(This article originally appeared in the Washington Post on July 10 2020) He lies about voter fraud, admires authoritarians, tries to suppress free speech and uses the law against those who would hold him accountable. President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump watch the fireworks on the Fourth of July. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) People have debated whether Donald Trump is fascist since he announced he was running for president. In 2015,...

(This article originally appeared in The Sonoma Independent on March 8th 2020)   There is only one reason that Biden has surpassed Bernie in the Democratic primary.  It is because voters believe the dubious hypothesis, widely amplified by the media and Democratic Party establishment, that Biden is the best and only option that voters have to beat Trump. But as an independent investigative journalist with 40 years of professional experience, I believe...

(This article originally appeared in The Sonoma Independent on February 25th 2020)   A widespread sense of collective cynicism has blanketed America’s oldest and wealthiest generation. It is the audacity of hopelessness: a political choice in opposing Bernie Sanders’ candidacy that 90% of  seniors are making that despite their relative affluence, they are the only demographic that deserves Medicare-style socialism. Seniors 65 and older handed Trump the 2016 election, in many states...

(This article originally appeared in The Sonoma Independent on November 2, 2019)   Bella Bella, the new off-Broadway play about the indomitable 1970’s congressional titan Bella Abzug, feels timely and significant in this, the season of Donald Trump’s impeachment. In early 1972, Bella made history because, as Hillary Clinton wrote in a Facebook post that coincided with the play’s opening on October 22, “In the midst of a crisis in our democracy with eerie...

The Democrats should not assume that Nancy Pelosi’s decision to begin impeachment this week will be sufficient to bring critical documents and witnesses to the congressional oversight process. Trump has fought tooth and nail to quash each and every subpoena issued by Congress to investigate him. It  was only his arrogance, and the clarity of the whistle blower statute, that forced Trump’s hand in making the Ukraine shakedown complaint...

(This article first appeared in the Washington Post here on June 14, 2019.) How did Donald Trump, a self-serving promoter who lost billions of dollars for his investors, convince the world that he is a financial genius? It wasn’t just by fabricating tales of his success. It was also by bullying and silencing people who could have stopped those deceits — particularly reporters and Wall Street analysts — forcing all but a...

(This article originally appeared in The Huffington Post on September 28th 2016)   Donald Trump brings shame to our entire gender. He is the living, fire-breathing, fear-evoking, hate-mongering, violence-threatening, sexist, racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, avaricious, insecure, intolerant, egomaniacal, bombastic, braggadocios, greedy sexual harassing manifestation of everything that is wrong with American men. In the presidential debate, Donald Trump modeled all of the worst qualities associated with male behavior. The latest revelation about his...

I hope that Nancy Pelosi realizes very soon that to stop the most dangerous autocrat in our nation’s history from stealing the next election, Democrats need to begin impeachment hearings now. Here are three essential reasons why: Democrats Must Own the Investigation Narrative or They Will Lose it to Trump’s Diabolical Plan to Prosecute His Investigators. During his Pennsylvania rally on May 20, Trump expanded his “witch-hunt” narrative and gave...

My article last year in the Washington Post about Donald Trump lying his way onto the first Forbes 400, accompanied by a 1984 audio recording of Trump pretending to be the fictitious John Baron, provided a timely springboard for commentators to offer valuable insights into the career and character of the President of the United States. This month's New York Times bombshell that Trump reported more gargantuan losses to the...

(This article first appeared in the Washington Post here on February 22, 2019. It was the most read feature on the Post in the days that followed)   Nearly four decades ago, Donald Trump deceived me into including him on the first Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans. He claimed a net worth of $100 million but was actually worth less than a tenth of that. Last week, President Trump declared a national state...

(first published here in the Washington Post April 20, 2018) In May 1984, an official from the Trump Organization called to tell me how rich Donald J. Trump was. I was reporting for the Forbes 400, the magazine’s annual ranking of America’s richest people, for the third year. In the previous edition, we’d valued Trump’s holdings at $200 million, only one-fifth of what he claimed to own in our interviews....

For generations, the myth that what was good for the Alexander & Baldwin corporation was good for the residents of Maui allowed Hawaii’s largest plantation and land development corporation to justify its legally questionable, ecologically destructive diversion of most of the fertile island’s largest streams. During the late 19th century, after a handful of powerful oligarchs like Alexander and Baldwin seized power from the Hawaiian monarchy through the “Bayonet Constitution,”...