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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Conservatives immediately put up ads supporting the nominee-to-be, while a liberal group aims to make the Supreme Court decision to uphold Obamacare part of the debate. -
At least eight funds now exist to help Trump administration aides and allies pay legal bills. But there are few rules to promote transparency or avoid conflicts of interest.
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One of Pruitt's closest political allies in Congress said he would call for the EPA chief to step down if his ethical scandals don't stop. -
Selling access to power is an old business in politics, but leaked documents related to Michael Cohen, President Trump's personal lawyer, show just how lucrative and expansive that business can be.
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Some Democratic challengers are outraising Republican incumbents in the midterm congressional elections. This revelation comes as House candidates file their first-quarter financial reports. -
This week's congressional hearings on social media, data mining and politics are shaping up as a watershed moment in the touchy relationships between Washington and Silicon Valley.
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One linguistics expert said referring to "optics" was a way to offer a non-apology along the lines of "I'm sorry you were offended." -
There's a scandal in the Trump administration. Not the one that special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating, but one involving several of Trump's Cabinet officials and their use of taxpayer funds.
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Michael Cohen, a longtime lawyer for President Trump says he paid adult film star Stephanie Clifford, known otherwise as Stormy Daniels, $130,000. The payment happened during the campaign after Clifford alleged she had an affair with Trump.
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The American system of financing campaigns is changing, as post-Watergate reforms crumble beneath a crush of unregulated money.
