American Kompromat

CHAPTER ONE  
 
THE MONSTER PLOT

November 2020 
 
It had been the worst of times like in Dickens s A Tale of Two Cities, but without the hope and light. It was the age of foolishness, the season of darkness, the winter of despair. America had been on the road to authoritarianism, and the pace had been relentless. There was disorder, chaos, and uncertainty throughout the United States. Democracy had been hanging in the balance, and it was dangling by a thread. The entire country was on tenterhooks, still waiting for the final results.

The nation was polarized in a way that it had not been since the Civil War. A line had been drawn. You were on one side or the other. It was us versus them.

To most of the country, he was vulgar and vile, a misogynistic, racist firebrand, a buffoon who knew only his own pecuniary interests and prejudices and would stop at nothing to satiate them. He was clownish and repellent. But well before the election, it had become clear that he was far more dangerous than that suggested, that his buffoonery masked real demagoguery, that he was a tyrant who had mes- merized tens of millions of people, and that it didn t matter to them what he said or did. He spoke for them. To them, he was a great leader. Even though he had implemented anti-science-based policies that had led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans, he could do no wrong thanks to a cult of personality created and aroused by his Trumpian spectacles and amplified by a sycophantic right-wing media. He was America s own autocrat.

Everyone was exhausted. There was widespread unemployment. He had put federal troops in the streets American soldiers fighting American citizens on American soil. He installed foxes in every bureaucratic henhouse in government. The Russians had undermined the US elections in 2016 and Trump had collaborated with them. Now, everyone was waiting to see what he would do

Craig Unger is the author of seven books, including the New York Times bestsellers American Kompromat, House of Trump, House of Putin and House of Bush, House of Saud. For fifteen years he was a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, where he covered national security, the Middle East, and other political issues. A frequent analyst on MSNBC and other broadcast outlets, he was a longtime staffer at New York Magazine, has served as editor-in-chief of Boston magazine, and has contributed to Esquire, The New Yorker, and many other publications. He also appears frequently as an analyst on MSNBC, CNN, and other broadcast outlets. Unger has written about the Trump-Russia scandal for The New Republic, Vanity Fair, and The Washington Post. He is a graduate of Harvard University and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Praise for American Kompromat
"For the first time a former KGB employee has gone on record to describe Donald Trump's historic relationship with the Kremlin. It's a bombshell that must be looked into." Robert Baer, former CIA operative and author of See No Evil

I said in 2017 that Trump had more Russian connections than Aeroflot, and American Carnage documents every flight. Trump s loyalty to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin was deeper and more insidious than merely envying his wealth and power. America has removed Putin s puppet from the White House, but the KGB man who controlled him is still in the Kremlin, eager to repeat the success of his greatest operation: President Trump. Read Craig Unger to understand why the danger to American democracy is far from over. Garry Kasparov, Chairman of the Renew Democracy Foundation and author of Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped
 
"By compiling decades of Trump s seedy ties, disturbing and consistent patterns of behavior, and unexplained contacts with Russian officials and criminals, Unger makes a strong case that Trump is probably a compromised trusted contact of Kremlin interests." John Sipher, Washington Post

"Craig Unger has just published a wonderful, well-written book. The jewel in the crown is how the KGB cultivated Donald Trump. With assistance of the eminent former KGB officer Yuri Shvets, American Kompromat establishes how it really took place." Anders Åslund, senior fellow, The Atlantic Council

A must-read. The gun s not quite smoking, but the barrel s plenty hot, and there are Russian shell casings all around. Kirkus (starred review)

Make[s] the unassailable case that Donald J. Trump has been cultivated by Soviet and Russian leaders. CounterPunch

Craig Unger, who gave us the important books House of Bush, House of Saud and The Fall of the House