The Big Cheat: How Donald Trump Fleeced America and Enriched Himself and His Family

I have read almost every book David Cay Johnston has written. This book did not disappoint. This book has all the receipts to prove how the Trump family has ripped people off for decades and improperly enriched themselves, and especially Donald Trump. at the expense of US taxpayers and in ways that threaten our national security. If you are concerned or just curious about this topic, I highly recommend this brilliant book, and I recommend David Cay Johnston's other books -- every one of them.

Quite remarkable and scary that someone like Trump became the President. This book outlines in detail a lot of wrongdoing by Trump and his immediate family.

This book is a deep-dive into Trump's financial crimes and how he's legally tried to implicate everyone else, including his own family members in financial crimes. Crimes committed between 2012-2022 are fully documented, including setting up shell corporations to steal from various charities. This is merely scratching the surface of all that he seems guilty of but this book does an excellent job of following the money. These will be some of things that Jack Smith will have to say in a much sterner tone and the book offers an excellent preview of some of the charges before him.

David Cay Johnston's book is an in-depth, factually based account of the cheating and lying and dishonesty which happened during the Trump presidency. Johnston is a trained expert in the details, from financial to legal to general political... he's also a good writer, so the book reads easily. Rather than re-living all the warts, which other reviewers have done, I would say that Johnston gives us an excellent road map to ensure that the damages inflicted by Trump do not happen in the future. In the final chapter, he lists several reforms which we need to enact: (1) require the IRS to release the tax returns of all future presidents; (2) all financial assets of future presidents, excluding personal residences and personal property, be placed in blind trusts; (3) define which specific presidential acts are impeachable offenses; (4) no relatives can be appointed by presidents to any positions; (5) strengthen whistleblower laws; (6) restrict the use of campaign funds, prohibit their use after the campaign ends, and no giving to other politicians, and more disclosure of Super PAC donors. After all the confirmed details of dirt, cheating and lying which Johnston gives us, you might feel the need for hygienic hand washing--the final suggested reforms are like the sunshine disinfectant which can heal these types of problems.

