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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Even setting aside the investigations by special counsel Robert Mueller and other federal prosecutors, Washington had more than its usual list of scandals in 2018.
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New York's attorney general announced that the Trump Foundation, founded by President Trump before he ran for office, will close as an investigation into the foundation's activities continues.
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Michael Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison this week. How does his sentence compare to that of John Edwards back in 2011, who faced similar charges for paying hush money to his mistress.
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Last month, Ross Spano won the race to represent Florida's 15th District. But there there are questions about how he financed his campaign. At least three federal authorities could be involved.
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A lawsuit involving President Trump and his D.C. hotel could hit the headlines in the fall of 2019, prime time in the next presidential campaign.
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Some of President Trump's associates and businesses are expected to get subpoenas on Tuesday, as a lawsuit advances alleging that Trump violated the Constitution's foreign emoluments clause.
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The Hatch Act keeps partisan politics out of the federal workplace. Should it keep civil servants from talking about impeachment or using the #resist hashtag?
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In 73 of the most competitive House races, Democrats raised more than $62 million from donors who gave $200 or less while Republicans raised barely $27 million.
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The first bill House Democrats' will vote on would establish automatic voter registration, strengthen the Voting Rights Act, limit partisan redistricting and tighten campaign finance laws.
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With control of the House, Democrats now can fulfill promises to investigate wrongdoing in the Trump administration, and overhaul political money and ethics laws.