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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As one of the emoluments lawsuits against President Trump goes before an appeals court, ethics controversies have become a persistent cloud over the White House, federal agencies and Congress.
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House Democrats' election reform bill requires "dark money" political groups to publicize their donors. In last year's elections, liberal groups led in "dark money" spending for the first time.
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In an extremely rare rebuke, a government ethics watchdog refused to certify Ross' recent financial disclosure. But he's still in office even as other Trump officials have resigned for ethical lapses. -
When Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., criticized the American Israel Public Affairs Committee with anti-Semitic stereotypes, she also may have inflated AIPAC's clout.
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The 2017 inaugural committee burned through far more money than any previous inauguration, Now, it says it will comply with a documents subpoena from federal prosecutors.
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All of the party's announced presidential candidates say they don't want money from corporate PACs. But they wouldn't have gotten much from those PACs anyway. -
Several Democrats have already entered the 2020 presidential race, and they all have one thing in common. They've agreed not to accept money from corporate political action committees.
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The Inspector General for the General Services Administration said agency lawyers decided to ignore the constitutional issues when they reviewed the lease after Donald Trump won the 2016 election. -
Unlike other National Park Service properties, the clock tower above the Trump International Hotel is open and staffed by park rangers. Government officials insist the arrangement is aboveboard. -
Caught in the shutdown, the National Park Service has closed all of its sites around the National Mall — all of them, that is, except the clock tower at President Trump's hotel.
