We were both there for many years. They went into a downturn in the late 2000s. In the face of the internet and it started to evolved into a fulfilling job for me. I decided what i really loved to do was investigate complex cases and it was less market for that in the journalism world. The emphasis was on breaking news so i decided to try to see if i could do that work as a consultant. What kind of stories did you work on . I started out covering american politics here in washington in the late 1980s, early 90s and investigating politicians for possible corruption. Ethics in washington and over the years, got evolved into different types of investigating journalism involving financial crime, broad corporate cases, scandals, financial crisis and then over time, after 9 11, i started branching out into International Criminal matters such as terrorism and organized crime. What was peters role . Peter was my editor. We were stationed together in brussels, belgium which is the headquarters for the european addition. He was a correspondent for most of his career. From mexico to brazil to singapore, winding up in brussels with me. What kind of clients did you attract . A lot of law firms, involving collocated cases, Big Companies trying to figure out whether they were competing adequately or whether they were in irregularities. Those are the big two. Opensource research . My specialty at the journal was documents. I was known as a document hound. Its really what i like to do. I like to try to get large quantities of documents to see if i can use them to unravel a mystery or figure out. The u. S. Is rich in public sources of information compared to other parts of the world. So i knew how to do that my heres at the journal. The Business Plan was to use private clients and their resources they had to engage in largescale document and accusation projects. We would subject all those to analysis and see if we come up with results. Its generally one of the things we call decisionsupport. A lot of what we do is mass information that enables a client make decisions about how to proceed without ever problem they are facing. A fraud case or a decision about how to compete against other companies. I Political Opposition Research firm. That was not enough business line. We didnt do like that for the first several years of the company. However, in 2012, we were asked to look at me romney for my democratic folks i knew from washington. They asked because our specialty is Business Research we have wall street journal background and mitt romney was very complicated, Business Career and it wasnt the sort of subject that an ordinary Political Research firm would be wellequipped to do. Its something we set out pursue, it was approached at my desk. Where you financially successful . The company is. Has done quite well over the years. Not mitt romney style well off but its nice. Was operation bangor . It was named, we name our projects using random categories. Sometimes we name the four cities. The idea is just to not have it, what the project was about. It was initiated in october of 2015. That was a look at donald trump Business Career and his long history of lawsuits and bankruptcies. Anything that would be significant or relevant and political context and campaign. Who instigated at . An associate of mine from washington and politics, said he would be interesting. In that case, it was originally my approached him. I asked him if he knew anyone interested in donald trump and he said i might. Who answered the call . Eventually we got hooked up with newspaper, a conservative oriented internet only publication. Who is paul . Paul singer is reported to be among the founders. I dont think ive ever seen document about. Hes the one who funded that . The project was funded by the deacon. We didnt inquire whether he was getting it so i think it was generally known at the time that paul singer is a supporter. So like what a conservative publication presumably Republican Fund and Opposition Research project on complex. At the time, it was the early primary season for the republican nomination. There is a lot of concern inside the Republican Party that trump was both not real republican, some of his positions, his history of donation suggest he was a democrat or had policy positions that were more than the democrat particularly on free trade. There were concerns with his policy positions and think there was concern he was not a viable nominee that if he were nominated, the republicans will lose because of his character, his policy positions general populace demagogic orientation, republicans had a terrible experience, a similar populace immigrant candidate. Prior to that, he right in your book prime and progress, this is from about march 2016, there was now unanimity on the need to do what they could to keep trump out of the white house and also unanimity as to why. Many of his traits disqualified him for the job and his political rhetoric was wholesome but his ties to the criminal underworld is reliant on russia money and his record in business. This was all prior to that project. It was the first day, which was for the republicans. Phase two was for the democrats. Youre right, this was where we were in the spring of 2016 when the republican primaries were starting down. We had done seven months of research into trump and formed definite opinions of who this person was and whether he was qualified to be president and wasnt. That indicates a lot of our concern involve the issues that are now in center in terms of russia. Its really about his associations with the underworld. We are concerned about the maf mafia. He seemed to know and did business with a lot of characters who had ties to the mafia and later the russian or human organized crime. Was this a follow the money case . It was, it started out as a litigation survey because trump, as we talk about in the book, has been involved in more lawsuits than anyone investigated. It was an incredible number of cases. It was in the beginning, as time went on, we begin to understand his business empire, began to try to figure out where the money was coming from. He became more and more a question of where is this money coming from that courses from