The Daily Fuckup

On February 10, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an order pausing new enforcement actions under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for 180 days while Attorney General Pam Bondi reviews the government’s policy, guidance, and enforcement posture. The White House framed the move as a way to restore proper bounds on enforcement, protect American competitiveness, and support national security. It was not a repeal of the law, but it was a clear sign that the administration wanted to slow the machinery around one of Washington’s main anti-bribery tools.

The order matters because the FCPA is one of the federal government’s few high-profile laws aimed at foreign bribery. It reaches companies and individuals tied to U.S. business activity, and it is supposed to deter firms from buying contracts or access with improper payments. A temporary halt to new enforcement does not change the statute itself, but it does change how aggressively the government is prepared to police it during the review period. Supporters can call that a reset. Critics will read it as a softer posture toward conduct the law was written to discourage.

The same day, Justice Department records show Trump granted a full and unconditional pardon to Rod Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor who was convicted on corruption-related charges. Also on February 10, federal prosecutors in New York were directed to seek dismissal of the Eric Adams indictment; the case had been filed earlier and was not yet dismissed on that date. Those are distinct legal actions, but they all landed in the same news cycle and pointed in the same direction: less pressure, not more, around public corruption.

That does not prove a single unified theory of motive. Presidents can set enforcement priorities, direct reviews, and grant clemency. But public corruption enforcement depends heavily on signals, and the signal here was hard to miss. The administration paused a major anti-bribery program, extended mercy to a convicted political figure, and moved to unwind a separate corruption case against a sitting mayor. Even if those steps were not coordinated as one plan, they gave the impression of a White House comfortable easing off the pedals when corruption cases get politically inconvenient.