American Kompromat

Now in paperback and updated with a new afterword, "American Kompromat" tells the story of the unimaginably corrupt, dissolute, and decadent subculture of the most powerful people in the world and how they have orchestrated, obtained, and used kompromat—Russian for compromising information—as leverage to achieve their political goals.

In the follow-up to the New York Times bestseller "House of Trump, House of Putin," "American Kompromat" is situated in the context of the Trump-Russia scandal and the new era of hybrid warfare, kleptocrats, and authoritarian right-wing populism. This time, rather than follow a trail of laundered money, Craig Unger reports on kompromat—the Russian word for compromising information—operations that uncovered the dirty little secrets of the richest and most powerful men on earth.

Set in a world of Upper East Side mansions and private Caribbean islands, of gigantic yachts and private jets, "American Kompromat" shows that something much more sinister and important was taking place than the public could ever imagine—namely, that from Donald Trump to Jeffrey Epstein, kompromat operations documented the darkest secrets of the most powerful people in the world and transformed them into potent weapons.

Unger explores the nature of the compromising material they obtained, how it was obtained, who was behind it (be they Russians, Israelis, or the new American variety of oligarch), who had access to the material since it was produced, whether it was used for blackmail or extortion, and what roles it played in the Trump-Russia scandal.