trump projects . He cant get money because he went bankrupt six times. A lot of other developers wont do business with him because he had a history of refuting disagreements. So where is it coming from . He began, it became increasingly apparent that he was doing that. You indicate that a lot of the trump tower condominiums or apartments were sold to russia. People from the soviet union, not all russians. That was one of his biggest sources of sales. Why is that region of the world seem to have so many shadowy figures . More now than in the past, communists structures essentially made it impossible to survive if you want engaged in some sort of current activity. It was a lawless environment, the men in the post communist era, that sort of culture of lawlessness eventually led to a great deal of hypocrisy. Stealing, cheating, people in their taxes, they would take out loans from banks and take the money out of the country. Its a real sad story about the failure of our countries, the west to instill more of a rule of law culture but its a problem with the rule of law in the dna in these countries systems and never being able to transplant it. Did you find names connected with trump that you found in the mid 90s when you are doing financial stories for the wall street journal . One of the first race i covered back then was the bank of new york scandal which was a case of corruption money falling into one of new yorks biggest banks. Later on, peter and i when we were in brussels, we put together stories, my wife worked with us about russian hypocrisy and there was activity in Eastern Europe and among the people that wrote about of the time and his relationship with figures from ukraine. So we did reporting on him including raising questions about whether he was a Foreign Agent for some of these foreign parties. Active in washington and unregistered and also another one. Very close to grandma. Both of these characters surfaced in 2016 and the Trump Campaign. It was shocking and disturbing in that context and led to a great deal of concern on our part that something was taking place here we didnt fully understand. One of the issues talk about is the issue of greek sales, what is that . Presales is a way of financing conduct departments, someone who has covered a lot of Business Issues over the years, it was new to me in this case. Essentially what you do when you put together a project is you try to get commitments from buyers before the thing is even both. If you can presale a third of the units, that income can be used to finance the project. Its a way of capitalizing a Department Without having to get funding from a bank and the presales help with promoting development. If you say we presold a building, that is demand for the rest of the units. Its that vulnerability, its area of controversy in the business because presales are often hyped and theres often a lot of puffery about how much presales youve made. If you inflate your presale claims, you can be accused of fraud, you can claim that they were misled. What we found was that there was a lot of hype about presales and questions about whether they had the commitments they claimed. When did this become a democratic funded project twice . In may 2016, it was fully democrats by june 2016. How did that happen . After we concluded, president of our country, we reached out to some folks we in the democratic world and offered our services to them. As a discussion of this on the book, i would sit out the general election, i brought some of the controversies around Hillary Clinton, i didnt want to get involved with that because she has a lot of international dealings i think are problematic. So we were going to say that but then it was deeply disturbing and it seemed like we didnt have a choice. I think you referred to Hillary Clinton as a lesser of two evils. Thats correct. I have high regard for people around her that we deal with but having covered the clintons for many years, i thought the way they raise money particularly created potential for problems. Who is mark . A partner at the law firm and originally, Seattle Law Firm but they have a big office and they are the lead law firm for the democratic party. What was his involvement in the funding project . Referring to he was the person we went to to see if the democrats were interested in continuing this research and he was simultaneously the lawyer for the National Committee and the clinton campaign. Dealings with a lawyer, did that give you indemnity . Essentially i think its now widely reported, the original idea was to develop information that would be useful in the context of advertising public statements and that sort of thing and it was continued as a legal representation because of terms long history of doing people or saying things about him. So that was the idea, it didnt really protect us from being sued, it was just anticipation of the possibility of knowing that. In fact, when everything went crazy in 2017, we were not indemnified and we found ourselves and found our different distance. I what time did christopher steal play a role . Who is he and when did he come into the picture . Chris was the lead for mike six, he served in the soviet union around the soviet union collapsed. Later became the head of the russia mi six and retired from the service in 2009, almost the exact time i left the journal. We were introduced to friends, mutual interest in russia and oligarchs and we became friendly. Did a little business together over the following years. This part of the world is not a big part of my business so it was an episodic relationship but we did like working together and we did have common interests. So when we finally concluded in the spring of 2016, that there was something unexplained about trumps relationship with russia, he was an obvious person for us to go to to see if we could find out more. By then, we had done research, tens of thousands of pages of documents. We felt we were running out of places to look for Public Information and we needed someone who was able to talk to people. And seek that there was more to be cleaned by talking to people in russia. Was a democratically funded by the time christopher steal came along . It was. The