Donald Trump complaining about critical coverage says that “we have to straighten out the press. Our press is very corrupt” as though the government will be correcting the press. He has it exactly backward, as it is the free press that corrects and straightens out corrupt government.

Look no further than the reporting of Daily News correspondents Graham Rayman, Rocco Parascandola and Tom Tracy who last month uncovered the NYPD overtime scandal that OT is being directed to a large number of cops at HQs, not police out in the field.

Their work blew open the dirty inside secrets, showing that the No. 1 highest earner among 35,000 uniformed cops was Lt. Special Assignment Quathisha Epps, who just happened to be an aide to Jeff Maddrey, who was chief of the department until a few days ago.

Exposed, Epps put in for retirement on Dec. 16 and two days later she was suspended. She then charged that Maddrey had been demanding sex in exchange for the hundreds of thousands of dollars of OT she had pocketed. That’s when Maddrey quit.

The salacious details ascribed to Maddrey are horrid. And so is the scandal that OT is apparently being funneled, not to crime fighting and hardworking cops freezing their behinds off patrolling the streets and subways, but to paper-pushers like Epps with cushy jobs back at 1 Police Plaza. There are hundreds of OT recipients who need to be carefully reviewed.