Peter Overby
Peter Overby has covered Washington power, money, and influence since a foresighted NPR editor created the beat in 1994.
Overby has covered scandals involving House Speaker Newt Gingrich, President Bill Clinton, lobbyist Jack Abramoff and others. He tracked the rise of campaign finance regulation as Congress passed campaign finance reform laws, and the rise of deregulation as Citizens United and other Supreme Court decisions rolled those laws back.
During President Trump's first year in office, Overby was on a team of NPR journalists covering conflicts of interest sparked by the Trump family business. He did some of the early investigations of dark money, dissecting a money network that influenced a Michigan judicial election in 2013, and — working with the Center for Investigative Reporting — surfacing below-the-radar attack groups in the 2008 presidential election.
In 2009, Overby co-reported Dollar Politics, a multimedia series on lawmakers, lobbyists and money as the Senate debated the Affordable Care Act. The series received an award for excellence from the Capitol Hill-based Radio and Television Correspondents Association. Earlier, he won an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton for his coverage of the 2000 elections and 2001 Senate debate on campaign finance reform.
Prior to NPR, Overby was an editor/reporter for Common Cause Magazine, where he shared an Investigative Reporters and Editors award. He worked on daily newspapers for 10 years, and has freelanced for publications ranging from Utne Reader and the Congressional Quarterly Guide To Congress to the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post.
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Democrats are calling on President Trump to release his taxes. On April 15, critics are planning anti-Trump tax marches across the country. -
The trust intended to build an ethics wall between President Trump and his businesses was quietly changed in February. Now he is allowed unlimited payments from the trust, among other changes.
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She already has an office in the West Wing. "I have been working closely ... with the White House Counsel and my personal counsel to address the unprecedented nature of my role," she said. -
White House Counsel Don McGahn has historical ties to President Trump and a combative record at the Federal Election Commission. His job is to interpret ethics laws and apply them to the White House.
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Christopher Liddell appeared to be invested in 18 companies when he joined the president in meetings with their CEOs. The investments totaled between $3 million and $4 million. -
Democrats say they'll try to keep Republicans voting on whether to look into the president's ethics. A House Republican says the Democrats are "going through the stages of grief" after the election. -
The Office of Government Ethics has been in the spotlight since President Trump ignored its call to divest his businesses. It has no enforcement power, but still has a big impact on federal workers. -
President Trump signed over 488 business entities, including his luxury hotel in Washington, to a trust. But a document says those assets are held "for the exclusive benefit of Donald J. Trump." -
A ballot measure last fall targeted South Dakota's status as the only state that allowed lobbyists to give politicians unlimited and undisclosed gifts. Now lawmakers have voted to repeal the law. -
Voters in South Dakota adopted a package of ethics and campaign finance reforms in November. Now the legislature is declaring a state of emergency in order to repeal it.