foundation for the decision to bring him on was the work we had done on the republicans but it was the democrat client who provided the funding for that work. In your book, you mentioned a couple of his political positions. He was supportive of the plo and anti margaret thatcher. Should that be a clue to people about his politics . That was his university base, a lot of people had that orientation. I dont think thats really his politics today. The truth is that i have never really asked about his political views because it wouldnt really remain. My firm is all external and we are not very partisan people. Similarly, chris has a security background so the issue of partisanship, it doesnt feature in our daily lives and it doesnt come up in conversations much. So when we got into this, i didnt really ask him about his political orientation. When i first met trump, he said he had had contact with a trump Family Member which was revealed to be evocative trump. He expressed no particular admiration for trump or Hillary Clinton. When did you get his first report . His first report came in june 2016, based on individuals who he had longterm relationships with who were from the region and able to travel to the region and speak to people in the region discreetly. Those oral interviews with people who had knowledge of trumps activities in russia and alleged context of people. How does the report get transmitted . The first one was transmitted on paper by express. We quickly concluded it was not an effective or safe way to transfer information, it was more secure. What was in that first report . What did you do with it . The first report was shocking. Its that broadly stated that there was an operation by the government of russia to support donald trump and help him when election and was aware of this. And cooperating edge. Expected to benefit from it. Biden, it was known that the National Committee and theres some discussion about into the first document. The picture was of the russia attempts in the u. S. And electronic president. That turned out to be correct. What did you do without report . Nothing initially. We eventually obviously we eventually tried to follow it up and see if we could get more and i cant really get into what we did, what we do in terms of our client but you can assume the information we receive would go to our clients as a matter of course. You talk about progress, the fact that you didnt want to provide just this raw report. He wanted to edit it. Thats not quite right. So there were two things, we can talk about the fact that chris wanted to take this to the fbi. He thought this was a National Security concern. Raise that with us. We initially were hesitant because didnt really know if that was an appropriate thing to do. We didnt think our client would be wild about the idea but we concluded if he thought that was the right thing to do if there was a crime in progress, that he should do that. What we didnt want to do was interfere with that process by editing the document or in any way politically influencing his report to the fbi which is not really a political matter for us. There is a National Security issue. What we did want to do and did do in terms of any of these matters, we tried to followup some of the Information Reports using our own methods which are open sourced so we would look for articles in russian language media, other places, for about some of the people named in the reports so a lot of what we try to do is to not necessarily prove or disprove things, some of this didnt fit that category. Its whether the things in there are credible. What we conclude is that a lot of this reporting was very credible. You quote mr. Steele saying he feels strongly that 70 of whats in this report is correct. Weve been through that, we did a new evaluation for this book of the original memos with three years of hindsight. Its very strong stuff. It still holds up. There was one issue and that, i believe in the first report. It was a salacious part of this and you want sure he wanted to include it. Is a story of Sexual Activity in a hotel in moscow. We had mixed feelings about it. Chris thought it was significant. Chris thought it was significant information because it could suggest there was black male, potential black male material on trump. In washington, we had a different reaction because we, at this from a different perspective, which was that this was a story that was never going to be proven or disproven and it was neither here nor there for us, we were much more concerned with the overall picture of conspiracy for the election. Ill add that this was not the only thing that chris found in the early reporting that created concerned about black male. There was also the fact that there was a secret relationship between the claimant and trump that involved money. That part has turned out to be accurate. He was conducting a secret business deal in russia that involved the kremlin during that campaign. So in the main, chris was basically right. There was a compromise. You could argue back and forth whether it was personal in nature financial in nature but there wasnt some kind of secret relationship that. How many reports were contained in the dossier . It was around a dozen. Over june through december 2016. First one in june, at wha what. Back did it start leaking out to the media and how . What we talk about in the book, or the summer of 2016, as the russia hack attack intensified and the deliberate computer crimes against our client got worse and worse. We talked to reporters about things that are in the dossier but didnt say what was in the dossier. We believed that was wrong material that didnt need to go out to anyone. We used as information, we talk to people about some of these subjects that was only after the election that we really shared, some of it was shared at the very beginning, at the very end of the election. Then there was additional sharing of the contents of this after the election in early 2017. We never intended for this leak to the press or to be printed online. January 2017, it hits the press. Right. What happens . What we did at the end, we thought it was the right thing to do, we can work on concerned the fbi wasnt taking