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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While giving reporters his reaction to the violence in Charlottesville, Va., the president reminded them he owns a vineyard there. But that presidential product placement was a blip on the radar. -
President Trump and his White House seem to have settled into a routine of dismissing the ethics laws. So when he plugged his Charlottesville winery at a last week, the pitch hardly made headlines.
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Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee want to know if the spending is "in the public interest" or for the financial gain of the president and his family. -
President Trump and some GOP lawmakers want an investigation into Hillary Clinton and other figures from the Obama era. But a probe of a defeated candidate is not the norm in American democracy. -
Because of his many roles at the White House, President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner draws controversy. Previous presidents hired family members too, but those staffers had political experience. -
The Trump re-election campaign paid consultant Mark Serrano $30,000 in April and May while he was also defending the president as a Fox Business news commentator.
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Bedminster, the New Jersey town that President Trump often visits, has been designated an official presidential residence and will receive $41 million in federal funds to help cover security costs. -
President Trump's re-election campaign paid Donald Trump Jr.'s lawyer $50,000. White House lawyers are paid government salaries, by taxpayers, but it's unknown how the private lawyers are being paid. -
The Trump family has been hiring lawyers to defend themselves against various potential charges involving Russian contacts. But who is paying those legal fees?
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A former federal prosecutor told NPR one place to start in thinking about the potential legal ramifications of the meeting is to consider a possible conspiracy charge.
