The Persuasion Game

In late 2019, as Donald Trump’s impeachment investigation was underway, numerous reports of his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and his associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, began to appear. While their roles as the president’s henchmen in Ukraine were closely scrutinized, their other activities drew less attention.

Chad Lewis seeks to remedy that in his first book The Persuasion Game, by providing a deep dive into the influence schemes that Giuliani, Parnas, and others ran from the very beginning of Donald Trump’s presidency. In pursuit of self-enrichment, Giuliani and Parnas clandestinely peddled foreign influence from corrupt autocrats and oligarchs that originated in Turkey, Venezuela, and Ukraine.

Using Giuliani’s connections at the Department of Justice and his proximity to the president, the two became key conduits into the Trump White House, advocating for dismissal of criminal investigations that involved corrupt foreign billionaires and promoting actions beneficial to autocrats.

Gradually, Giuliani and Parnas’s corrupt schemes spread into various chambers of the Trump administration, entangling officials at the highest positions along the way and eroding American institutions. The Persuasion Game connects the dots within that web of quid-pro-quos into a coherent story that should draw the attention of anyone concerned about the future of American democracy.