Untouchable
How Powerful People Get Away with It
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- £14.99
Publisher Description
A NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB 'MUST-READ'
#1 ON COSMOPOLITAN'S 11 BEST NEW NON-FICTION BOOKS TO ADD TO YOUR TBR PILE IN 2023
CNN senior legal analyst and nationally bestselling author Elie Honig explores America’s two-tier justice system, explaining how the rich, the famous, and the powerful— including, most notoriously, Donald Trump—manipulate the legal system to escape justice and get away with vast misdeeds.
How does he get away with it? That question, more than any other, vexes observers of and participants in the American criminal justice process. How do powerful people weaponize their wealth, political power, and fame to beat the system? And how can prosecutors fight back?
In Untouchable, Elie Honig exposes how the rich and powerful use the system to their own benefit, revealing how notorious figures like Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, and Bill Cosby successfully eluded justice for decades. He demonstrates how the Trump children dodged a fraud indictment. He makes clear how countless CEOs and titans of Wall Street have been let off the hook, receiving financial penalties without suffering criminal consequences. This doesn’t happen by accident.
Over the four years of his administration, Donald Trump’s corruption seemed plain for all to see. The former president obstructed justice, flouted his responsibility to the Constitution, lied to the American people, and set the United States on a dark path to disunity and violence. Yet he has never been held accountable for any of his misdeeds. Why not?
Untouchable holds the answer. Honig shows how Trump and others use seemingly fair institutions and practices to build empires of corruption and get away with misdeeds for which ordinary people would be sentenced to years behind bars. It’s not just that money talks, Honig makes clear, but how it can corrupt otherwise reliable institutions and blind people to the real power dynamics behind the scenes.
In this vital, incisive book, Honig explains how the system allows the powerful to become untouchable, takes us inside their heads, and offers solutions for making the system more honest and fairer, ensuring true justice for all—holding everyone, no matter their status, accountable for their criminal misdeeds.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
CNN legal analyst Honig (Hatchet Man) delivers a disturbing analysis of how the U.S. justice system makes it so difficult to hold the wealthy and well-connected to account for their crimes. Though Honig's case studies include Mafia bosses, Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, and Jeffrey Epstein, his particular focus is on Donald Trump. Among factors that help to insulate elites from legal action, Honig identifies the use of lower-level actors to carry out crimes; the hiring of top lawyers who have the connections and knowledge to game the system; and prosecutors' reluctance to bring cases against powerful criminals without an overabundance of evidence. Zeroing in on Trump, Honig details how he was protected by the Justice Department's long-standing policy that a sitting president can't be indicted, and argues that the copious evidence of Trump's alleged crimes—including obstruction of justice, campaign finance violations, and incitement of sedition—should have resulted in an indictment soon after he left office. Honig is particularly harsh on Merrick Garland, arguing that the attorney general "took far too long to set his sights squarely on Trump—and even then, he behaved more like a tepid bureaucrat than a determined prosecutor." Though Honig underplays the politics involved in charging Trump, his fluid prose and sharp analysis amount to a slam-dunk case that American justice is far from blind.
