Chad Lewis

Gebundenes Buch

The Persuasion Game: The Influence Peddlers to the Trump Administration Who Jeopardized America

Beschreibung

In late 2019, as Donald Trump's impeachment investigation was underway, numerous reports of his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and his associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, began to appear. While their roles as the president's henchmen in Ukraine were closely scrutinized, their other activities drew less attention. Chad Lewis seeks to remedy that in his first book The Persuasion Game, by providing a deep dive into the influence schemes that Giuliani, Parnas, and others ran from the very beginning of Donald Trump's presidency. In pursuit of self-enrichment, Giuliani and Parnas clandestinely peddled foreign influence from corrupt autocrats and oligarchs that originated in Turkey, Venezuela, and Ukraine. Using Giuliani's connections at the Department of Justice and his proximity to the president, the two became key conduits into the Trump White House, advocating for dismissal of criminal investigations that involved corrupt foreign billionaires and promoting actions beneficial to autocrats. Gradually, Giuliani and Parnas's corrupt schemes spread into various chambers of the Trump administration, entangling officials at the highest positions along the way and eroding American institutions. The Persuasion Game connects the dots within that web of quid-pro-quos into a coherent story that should draw the attention of anyone concerned about the future of American democracy.

Autor

Ever since backpacking through Europe in his teenage years, Chad Lewis has sought to understand the world. He focused his studies at the University of Maryland around American foreign policy vis-à-vis post-Soviet politics. He spent over a decade abroad, living in Europe, Russia, and South America, exploring how those parts of the globe differed from America in cultural, socio-economic, and political senses. The years-long close observation of Russia helped Lewis notice early signs of Kremlin trolls who were promoting Putin's talking points in the Western media. They masqueraded as Americans but had English grammar mistakes common for Russian speakers. Juxtaposing those comments with Russia's increasing foreign aggression, Lewis quickly understood the potential national security ramifications. Concerned, in the fall of 2014 he reached out to the US government and alerted them to his findings. Years later, the intelligence community would admit that the US had fallen victim to a Kremlin disinformation effort. In 2019, alarm bells rang for Lewis with the arrest of Rudy Giuliani's associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. While most of the media focused on their connections to Donald Trump's first impeachment, Lewis started weaving isolated reports of their actions into an integrated picture and discovered layers of influence peddling, both domestic and foreign, by Giuliani and his associates. Lewis turned his research into his first book, The Persuasion Game, to illuminate the gravity of the damage done to US institutions by influence peddlers and to protect American democracy from future treachery. He aims to expand upon this subject by launching his new podcast in 2025. Learn more at chadlewis.net .

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Amplify Publishing
• Seitenzahl: 520
• Erscheinungstermin: 2. April 2025
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 234mm x 162mm x 43mm
• Gewicht: 757g
• ISBN-13: 9798891384187
• Artikelnr.: 72235042