“This is what Corruptionland looks like: mounds of dirt, billions of dollars in taxpayer spending, and everything with Donald Trump’s name and likeness on it.”
That is the picture Miles Taylor wants Americans to see in CORRUPTIONLAND, his new documentary examining alleged abuses of power in Trump’s second administration.
The mounds of dirt at East Potomac Golf Course offer a vivid entry point into a sprawling story: how visible construction projects and presidential vanity give way to a less obvious network of institutions and safeguards that, Taylor argues, have failed to check Trump’s abuses of power.
The 35-minute film, released free online by DEFIANCE.org, is accompanied by a public ledger documenting more than 100 alleged episodes of corruption and abuses of power. The producers estimate that the cases involve more than $377 billion in public money, private benefit and transaction volume. That figure represents the scale of the allegations, not a finding that $377 billion has been lost to proven corruption.
Taylor, a former chief of staff at Trump's Department of Homeland Security, said he initially approached several Oscar- and Emmy-winning directors about making the film. When they told him there wasn’t enough time, he decided to take matters into his own hands.
“F--k it, I'm just going to go do it myself,” Taylor recalled thinking. “I’ll script it and I’ll direct it myself, and I’ll go find a production company that can come in and film this thing with decent cinematographers, and we’re just going to work our butts off.”
His goal was to explain not just the individual allegations, but how the government’s safeguards had been weakened, or more ominously, collapsing, and what could happen if the pattern continued
“We need a reminder and a way to try to characterize this for the American people that isn’t just one gigantic, in-your-face listicle,” Taylor said. “But really to go and explain not just what has happened, but how it’s gotten to this point.”
Taylor insisted on filming at East Potomac Golf Course because the site offered something audiences could immediately understand. His production partners initially questioned whether the location deserved attention amid so many other controversies.
“I’m going to show you the trees that have been chopped down. I’m going to show you the dirt,” he recalled telling his colleagues.
The golf course is part of a broader argument about presidential projects, including the demolition of the White House’s East Wing to make way for a planned ballroom. The film raises questions about congressional oversight and private financing, including potential benefits for donors.
But the visual is only the first layer. Taylor argues that the deeper problem is what happens when the institutions charged with scrutinizing presidential decisions stop pushing back.
The film examines the roles of White House counsel and the Justice Department, along with pressure on the news media, threats directed at federal judges, the elimination of department inspectors general, and agreements involving law firms that capitulated to administration pressure.
The consequences, Taylor argues, extend beyond Washington’s political battles. The former inspector general for the U.S. Agency for International Development warned that the disruption of aid oversight could put lives at risk.
If internal legal advisers, watchdogs and independent institutions fail to provide meaningful checks, Congress is left with a central constitutional responsibility: oversight. Yet Taylor argues that Congress has not adequately performed that role.
The film features Rep. Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat, who frames corruption not as an abstract Washington scandal, but as money taken from ordinary Americans.
Taylor believes recovering money and preventing future abuses should be priorities for the next Congress. He sees the current anger over corruption as a potential catalyst for sweeping government changes.
“Right now it’s going to be all about accountability,” Taylor said. “People want accountability, and they want investigations, and they want to go after the oligarchs, and they want to go after Donald Trump.”
But he expects the focus eventually to shift toward prevention.
“When that burns off, there’s going to be a once-in-a-generation moment for sweeping reforms to the American system,” he said.
Taylor also believes corruption has become intertwined with economic anxiety. Americans struggling with prices and affordability may see those problems not simply as policy failures, but as consequences of decisions made by officials they believe are serving powerful interests.
“I think even the other issue that’s in play in this election, the economy and prices and affordability, people also see as a corruption issue,” Taylor pointed out.
Whether that sentiment produces lasting reform remains an open question. But Taylor argues that public anger over corruption can endure long after an election, pointing to the legacy of Watergate.
“When we go back and look at Watergate and you disaggregate different generations in the polls, you see that the Watergate generation, for decades, has remained especially cynical about government, and they have kept low trust in government,” he said.
His hope is that this time, public frustration will lead not only to accountability for individual acts, but also to reforms that make future abuses harder to carry out.
Ultimately, the film’s final check on presidential power is the American people, and whether they demand that the safeguards designed to protect them be rebuilt, he said.