Political Corruption

"Six minutes from now, one of us would be dead. None of us knew it was coming." So says Wes Holloway, a young presidential aide, about the day he put Ron Boyle, the chief executive's oldest friend, into the president's limousine. By the trip's end, a crazed assassin would permanently disfigure Wes and kill Boyle. Now, eight years later, Boyle has been spotted alive. Trying to figure out what really happened takes Wes back into disturbing secrets buried in Freemason history, a decade-old presidential crossword puzzle, and a 200-year-old code.

Every facet of American life is being overtaken by big platform monopolists like Facebook, Google, and Bayer (which has merged with the former agricultural giant Monsanto), resulting in a greater concentration of wealth and power than we've seen since the Gilded Age. They are evolving into political entities that often have more influence than the actual government, bending state and federal legislatures to their will and even creating arbitration courts that circumvent the US justice system.

Behind most major political stories in the modern era, there is an agenda - an effort by opposition researchers, spin doctors, and outside interests to destroy an idea or a person. The tactic they use is the Smear. Every day, Americans are influenced by the Smear without knowing it. Paid forces cleverly shape virtually every image you cross. Maybe you read that Donald Trump is a racist misogynist or saw someone on the news mocking the Bernie Sanders campaign. The trick of the Smear is that it is often based on some shred of truth.

Blind Ambition is an autobiographical account of a young lawyer who accelerated to the top of the Federal power structure to become Counsel to the President at 30 years of age, only to discover that when reaching the top, he had touched the bottom. Most striking in this chronicle is its honesty. Dean spares no one, including himself. But, as Time noted, Dean survived, despite the opposition of powerful foe, because he had no false story to protect and he had an amazing ability to recall the truth.

Ten years after the infamous Watergate scandal that brought down the Nixon presidency, Jim Hougan—then the Washington editor of Harper's Magazine—set out to write a profile of Lou Russell, a boozy private-eye who plied his trade in the vice-driven underbelly of the nation's capital. Hougan soon discovered that Russell was "the sixth man, the one who got away" when his boss, veteran CIA officer Jim McCord, led a break-in team into a trap at the Watergate.

We have never seen a president like this...norm-breaking, rule-busting, dangerously reckless to some and an overdue force for change to others. One thing is clear: We are witnessing the reshaping of the presidency. Jonathan Karl brings us into the White House in a powerful book unlike any other on the Trump administration. He's known and covered Donald Trump longer than any other White House reporter. With extraordinary access to Trump during the campaign and at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Karl delivers essential new reporting and surprising insights.

Secrecy World offers a disturbing and sobering view of how the world really works and raises crucial questions about financial and legal institutions we may once have trusted. This audiobook discusses the fragile scaffolding upholding any tax haven, the flexible laws of banking, and the radiating impact of an international financial scandal.

The Convenient Terrorist is the definitive inside account of the capture, torture, and detention of Abu Zubaydah, the first “high-value target” captured by the CIA after 9/11. But was Abu Zubaydah, who is still being indefinitely held by the United States under shadowy circumstances, the blue-ribbon capture that the Bush White House claimed he was?

Former congressman and current Fox News contributor Jason Chaffetz explains how we ended up with a politicized federal bureaucracy that actively works to promote the Democratic Party's agenda and undermine Donald Trump.

Our economy has tanked, our freedoms are shrinking, and social divisions are growing. Our politicians seem most interested in their own careers, and much of the media only make things worse. We are living in a country almost unrecognisable from the one that existed a decade ago. But whose fault is it really? Who broke Britain and how did they do it?

A Corrupt City Council, Conspicuous Corporate Crimes, and Cagey Characters. It’s 1982, and business is booming in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Sonny McBride and Jim Tarpley are engaged in a bitter, often violent battle for the North Texas spoils. The titans of industry play a continuous, zero-sum game of deliberate attacks and defenses to gain a dominant market position. Castillo, Texas, a fast-growing, wealthy community, is the latest target for Sonny and Jim. Their fight to corner the multi-million dollar businesses in Castillo will result in two kidnappings, multiple assaults, and one ...

The best-selling author of Bringing Down the House (63 weeks on the New York Times best seller list and the basis for the hit movie 21) and The Accidental Billionaires (the basis for the Academy Award-winning film The Social Network) delivers an epic drama of wealth, rivalry, and betrayal among megawealthy Russian oligarchs - and its international repercussions.

In this explosive account of wrongful acts and ongoing cover-ups, Jesse Ventura takes a systematic look at the wide gap between what the American government knows and what it reveals to the American people. For too long, we the people have sat by and let politicians and bureaucrats from both parties obfuscate and lie. And according to this former Navy SEAL, former pro wrestler, and former Minnesota governor, the media is complicit in these acts of deception.

How did the Bushes, America's most powerful political family, become gradually seduced by and entangled with their Saudi counterparts?

When CIA agent Adam Darby is abducted and left stranded in the wilderness, he never expected it would lead him to a group of retired operatives, a dangerous conspiracy, and the love of his life. Betrayed by his boss and abducted during a routine stakeout, Adam finds himself lost in the rugged landscape of northern Montana. In his search for civilization, he stumbles upon some unlikely friends. The shock of betrayal and a new organization of retired operatives give Adam a determination to save his parents from blackmail, but soon finds himself fighting for the safety of all Americans.

Two rogue computer hackers employed by the CIA have stolen four hundred million dollars from the Taliban. When President Joshua Bartlett learns of the theft, he has the hackers give him half of the cash but then arranges to have them killed so that he can keep the balance for himself. By steadfastly refusing to return the money to the Taliban, Bartlett has incurred its wrath. To force the president to return the money, Taliban fighters acting in concert with a powerful Mexican drug cartel, wage a jihad along the southern border. In a shocking act of deception, the president withdraws four ...

Girolamo Savonarola—his name evokes images of fiery sermons, relentless reform, and a city gripped by revolution. If you’ve ever wondered how one man, armed with nothing but his faith and words, could shake the foundations of Renaissance Florence, this book is your answer. • Discover the rise of a prophet who dared to defy the Medici, the Pope, and the cultural excesses of his time. • Uncover the passionate conviction that led to the infamous Bonfire of the Vanities, an event that forever altered the course of history. • Witness Savonarola’s fierce battle against corruption and ...

Based on Nixon’s overlooked recordings, New York Times best-selling author John W. Dean connects the dots between what we’ve come to believe about Watergate and what actually happened Watergate forever changed American politics, and in light of the revelations about the NSA’s widespread surveillance program, the scandal has taken on new significance. Yet remarkably, four decades after Nixon was forced to resign, no one has told the full story of his involvement in Watergate.

In the third volume of his Proof series, New York Times best-selling author Seth Abramson takes listeners on a deep dive into the Ukraine scandal, revealing it to be more sinister, complex, and transnational than previously thought. Abramson’s research on Trump administration corruption positions the Ukraine scandal as the foreseeable culmination of years of clandestine machinations involving scores of players, from Beijing to Budapest, Ankara to Caracas, Warsaw to Jerusalem, Kyiv to Riyadh, and Moscow to DC.

Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are the self-styled prince and princess of America. Their swift, gilded rise to extraordinary power in Donald Trump’s White House is unprecedented, unconstitutional, and dangerous. In Kushner, Inc., investigative journalist Vicky Ward digs beneath the myth the couple has created that depicts themselves as the voices of reason in an otherwise crazy presidency and reveals that Jared and Ivanka are not just the president’s chief enablers, they are, like him, disdainful of rules, of laws, and of ethics.