Every historical scandal was caught by something — a special prosecutor, an inspector general, a congressional committee, a jury. This page inventories what condition those same mechanisms are in now.
Click any card. Reduced oversight capacity is not itself evidence of wrongdoing — it is evidence about who would be positioned to find it.
In June 2026 a federal judge was told repeatedly that a blocked $1.776 billion fund was dead. She declined to take anyone's word for it and asked two senior officials to say so in a sworn declaration, under penalty of perjury. She indicated that would likely end the case.
The Justice Department refused — calling the request "unnecessary" and citing separation-of-powers concerns. The memo creating the fund was never rescinded.
That exchange is the clearest illustration on this site of why the machinery matters. Every other mechanism in the list above had been reduced, obstructed or left unfilled. The one that produced a hard result did so because a single official with independent authority insisted on evidence instead of assurance.