it seriously or there was a coverup going on. It was suggested we could raise this with mccain and petain could raise it with calmly and then we could ensure this was being dealt with. We felt that would hopefully put this to rest in terms of our obligation to make sure this didnt get swept under the rug. We gave it to one of his advisors. Is he a friend of yours . An acquaintance. Someone who had helped us in 2000, my wife and i, she was originally the one in have been helpful to us. One of the things was given that he was helping journalists, us, we might have suspected he would do the same thing but we didnt so we thought he was just going to give back. It turned out he shared it with journalists. One journalist eventually published it. That happened january 10, about a week before the inauguration and all hell broke loose. What you mean by all hell broke loose . We became subject to International Media frenzy and immediately became targets for trump and his associates and accused of peddling some of the information. Journalism for hire, all kinds of thing. We were placed at the center of this controversy. Trump had a relationship with the government in russia. It was pretty unpleasant. I remember getting calls from tv stations in japan in the middle of the night and crazy stuff like that. Because of the nature of the controversy and the fact that russia was engaged miss hybrid or up against our country, he created security concerns. Your firm was described as lowprofile, nefarious, or any of those descriptions are correct . We do something that is relatively unique. We combine the skills of paternalism with other fields. Lowprofile, yes but not because we are deliberately secretive. This is where i think we are misrepresented, we are just not looking for attention. We are not secretive people. This is not my first cspan interview and ive done a lot of public things. I speak at universities and things like that. To be called secretive is not right but we were comfortable in our anonymity and had no plans of seeking publicity. What was Christopher Steeles reaction in england . When this all hit the news . He immediately packed up the kids and left home. He went to stay with friends and other places. Because of his previous work on russia, there was an immediate concern that he would be in danger and there was legitimate concern about whether there would be retaliation. Then theres harassment of the media. Which of you ever find yourself in the middle, there would be trucks outside your house and chasing you down all the time. It was a very uncertain time and we were concerned about all sorts of things from the russians to domestic people who could be incited into something. During this time, there is a lot of opinion reporting and you take on your old colleagues in the wall street journal. Specifically kim. Right, taking on the right word, we find it almost amusing that they are so insistent on defaming us. Its been a long Term Campaign destination against us and i think its beneath that paper, which is a great journalism to constantly engage in all these attacks against us grounded in truth so its remarkable, for a long time this would be daily. All kinds of fantastic allegations against us that had no resemblance to reality. The point we try to make us, the most disingenuous aspect is this is people who know us. They are very familiar with our backgrounds and very careful journalists who are straightforward and honest. Its sad to see them stooping to these attacks. As you well know, the Inspector General for the department of justice came out with a report on operation hurricane which was looking into russia connections and the wall street journal editorialized that report and this is what they wrote on december 112019. The fbi corrupted the Court Process for obtaining want to spy on top aide and by supplying the courts false information by christopher steele, an agent of the Hillary Clinton campaign. Its total nonsense. The material from steel was in a footnote. Her page was a longtime suspect was under investigation for many years and it turned out was involved with russia agents who were convicted of espionage. Thats a very deliberate misconstruing of the history of this. We see this now constantly. Its really the technique essentially telling truth and repeating it as often and loudly as you can in hopes that some people will fall for it. But in the report itself, the report on operation hurricane michael, writes that two witnesses, Glenn Simpson and jonathan weiner, former state Department Official declined our request for voluntary interviews and we were unable to compel the testimony. Why dont you testify or submit testimony . My testimony was compelled three times in front of congress. I testified for over 20 hours. I went through this entire story under oath subject to criminal penalties and i was asked every question imaginable about the, all of this. It is very expensive to be represented by all of this. My team of lawyers submitted, my Inspector General came around after we had done it three times. Opposition was that we told our story and this was the only thing that would be produced, would be more legal bills. The outcome would be identical to the previous three. They have investigated us repeatedly and they always find the same thing. Ultimately, they would come out wherever else they would. Thats where we are. The fbi investigation, nobody did anything wrong here. There is no conspiracy to break the election. Essentially, its everything weve said all along. We feel like we made the right call. Senator grassley and newness play a role as well. They were the original defenders of the president sat forward in investigating the investigators and what they did for the first two years of terms presidency was investigate us. An attempt to depict us as parts and hacks, fabricators, everything you can imagine. That went on for two years. They werent interested in getting to the bottom of whether the russians really did run this massive operation to steal the election which obviously now we know they did. Just to go back, how did the fbi get wind of the steel reports . Originally, chris approached a long time contact of his of the fbi. Another