The Big Cheat: How Donald Trump Fleeced America and Enriched Himself and His Family by David Cay Johnston“The Big Cheat” tells the story of how President Trump abused his position of power to enrich himself. Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter David Cay Johnston documents how Trump used his presidency to get richer and set up lucrative future opportunities. This concise 241-page includes nineteen short chapters.Positives:1. A well-written, well-researched book.2. An interesting topic, the story of how Trump used the his presidency to fleece America.3. Provides a clear purpose of the book in the introduction.” The Big Cheat documents how Trump did what he has always done: promise the moon, the sky, and the stars, and then deliver rocks and sand, if that.”4. Describes how Trump gave aid and comfort to those who feared racial minorities. “In supporting Trump they found a way to express the desire of many to Make America White Again.”5. How Trump came up with ways to line his own pockets from charity events. “The years of excessive fees for using the golf course and the money that flowed from the father’s charity to the son’s charity to the Trump Organization constituted self-dealing, using charity funds to benefit the people in charge of the charity instead of applying the money to the charitable purpose donors believed they were supporting.”6. Where did all the Trump inaugural money go?7. How Trump collected tributes. “Everson realized that those seeking favors from Trump would stuff his pockets with money that was, to them, like tap water. Indeed, soon people, organizations, and governments that could drop unlimited sums on Trump did so. The government of Saudi Arabia, among others, rented out entire floors at Trump’s Washington hotel. The Saudis rely on the U.S. military to maintain their iron grip on that nation’s people.”8. Describes financial conflicts of interest. “This lease language makes it crystal clear that Trump had to exit the Old Post Office building lease once he assumed office. Indeed, the 1808 law, updated and still in effect, provided that “every such contract or agreement shall moreover be absolutely void and of no effect.”9. Trump’s international dealings. “Then there’s India, where the Trump Organization had its biggest deals. Five Trump-branded projects worth $11 million annually in fees to Donald were underway in India when he became president. As with Trump-branded projects in the former Soviet satellites Azerbaijan and Georgia, in Panama, and at the Trump SoHo tower in Manhattan, the principals in the India projects involved people under criminal investigation.”10. Trump’s tax scam. “She explained that half of Trump’s income tax cuts would go to people in the top 1 percent.” “The net effect of Trump’s tax law was insignificant relief for those on the lower half of the income ladder and a big tax cut for the richest Americans. Trump’s ironclad promise of ending the income tax for 60 percent of Americans filing tax returns never materialized.”11. Trump’s tax law. “Trump’s tax law also shifted the burden of supporting our federal government from companies and onto workers. In 2018, the first year the new law was in effect, the share of federal revenues paid by corporations fell by a third, to 6 percent from 9 percent.”12. Trump helping out his rich friends exposed. “Special Agent Galdys sent a short email to Cohan on June 13, 2017, making it clear he was no longer pursuing the case, but not why. Cohan believes Trump signaled that the IRS should lay off Bill Koch.”13. Trump’s wall scam. “On Trump’s watch, government contractors completed only 69 miles of fencing, not the 450 miles of wall that Trump claimed, the Government Accountability Office reported in June 2021.”14. Trump’s federal loan scams. “One reason the Trump administration was so determined to keep the identities of loan recipients secret emerged from the files. More than two dozen loans totaling more than $3.6 million were made to companies owned by or connected to the Trump-Kushner family.”15. How Trump favored fossil fuel industries. “Trump and his team tried to enrich many industries, especially fossil fuel companies, usually in ways that inflated profits at the expense of the American people.”16. Trump’s pollution policies. “What all of these Trump pro-pollution policies have in common is that they would shift costs of mitigating the effects of toxic waste from energy producers to taxpayers.”17. Trump’s financial ties to Russia. “Another investor in the Bank of Cyprus was Dmitry Rybolovlev. He’s the oligarch who paid Trump $95 million in 2008 for a gaudy Palm Beach mansion worth maybe a third that much, tore it down, and later sold off parts for a fraction of what he paid. That inflated purchase price allowed Trump to repay an overdue $40 million Deutsche Bank loan.”18. Ivanka’s financial abuse of power exposed. “Ivanka also owned a slice of her father’s Washington hotel. In the first three years of his presidency, the hotel made her $13 million, she disclosed in ethics reports. In 2020, when the pandemic hit travel and entertainment businesses hard, she still earned $1.5 million.”19. How Trump made family first over country. “While Jared was working in the White House, Freddie Mac, the federally sponsored mortgage loan corporation, approved almost $850 million of 10-year interest-only mortgages issued to the Kushner Companies.”20. Trump’s legacy. “He promised to Make America Great Again. But Trump is the only president since Herbert Hoover in 1933 to leave office with an economy that was smaller per American than when he moved into the White House.”Negatives:1. No charts, graphs or visual material to complement the narrative.2. Very few links and supplementary material.3. No bibliography.4. No clear expectations on what Mr. Cay Johnston expects to happen to Trump.5. I would have added an appendix denoting exactly how we can prevent future presidents from fleecing America.In summary, this is an interesting book that describes how Trump used the presidency for his personal gain. David Cay Johnston does a very good job of investigating and exposing Trump’s modus operandi and explaining it clearly to the public. My only criticism of note is the lack of supplementary material like notes or lists that would have complemented the narrative. A worthwhile read, I recommend it.Further suggestions: “It’s Even Worse Than You Think” by the same author, “Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth: The President's Falsehoods, Misleading Claims and Flat-Out Lies” by Glenn Kessler, “Everything Trump Touches Dies: A Republican Strategist Gets Real About the Worst President Ever” by Rick Wilson, “Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic” by David Frum, “One Nation After Trump” by E.J. Dionne Jr., and “Democracy in Chains” by Nancy MacLean.