“No impunity!” It’s a demand I’ve heard from social movements around the world, starting in Peru, where I grew up, after the corruption and abuse of the government of Alberto Fujimori. I’ve heard it as a human rights investigator and advocate in Colombia, Guatemala, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. And demands for accountability for corruption drove the movement in Serbia that led to the October electoral defeat of strongman Aleksandar Vučić and his party.
When I moved to the United States with my family to finish college in 1997, I couldn’t have imagined that “no impunity!” would become a necessary rallying cry here too. My American dad had always told me, growing up, that the United States was different from Peru and other countries, because it had the rule of law. But that eroded shockingly quickly under the second Trump administration, and on Nov. 3, American voters delivered their own version of that rallying cry to Congress, in a blistering midterm indictment of what many saw as clear corruption and abuse of power.
The incoming Congress has pledged to investigate, and following through on that pledge will be crucial. Real accountability, grounded in evidence and equal standards, is the only way for the country to claw its way out of the corrupt capture of the federal government and to end a continuing cycle of impunity and abuse.
Republicans already have been preparing the ground for objections that such investigations would be nothing more than tit-for-tat probes. Some observers have worried about opening a Pandora’s box of prosecutions for political ends. Perhaps in response, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Nov. 4 stated that Americans don’t want Democrats to “get even.” Certainly, replicating this administration’s pattern of weaponizing law enforcement would only make things worse.
But these are all reasons to get investigations right, not to look away.
I’ve seen what unchecked impunity can breed. In Colombia, where I investigated ties between organized crime and government in the early 2000s, the country for decades went through cycles of violence and corruption, with those most responsible routinely getting off the hook through self-serving deals. Meanwhile, they simply kept recycling their networks, creating new structures to maintain their control, while regular Colombians paid the price.
But serious investigations can deal major blows to corrupt structures in power. In Peru more than 20 years ago, special prosecutors systematically investigated 1,500 members of Fujimori’s mafia-like network and worked their way up the chain of command, ultimately bringing Fujimori himself to justice for his crimes. The years-long investigations helped Peruvians grasp the scale of the corruption, opening the door to years of democratic renewal. They didn’t solve all of Peru’s problems, and recent years have brought backsliding, with new corruption scandals and Fujimori’s daughter, Keiko, recently eking out a win for the presidency in an election where voters didn’t seem to like any of the candidates. But the investigations did break the mafia-like capture of Fujimori’s regime, creating the space for a new chapter to be written.
Swiftly – and With Care
In the United States, a meaningful accountability effort would further three crucial goals, each of which needs to be pursued swiftly and with care.
The first goal is to dismantle corrupt networks.
The corruption in evidence in the United States today follows a pattern common in other countries: A network effectively captures the government for profit, often using legal means; it then uses that power to reward insiders, intimidate opponents, and avoid accountability. In Peru, Fujimori and his associates essentially installed a mafia in power. They used their authority for self-enrichment; to bribe and extort others to get their way; and to secure their own impunity. In the United States, the Trump administration has created a similar incentive structure of rewards, intimidation, and impunity. Family members and insiders have seen their wealth skyrocket; the administration coerced law firms to do its bidding and pursued frivolous prosecutions of those who crossed it; and it has hollowed out accountability mechanisms, such as offices of inspectors general, that could have served as a check on abuse.
This is not just a collection of one-off cases. It’s systemic. The only way to break that kind of capture is to take a systemic approach to exposing and dismantling the network itself, not just its most visible leader. That means investigations that go beyond individual instances of abuse, but also follow the money, examine who else was involved, and work their way up the chain of command. An investigation of the killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis, for example, should go beyond the actions of the agents involved, to examine to what extent abuses were fueled or facilitated by policies, instructions, or omissions coming from higher up.
The second goal is to limit further abuse of power and corruption.
For two years, the current administration has sent the message that those in its orbit will get away with anything they do on its behalf. The January 6th insurrectionists, even those convicted of the worst violence, were pardoned. The Justice Department has all but shut down its Public Integrity Section, which normally would be charged with investigating public corruption. And President Donald Trump has repeatedly promised pardons for people close to him.
By investigating, Congress can counter that dynamic and make clear that there will be consequences for those who engage in misconduct, corruption, or abuse. The mercurial Trump may or may not follow through with his pardon promises — he’s had no problem throwing one-time allies like Kimberly Guilfoyle under the bus. Even if he does, such pardons will only apply to federal crimes. Most people would still prefer not to have their misconduct exposed through investigations and hearings, and there are other tools available to ensure consequences in the most serious cases, including civil enforcement and fines, impeachment, and state-level prosecutions. Other countries’ criminal and civil authorities may also have jurisdiction over cross-border deals involving fraud, money laundering, or other violations of law.
Rebuilding Trust
A third goal of meaningful accountability is to rebuild Americans’ trust in government.
That includes showing in practice that the powerful are not above the law. The United States has a troubling history of letting the powerful off the hook, starting with President Gerald Ford’s pardon of his predecessor, Richard Nixon, for the monumental Watergate scandal, and including the Justice Department’s failure to promptly investigate Trump or other senior officials after the January 6th insurrection in 2021. That pattern needs to change.
The new Congress can show historic leadership by making genuine accountability a priority. That means conducting thorough, fair, well-structured, and well-resourced investigations of apparent corruption and abuse of power, prioritizing the most egregious matters. That includes reported self-dealing such as the $620 million loan that the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital made to a start-up three months after Donald Trump Jr.’s firm invested in it, following reported White House intervention. Targets for accountability also should include apparent pay-to-play schemes like the administration’s approval of a sensitive AI chips deal with the United Arab Emirates a couple of months after a member of the UAE royal family invested $500 million in the Trump family’s crypto venture.
Accountability also means building cases based on facts, not preferred outcomes, through proceedings that respect due process. It means avoiding political theater and instead showing Americans exactly what has been happening in their country, with evidence in hand.
Rebuilding trust also requires building as broad a consensus as possible about what has happened and where the United States needs to go. Americans have long been concerned about corruption in government, but that concern is particularly acute now. CBS News exit polling found that 9 in 10 midterm voters identified corruption as a major factor in their vote. Another poll found the share of Republicans who say Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself has jumped from about one in five to one in three over the past year.
That shared concern offers an opportunity to bring Americans of different ideologies together to ensure this level of corruption and abuse of power never happens again. Legislation may be hard to pass in the next two years due to the president’s veto. But credible investigations can serve as a starting point for a national conversation about not only how the United States got to this point — and how longstanding weaknesses in its system and laws, combined with the erosion of oversight, facilitated the corruption — but also what kinds of systems of accountability should be built going forward.
Investigations and accountability are not a panacea for all the country’s challenges. But true accountability that holds everyone, including the powerful, to the same standards, is a crucial starting place. On Nov. 3, Americans unequivocally rejected corruption. Congress needs to show it was listening.