guy named michael, someone who chris worked with on the scandal. Was the originally organized crime agent and worked with chris on that. Shortly thereafter, met up with bruce, an old contact of his. He was or is at d. O. J. , correct . Correct. Hes been punished for having the courage to listen and try to pass along information. Theres been a campaign in for location against service for bring doing their jobs. Hes one of the many people who suffered through that. People asked me how bad was it . I say well, it was important for us but its nothing compared to the people who have had their careers damaged and reputations really hurt by some of the things that have been done to them. What is his spouses connection . A distinguished expert on russia, shes a russian the west. She worked for the cia for a time. She approached me in 2015. I knew her from competence. Russian organized crime, expertise and was very small. Sort of like people interested in that. Knew her from events, we met and had casual conversation about organized crime. She approached me in 2016, she was between fulltime jobs. She was working for parttime work. If you have anything, use my russian language skills, i am available. We did at the time and politics, it was a case involving a russian sex trafficking operation. So that was how that originated. From a report regarding the floor, michael writes that he private the information he received from simpson and steel from the fbi which already received much, but not all of the same information through its direct contact with steel. He did not advise his supervisors and the office of the Deputy Attorney general with contacts with steel and simpson about his wife or his acting as a conduit of this information to the fbi until the office of the Deputy Attorney general leadership confronted about his activities in late 2017. Correct . I dont know. I dont have any reason to dispute it but i dont know about the internal working with the d. O. J. Im not qualified to pass judgment. He found he hadnt violated any rules or policies are committed transgression. Ultimately left with labeling that a lapse in judgment. In hindsight, that is his job judge that. A lot of the other considerations here were that our country was under attack. In that way, its hard to follow him for essentially doing his job which was to protect our country. How did david become a part of this story . They went with someone ive known for many years on and off, we travel as journalists originally and had occasional contact with him about that after i left the journal. Hes a reporter who now runs the bureau here and also in espionage and has written one or two books about espionage matters. He reached out to me at the very end of the campaign when we were very concerned about what was happening in the government. He had to reopen an investigation into Hillary Clinton and seems to be suppressing the fact that they had an investigation into trump and that concerned us and confused us. I agreed to meet him. That led eventually to him speaking over skype with chris steel. A story that ran in the final days before the election about how chris provided information to the fbi. You express disappointment, you coauthored expressed disappointment that some of the stories, the information you found out was not rising to the top of the media. Its club located because people were frustrated. The fact that some of this stuff didnt get more attention but we were also cognizant of the fact that this was hard to believe and there was a lot of other things going on. So we dont think reporters fell down on the job or work during their jobs so much as this was a difficult thing to try to raise. It was certainly frustrating at the time and obviously in retrospect, we think the country would have benefited if more attention had been prayed paid to these. Were you frustrated by the obama fenestration . Yes. I could say we work but we were also cognizant of the fact that they were in this position, to end Republican Congress were resistant and acknowledging what was really happening and doing something about it and i put them in a difficult position. We didnt know what the Obama Administration was doing. The problem is that when you are doing a case like this, you know theres a parallel or intelligence operation looking at the same thing, you have any visibility into whats happening. The Obama Administration put out a statement, time to dominate the evening news cycle. U. S. Intelligence community is confident the russian government directed the recent confirmations of emails from institutions including from u. S. Political organizations, recent disclosures intended to interfere with the u. S. Election process from october 72016. What else happened that day . A lot. Wikileaks released a new batch of emails that completely offended it ended. The other event that occurred on monday when they published an audio recording of trump talking about sexually assaulting women. All of these events occurred in one day. They tended to drown out the most important, which was this announcement by the government. Have you found effort by the congress to investigate the 2016 election conclusive . The same place since the house changed and became the democratic majority control, much more serious and sincere. The first two years of this, they used their power to obscure the truth, cover things up and discredit us and anyone else who dared to raise concerns about what was really going on here. Things have gotten better in that sense in the last year. I think shift has been a remarkably able investigator. I think the first two years of the presidency has left a lot of people confused about what really happened and created this air of in conclusiveness around the operation 2016. The body of evidence that is emerged, leaves a little question about what happened. There was an effort to elect trump president and he instigated and encouraged it. Whether theres enough evidence to charge you cant argue there was 140 contacts between trump people or questions during the campaign. Trump was doing business, trying to do business secretly during the campaign. Sue to my mind, this was really clear. I get the fact that other people dont see