Masters of Corruption, Mark Moyar

“In the United States you can elect any president you want, but a small group of people you’ve never heard of still run everything — year after year, administration after administration. That’s not democracy. It’s oligarchy, and Mark Moyar explains exactly how it works.” —Tucker Carlson

This book tells a remarkable true story of bureaucratic assassination during the Trump presidency, revealing in vivid detail how career federal employees thwarted President Trump’s efforts to drain the swamp.

Mark Moyar, a senior political appointee at the US Agency for International Development, discovered evidence of corruption involving five career bureaucrats and reported it to agency officials in 2018. Senior bureaucrats orchestrated a sophisticated retaliatory plot, which began when a Special Operations general fraudulently accused Moyar of divulging classified information, and ended with the termination of Moyar’s employment.

The bureau that Moyar had been on track to lead, with an annual budget exceeding $300 million, fell into the hands of one of his bureaucratic assassins. The leading perpetrator of the corruption exposed by Moyar subsequently escaped punishment by transferring to another federal agency.

A multi-agency cover-up followed. Moyar sought help from three Offices of the Inspector General–the government’s main bulwarks against whistleblower retaliation–but all three conducted flimsy investigations that absolved the bureaucracy. When Senator Charles Grassley demanded that agency officials fill the gaps in the government’s story, he was met with lies and evasions.

This suspense-filled drama provides an insider’s view of the federal bureaucracy’s corruption, its weaponization of bureaucratic procedures, and its failures to protect employees from retaliation. In telling his story, Moyar reveals how future administrations can drain the swamp and draws a roadmap for the restoration of integrity to the United States government.

Biographical Notes: Mark Moyar holds the William P. Harris Chair in Military History at Hillsdale College. During the Trump administration, he received a political appointment at the US Agency for International Development, serving as the director of the Office of Civilian-Military Cooperation. After he reported several career bureaucrats for corruption, he was fraudulently accused of divulging classified information, setting in motion the events described in this book. His previous academic appointments include the Kim T. Adamson Chair of Insurgency and Terrorism at the US Marine Corps University and fellowships at the Joint Special Operations University and Texas A&M University. The author of seven previous books on history, leadership, and international development, he has also written articles for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. He received a BA summa cum laude from Harvard and a PhD from Cambridge.

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“Mark Moyar’s account of his years in the public arena is vital for every citizen to read and understand. It is the unelected that largely govern us–and subvert the will of the people. This is the best insider account on this subject I have read. Moyar’s Masters of Corruption is a must read.”—Peter Schweizer, author of #1 NYT bestseller Red Handed