Is American foreign policy really for sale?

In 2016, Donald Trump promised to impose “a complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections.” He didn’t.

- DAVID GREENBERG

And, as headlines about the president’s accepting a $200 million airplane from Qatar and his daughter Tiffany’s outing on a Libyan oil mogul’s yacht suggest, the swamp that President Trump pledged to drain has become miasmatic. The watchdog group OpenSecrets estimates that foreign clients have spent more than $5 billion since 2016 to gain the favour of the US government and American institutions.

That estimate appears in Kenneth P Vogel’s Devils’ Advocates, a look at the world of foreign influence campaigns in the Trump and Biden years. An investigative journalist for The New York Times, Vogel has made covering lobbying his stockin-trade. His painstakingly reported articles pulse with outrage at the mercenary cast of so much Washington deal-making.