Devils’ Advocates: The Hidden Story of Rudy Giuliani, Hunter Biden, and the Washington Insiders on the Payrolls of Corrupt Foreign Interests

In this explosive investigation, New York Times journalist Vogel (Big Money) casts a harsh light on how U.S. elites exploit their proximity to power to garner lucrative deals with oligarchs and authoritarian leaders abroad. He does so by tracking the similar trajectories of former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, who first began consulting for foreign clients in 2002 and whose firm garnered million-dollar contracts with international autocrats during the first Trump administration, and Hunter Biden, who worked with oligarch-owned Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma during his father’s vice presidency. Vogel gives a meticulous recap of Giuliani and Hunter’s overlapping influence peddling and its culmination in the Trump administration’s “Ukrainian pressure campaign” seeking an investigation into President Biden. He also examines the history of the foreign lobbying industry, from 1930s PR campaigns “to soften Germany’s reputation” in the U.S., to the more recent innovations of figures like Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, who forged the blueprint of contemporary lobbying, and Robert Stryk, who gained prominence due to his willingness to take on “toxic” clients. Vogel’s deeply reported account reveals the staggering extent of corruption across both Republican and Democratic administrations; while he emphasizes that Trump’s transactional approach to the presidency is more overt, he shows that foreign lobbying simply “moved further underground” during the Biden administration. It’s a damning picture of U.S. foreign policy as up for sale. (Oct.)