Vance with investigating corruption in states and cities governed by Democrats. 

Vance as a corruption fighter is a bad joke. His ties with Addison and Vitol cry out for congressional investigation. 

California Congressman Mike Levin posted on X.com that,

“Congress has a duty to act. We should bring Secretary Wright, Vitol, and Addison in to testify under oath. We should demand the phone records, emails, and flight logs. We should find out whether anyone got a heads-up about a military operation. And we should require open, competitive bidding before any company profits from our foreign policy.”

This is a reasonable demand, but should be extended to Trump’s entire foreign policy. With former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang engulfed in a scandal over an affair with an alleged Chinese spy, the salient question becomes whether the Trump administration gave him protection and turned a blind eye to Nvidia’s circumvention of a US export ban to China. Huang and Nvidia have been major donors to causes near and dear to Trump’s heart, such as his inauguration and his garish White House ballroom.  

The backroom deals behind the war with Iran also demand congressional scrutiny. Speaking to sports broadcaster Stephen A. Smith on Thursday, Trump justified the war by saying “the people we are looking to protect,” which is “basically the Middle East,” are “tremendous investors in our country. They spend trillions of dollars in our country.”

One of the biggest beneficiaries of these investments from the Middle East is Trump himself. In an interview for 60 Minutes that aired on Sunday, columnist Ross Douthat asked about the seeming corruption inherent in the fact that Trump’s sons Donald Trump Jr.  and Eric Trump help “manage a cryptocurrency company called World Liberty Financial” which is “also partially owned by investors connected to the government of the United Arab Emirates.” Trump responded by saying “every president has a problem…going back to George Washington.” Very gently, Douthat noted that the sheer scale of Trump’s conflicts of interest dwarfs previous presidents.

In 1935, Major General Smedley Darlington Butler wrote a book titled War Is a Racket, a title that has a new resonance in the Trump era. Trump’s foreign policy is rancid with corruption. He is clearly setting policy, including the wars he’s launched, to benefit cronies who have lavished largesse on him and his inner circle. The incoming Democratic Congress won a landslide because the public is sick of Trump’s corruption and wars. It’s of paramount importance that Congress use its investigatory powers to shut down Trump’s racket.