American Oligarchs (The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power) - Andrea Bernstein

The Trump and Kushner families arrived in America penniless. Their rise to the White House is a story of survival and loss, crime and betrayal-and the building of unimaginable wealth. Emerging from the famously corrupt worlds of New York and New Jersey real estate, two states that have come to define corruption in America, the Trumps and the Kushners ascended to the highest office in the land bringing the political cultures of these states into the Oval Office. Based on hundreds of interviews and over 100,000 pages of documents, audio and video tapes, many previously unseen or long forgotten, this electrifying work of investigative reporting shows how the families used grit, trickery and fraud to take advantage of post-war programmes that bolstered the middle class and then wielded the levers of political, prosecutorial and judicial power to amass and protect their enormous fortunes. In gripping detail, American Oligarchs documents the two families' labyrinthine web of illicit dealings and connections across the globe before, during and after the 2016 election, and how the Trumps and Kushners, once in power, have pushed America from democracy to the precipice of oligarchy and beyond.