How will the future payments find you if you disappear? You need to leave a forwarding address.
That attitude is so old school! The Supreme Court ruled a few years ago that a politician just accepting money from an interested party is not illegal. The Government has to prove that the politician performed an official act that benefited the interested party directly as a result of the payment. Just giving a supreme court justice large gifts over many years and having that justice rule in cases effecting your firm is nothing to worry about. The actual case that the SC ruled on was a former Virginia Governor. He received many gifts from a person doing business with the state. And the Governor made calls to civil servants supporting his friend. But since the prosecutors did not directly connect a given payment to a given call, the SC reversed his conviction. Even before Trump, bribery is legal in the US. Now what would happen if civil asset forfeiture occurred covering the bribe-the SC’s conservative head would explode! 
He need not worry. All the politician has to do is make sure there is no record of an official action being taken as a result of the gift. Short of that, there is no problem. See Justice Thomas or former Governor McDonnell.
“Chief Justice John Roberts said McDonnell’s conduct in accepting more than $165,000 in gifts and loans from a wealthy businessman in exchange for promoting a dietary supplement may have been “distasteful” or even “tawdry,” but didn’t necessarily violate federal bribery laws.“ in 2016.
Politician has to worry about bad publicity. Politician has to be worried about investigations, which are unpleasant. Politician needs to disclose cash gifts regardless. Your point is worth making though: innocent politicians in this hypothetical have a layer of protection that they didn’t have previously, as do crooked ones in the actual world.
After determining that the money was real, I’d be searching for a landlord that took cash.
So after owning my own home for 40 years I should start renting?
This is what I did the one time I received a large amount of cash (10K) “under the table”. But damn, it was fun to spread it all out and look at….also, it required a larger envelope than I would’ve guessed.
Even now, sometimes when I see a TV show or movie where someone slips someone else an “envelope” that supposedly contains a large bribe my reaction is “that amount of money would not fit in that standard white envelope”.
For round numbers 1000 bills is s stack about 7-8" high. So roughly a stack of two standard building bricks. Since the largest denomination US bill is the $100, one building brick is about $50K.
Multiply or divide accordingly. $50M is 1000 building bricks of money. Even $500K = 10 bricks will (over-)fill a standard briefcase.
$5000/week is more than i could spend in cash on things that i want that wouldn’t raise suspicion.
I wish! Trump has redefined politics in so many ways and this is one of them. Bad publicity is hard to get when all you have to say is I am just following the President’s example. As for investigations, what are they going to do with the results? It isn’t a crime to accept “presents”. After the investigation, life goes on. Sigh for the simpler times when people had to try to look honest. Of course those were the days of Epstein and those folks were definitely not honest nor discreet. Just quiet about things.
Depends on where you are - Eric Adams got a lot of bad publicity for his Trump-like activities, although I don’t think that’s the only reason he with drew fromthe last election.
This is true. And Trump gets a lot of bad publicity for his actions. Neither seems to be harmed by the publicity. I am afraid that even Mr. Adams is a poor example of punishment for getting bad publicity. He lost, but I don’t think the publicity caused that.