Russian Roulette; The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump

New York: Twelve, 2018. First U.S. Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Evan McGrath (Isikoff author photograph) and Mary. xi, [1], 339, [1] pages. Occasional footnotes. Notes. Index. Michael Isikoff (born June 16, 1952) is an American investigative journalist who used to be the Chief Investigative Correspondent at Yahoo! News. He is the co-author with David Corn of the book titled Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump. From July 2010 to April 2014, Isikoff was the national investigative correspondent for NBC News. He resigned from NBC, citing the network's move in a direction that left him with "fewer opportunities" for his work. He had previously worked for Newsweek, which he joined as an investigative correspondent in June 1994, and wrote extensively on the U.S. government's War on Terror, the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse, campaign finance and congressional ethics abuses, presidential politics and other national issues. David Corn (born February 20, 1959) is an American political journalist and author. He is the Washington, D.C. bureau chief for Mother Jones and is best known as a cable television commentator. Corn worked at The Nation from 1987 to 2007, where he served as Washington editor. In February 2013, Corn was given the 2012 George Polk Award in journalism in the category of political reporting for his posting of a video and reporting of the "47 percent story," Republican nominee Mitt Romney's videoed meeting with donors during the 2012 presidential campaign. #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER #1 USA TODAY BESTSELLER. "RUSSIAN ROULETTE is...the most thorough and riveting account." --The New York Times. The incredible, harrowing account of how American democracy was hacked by Moscow as part of a covert operation to influence the U.S. election and help Donald Trump gain the presidency. RUSSIAN ROULETTE is a story of political skullduggery unprecedented in American history. It weaves together tales of international intrigue, cyber espionage, and superpower rivalry. After U.S.-Russia relations soured, as Vladimir Putin moved to reassert Russian strength on the global stage, Moscow trained its best hackers and trolls on U.S. political targets and exploited WikiLeaks to disseminate information that could affect the 2016 election. The Russians were wildly successful and the great break-in of 2016 was no "third-rate burglary." It was far more sophisticated and sinister -- a brazen act of political espionage designed to interfere with American democracy. At the end of the day, Trump, the candidate who pursued business deals in Russia, won. And millions of Americans were left wondering, what the hell happened? This story of high-tech spying and multiple political feuds is told against the backdrop of Trump's strange relationship with Putin and the curious ties between members of his inner circle -- including Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn -- and Russia. RUSSIAN ROULETTE chronicles and explores this bizarre scandal, explains the stakes, and answers one of the biggest questions in American politics: How and why did a foreign government infiltrate the country's political process and gain influence in Washington? Derived from a Kirkus review: An eye-popping exposé of what amounts to a Cabinet appointment for Vladimir Putin in the Trump White House. The facts are being revealed daily: In one bit of fresh Trump news uncovered by Yahoo News investigative reporter Isikoff and Mother Jones Washington bureau chief Corn, Russian authorities lobbied the incoming administration extensively for a Putin regime-friendly secretary of state, and voilà, Rex Tillerson was appointed. That Tillerson is out of office is just one denouement of a tale that may start with the premise, as one intelligence insider put it, that the White House is now occupied by a "Manchurian candidate." And why might Trump be so characterized? There lies the meat of this book, a careful, piece-by-piece look at the business dealings between Russia and various tentacles of Trump's business empire, including attempted spinoffs from the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. Tied up in what is a resounding refusal to put national interests over personal ones are a mess of related circumstances, including side notes on Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, Edward Snowden, and the Panama Papers; Barack Obama's failure to act on intelligence that reported Russian infiltration of the American electoral process; an unhurried intelligence apparatus that assumed that Hillary Clinton was going to win; and now, a president who, for all his protestations to the contrary, seems thoroughly in the pocket of the Russian government. If you're puzzled why the sitting president isn't going after the Russians for election tampering and other bad behavior, this is just the book to explain.