While We Slept: Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and the Corruption of American Democracy

In 2016, Vladimir Putin ordered Russian intelligence to execute an active measures and disinformation operation targeting the American presidential election. While the election of Donald Trump was a desired outcome of this campaign, its overall goal was to discredit American democracy in the eyes of its own citizens and the world. It succeeded.While We Slept provides a side-by-side examination of the lives and characters of Putin and Trump. It details the connections Trump and his campaign had with Russia’s intelligence services, oligarchs, and Eurasian organized crime through a synthesis of the Mueller Report, the Senate Intelligence Report on Russia, Congressional testimony; court documents, U.S. and foreign intelligence findings, FBI 302 interviews and search warrant affidavits; relevant literature and memoirs; and international reporting. Donald Trump’s embrace of the Russian interference campaign was the original sin of his presidency and presaged the rampant criminality and corruption that followed.While We Slept provides a vivid description of Vladimir Putin’s career in the KGB, his alliance with organized crime in post-Soviet Russia during his early political career, and the role manipulating elections played in his ruthless rise to power. It provides a comprehensive accounting of Donald Trump’s corrupt early career and numerous connections to the American Mafia in New York and Atlantic City. It describes how Trump and Putin share linkages to the nexus of Eurasian organized criminals spanning from the former Soviet Union to Israel to Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, in New York City.The book exhaustively details Trump’s suspected money laundering activities and multiple attempts to build a Trump Tower Moscow; Roger Stone’s interactions with Russian military intelligence and WikiLeaks; Paul Manafort’s corrupt activities in Ukraine and his interactions with Russian intelligence during the 2016 campaign; George Papadopoulos’ foreknowledge that the Russians possessed Hillary’s emails; Carter Page’s interactions with Russian foreign intelligence and his 2016 trip to Moscow; the June 9th Trump Tower Meeting; the corrupt activities of Cambridge Analytica; the profiles of Erik Prince and Michael Flynn, and the mysterious role Israeli politicians and intelligence sources played in the 2016 election.