Opinion - Accountability is coming: Trump aides face looming congressional probes

The constant stream of crazy news stories coming out of the Trump administration is a bowl full of distractions, until a glance under the chaos reveals crass corruption.

Sixty percent of voters now rank "government corruption," as their top concern, according to a Fox News poll released last week . Corruption is a bigger issue than inflation or gas prices, with the midterm elections just days away. Exposure of the corruption will go beyond Election Day.

Congressional investigators will soon be asking how a Trump ambassador with access to national security information was revealed to have sent a "Honey Please," demand for money to a Trump donor.

Kimberly Guilfoyle, the ambassador to Greece, resigned after reports that she allegedly solicited $100,000 from the businessman to pay her personal credit card bill ahead of her Senate confirmation hearing, according to The Wall Street Journal .

Any ambassador with undisclosed financial obligations, as well as reported ties to dealmakers looking to profit from American investments overseas, is vulnerable to blackmail and extortion.

Congressional investigators, Republican or Democrat, might also ask how a former TV host and former girlfriend to the president's son, with no diplomatic experience, became an ambassador.

Government prosecutors have largely failed to hold Trump accountable for multiple charges of misconduct .

But as Trump's time in office expires, the people around him responsible for reckless and self-serving actions cannot assume they will have the same power to stay out of jail.

There will be a particularly hot congressional spotlight on several aides now representing Trump overseas. Did they mix the nation's global affairs and even the use of the American military with their personal business?

That list of high-flying Trump associates includes Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law. They have been largely free of scrutiny as the president's top foreign policy negotiators. But with Trump's hold on Congress fading in his last years in office, Witkoff and Kushner face increasing odds of being called for congressional testimony.

They will have to handle questions about their talks about billion-dollar oil refinery deals that "would benefit Middle Eastern business executives with ties..." to Witkoff and Kushner, according to reporting in last week's New York Times.

Also likely to have to testify under oath before Congress are the president's sons, Eric and Donald Trump Jr.

Both are heavily involved in cryptocurrency ventures, promoting an industry that has become a favored instrument for people skirting taxes and international sanctions law on business deals. Crypto is also a haven for hiding funds used by drug traffickers, and kidnappers. With Trump in office, his family has made billions from crypto .

Corporations have privately given Trump hundreds of millions for his ballroom project while several have government contracts, The Washington Post reported last week.

A former Trump aide likely to sit before Congress is the former White House press secretary Katie Zacharia. In her week on the job Zacharia stumbled in handling questions about her background and work in China. On television, she has repeatedly described herself as a lawyer. But journalists uncovered that she never practiced law in the U.S. The Wall Street Journal subsequently reported that she took the California bar exam and failed.

When reporters asked where she passed the bar, she offered an answer referring to her move to China. But foreign nationals cannot simply take the Chinese bar examination and become licensed Chinese lawyers. And her husband was involved with major business deals in China while she worked at a law firm in China.

Was that history uncovered in security-vetting process done by the White House?

Failure to properly report professional credentials and foreign ties is grounds for questioning. The government can't function with officials who can't be trusted with sensitive government information.

Last year, Joe Cirincione, a national security analyst, described the people Trump was nominating as ambassadors as "a diplomatic clown car that's about to be rolling up at the Capitol with all these idiots. ... Where's the outrage?" The outrage is now likely to emerge in congressional hearings.

Furious questioning is in store for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Another former television personality with no government experience, Hegseth has overseen American military strikes that killed people in the Caribbean. Videos of the attacks were released by Hegseth's team at the Pentagon. The administration described the targets as drug smugglers and made a spectacle of their deaths. But the evidence for using lethal U.S. military force against these alleged traffickers has never faced investigation by prosecutors or serious congressional scrutiny.

That was before Hegseth proposed showing the nation a livestreamed firing-squad execution of a man in a wheelchair . The White House later called off the barbaric display.

Using their subpoena power, congressional investigators need to prime the pump on reviewing financial disclosures, security-clearance applications and quid-pro-quo deals. They need to probe wasteful government contracts and the misuse of military force. Review of the financial dealings of presidential relatives and associates is overdue.

The records exist. The witnesses exist. Congress has the power to uncover the truth.

And the objective should be accountability, not political revenge. Polls show Americans, Republicans and Democrats, see the corruption. Accountability is coming. The diplomatic clown car is long overdue to be pulled over by police and the vehicle searched from tip-to-tail.

Juan Williams is senior political analyst for Fox News Channel and a prize-winning civil rights historian. He is the author of the new book " New Prize for These Eyes: The Rise of America's Second Civil Rights Movement . "