taken to the cleaners

The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Sunday accused the Biden administration of being taken to the cleaners for a tentative deal with Iran to free five detained Americans in exchange for unfreezing $6 billion in assets and freeing an unknown number of Iranians imprisoned in the U.S.

Not only did customers of outfits like brokers FTX and Voyager, and stablecoin TerraUSD/Luna, get taken to the cleaners, the currency at the heart of the bubble, bitcoin, lost around two-thirds of its value.

“I like Joe very much, but I think he got taken to the cleaners. He’s agreeing to all this bad policy in return for which he’s been promised there’s going to be some kind of pro-energy infrastructure bill sometime in the future.”

“Californians have been taken to the cleaners before by expensive measures that promised the world but didn’t deliver.”

Mr. Trump’s thoughts aside, the history of government ethics cases points to a common theme when officials order aides to see to the laundry: In the end, it is usually the taxpayers who are being taken to the cleaners.