that because theres been this deliberate effort to obscure that. The highest level of our Government Trump and attorney general for the barr has succeeded to some extent into confusing about the facts. Can you draw a Straight Line or a crooked bind between your august 2015 email to your republican friend of muller report . Its my life so for me, the original stateline is handling. But i think in general, this is the culmination that i have been worried about and interested in for very long time in terms of the increasing destabilization of the left by this wave of criminality coming out of the east. The fact that it has seeped into our politics, infected our politics here in washington, something that i was writing about and learning about ten years ago, for me, this is one long story. Unfortunately, its a worrying outcome. People one of the reasons we wrote this book, we need to wake up to how much of a threat this is. Does fusion gps still exist . Yes, we are driving and its a wonderful place to work. Are you doing more political work now . Thats a hard question to answer. We are not doing a lot of Campaign Work because we are in washington, a lot of the things that come up certainly have a political past to them. We talk about having done some political but its a very small part of our business. The democracy integrity product, a nonprofit that was set up in early 2017 to continue to investigate foreign interference in democracies. Russian interference in countries in the western democracies. What we suspected in the now concluded is that there is a an effort by the government of russia to undermine their product elections in the west, in the uk, france, germany, america and its much bigger than trump that this is an assault against our system and thats where we need to put our investigative efforts, and exposing what russia is really up to on a broader scale. The democracy integrity product, are the results or your Research Available to the general public . Some of it. I dont have full visibility into what they do with things but i believe some of what they have done but it was started by fusion gps . Not exactly, we talked about, after the election, we lost. We continue to be concerned about these issues and we worked on it without a client for many months. We talked about the need for some sort of effort to continue to look at this issue versus war on our democracy. I talked about with dan jones, a former investigator and he is the one who incorporated the organization and we work for it. How has the last three or four years change your life . Mine has significantly turned upside down. I became a public person, i didnt desire or long for it. I also just became this consumed so much of my time, it made me unable to work on the other aspects of business that i enjoy. I had to deal with a lot of things like lawyers and lawsuits that i had not had to deal with in the past. You talk about potentially bankruptcy by law by pink lawyers. You believe there is very elaborate attempt and certainly seems like it was a possibility that we would just be buried and so many cases and we wouldnt be able to pay all that. We wouldnt be able to pay lawyers. What your lead relationship with mr. Steel . We talk to each other and we are supportive of each other. We feel we did nothing wrong. Decisions that were made were in the best interest of our countries. In our societies and and we would like to see this in the sense that i should understand what it is we are worried about. So we are all friendly. You went through rough patches. Of course. Youre arguing simply retreat, go forward and theres the pressure, it makes for tense times. One more name, jacob bartlett. Whos that . Take is our analyst at fusion who is generations younger and was hired in one of our earliest employees and happened to be the guy who got the assignment to work on budget in the beginning. Project to essentially you have one sort of person who is the keeper of the records and does the management of the information so you have a project leader such as myself and an analyst who does things day today. He became a walking encyclopedia of information. This is conclusion of crime and progress. There is ample evidence over the past three years to show the Trump Campaign and russian government repeatedly sought to Work Together to sway the 2016 election and they succeeded. The Trump Campaigns conspiring scene conspiring with russia may not be a crime provable in credible court but is one of the most significant betrayals in american history. I believe that today and i also feel that, so when we wrote that, it was summer 2019 and we had no inkling the president was author engaging in conduct. The proof of that observation with the impeachment proceedings, he did the exact same thing. Its hard to deny that he does this. The cofounders of fusion gps and coauthors of this book crime and progress inside steel dossier in the fusion gps investigation of donald trump. Thank you very much. Heres a look at authors who have appeared or will be appearing soon. Recently New York Times inhibiting opinion writer, west discussed the meat to movement. Coming up, he will share his thoughts on building a high achieving an innovative university. This weekend on afterwards, joe offers his insights into becoming an entrepreneur. Recounts his founding of ameritrade. I always had to say to myself, be ready to sell, be ready to lose all your dreams and start over. I got a website, one of the entrepreneurs in that website interview says entrepreneurs are different. We fail and when we do, we get back on the waters. Youve got to understand that eight out of ten new businesses fail. Your risk is quite high but if that happens, you are really an entrepreneur, you get back up and try again. Afterwards airs saturday 10 00 p. M. And sundays 9 00 p. M. Eastern and pacific. On book tv, cspan2. All previous afterwards are available as podcasts and to watch online at booktv. Org. Good evening, the president ial vibrate, im glad youre all here. Its a special night for us because the book itself is perfect for the kind of authors and book topics we like to have here at the president ial vibrate because it talks about congress and the president and