Slightly misleading, but still compelling [American Kompromat by Craig Unger]

This is a story about the dirty secrets of the most powerful people in the world—including Donald Trump.

It is based on exclusive interviews with dozens of high-level sources—intelligence officers in the CIA, FBI, and the KGB, thousands of pages of FBI investigations, police investigations, and news articles in English, Russian, and Ukrainian. American Kompromat shows that from Trump to Jeffrey Epstein, kompromat was used in operations far more sinister than the public could ever imagine.
 
Among them, the book addresses what may be the single most important unanswered question of the entire Trump era: Is Donald Trump a Russian asset?

In addition to exploring Trump’s ties to the KGB, American Kompromat also shows that from Donald Trump to Jeffrey Epstein, Russian kompromat operations documented the darkest secrets of the most powerful people in the world and transformed those secrets into potent weapons. 

From it's big sultry red cover, highlighting a silhouetted profile of former President Trump, with a subtitle highlighting his would-be ties to the KGB, one might think at a glance that Craig Unger's American Kompromat: How the KGB Cultivated Donald Trump, and Related Tales of Sex, Greed, Power, and Treachery is an exposé on Trump's links to the Russian government and his treacherous work as a Russian agent. To some degree it is that. But at it's nature it's about a network of Russian assets working and used in conjunction to manipulate the American political machine. 

As outlined in the book, the Trump team, the Trump machine, openly worked overtime to hide or minimize the revelation of or the appearance of malfeasance with regards to his Russian links. So, sure, there "may not be" a "concrete" case to be laid and outlined, but that's what I was expecting. I was expecting a deep dive into the nature of Russian spycraft and blackmail-predicated intelligence gathering. Specifically tied to the former president. Instead I got chapters on William Barr and his interesting ties to a Catholic sect with foundational ties to Fascist Spain. Chapter after chapter on Jeffrey Epstein and his sex trafficking, money laundering cohorts. The Trump profile rightly felt like a mislead. So because I didn't get that to the extent I'd hoped for I'm rating this a 4 star read. But here's why it still ranked so high regardless.

A fantastic chronological overview was provided of a network of intertwined, presumably blackmailed Russian assets, working towards their own personal ends, and the corruption they fostered was provided. I didn't necessarily get what I expected, but I got a lot that was new and quite a revelation, at least to me, provided in a comprehensive retelling. That one asset in the '80s could pull the thread on the tapestry that was to become of Donald Trump is a premise, an angle, I did not see coming. That so many high profile people were involved in the Epstein sex business and how people worked to cover it up, it was something I'd like to say I generally knew but can't have heard as much of the specifics of before. As we neared 2019, 2020 in the recapping of the DJT kompromat story I relieved the last year all over, at dizzying speed and was disgusted anew. 

And still, somehow the tone read more of hopeful, patriotic liberal and less disillusioned leftist. So, on the one hand, didn't get what I thought I was promised. On the other hand, it was still a really compelling read. So 4 stars. Would I recommend this? Probably? Possibly? Depends on the possible audience. This is not a "everyone has to read this" book, but it is a "for my friends who I know will find it interesting" recommendation.

American Kompromat (ISBN:9780593182536) was published January 2021.