The Record
A Georgia official told to “find 11,780 votes.” A mob at the Capitol, and 187 minutes of silence. Seventeen inspectors general fired in a single night. You remember the headlines. You have never seen them in one place.
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01 · The Book
None of it was secret
THE RECORD is the whole story of Donald Trump’s public life, from the 1973 federal housing-discrimination suit against the family company to the second term’s campaign of retribution.
Fifty years of lies, self-dealing, and abuse of power, told in the words of the people who were there and the courts that ruled. Every quote, dollar figure, and court ruling in these pages was reported, filed, or said out loud, much of it by the man himself. No anonymous sources. Just the record, laid end to end.
Inside
- 01The $413 million from his father, and how the “self-made” legend was built
- 02A hotel five blocks from the White House, and the foreign governments that spent there
- 03A memecoin launched three days before the oath of office, and the dinner for its biggest holders
- 04$2 billion from a Saudi fund to his son-in-law’s firm
- 05Two impeachments, four indictments, thirty-four felony convictions
- 06The Epstein files: promised, buried, called a hoax, and finally ordered released
- 07Pardons for allies, prosecutions for critics, and his name bolted onto the Kennedy Center
You lived through all of it.
You have never seen it all at once.
02 · Contents
Nine parts. Fifty years.
Part I
The Falsehoods
Not adjectives, arithmetic. The four-year daily count, the birther years, the election lie, and the pandemic.
Part II
The Conspiracy Theories
From vaccines-cause-autism to Ted Cruz’s father and Lee Harvey Oswald.
Part III
The Inflammatory Statements
“Vermin,” “poisoning the blood,” and members of Congress called “punishable by DEATH.”
Part IV
Conflicts of Interest
The hotel five blocks from the White House, the foreign money, and the second term’s cryptocurrency.
Part V
Nepotism and Patronage
Jared and Ivanka: the West Wing as family office, and the son-in-law’s $2 billion.
Part VI
The Legal Record
The verdicts against him and the rulings in his favor, reported with equal prominence.
Part VII
Abuse of Power
The 187 minutes, the pardons, and seventeen inspectors general fired in one night.
Part VIII
Broken Promises
The wall Mexico never paid for, the health plan “two weeks away” for nine years, and the Epstein files.
Part IX
The Pattern
What held, what broke, and a master chronology from 1973 to now.
46 chapters · 27 Deep Files · 588 pages
03 · From the Introduction
Why I Made This Book
Let me tell you first what this book is not.
It is not an investigative work. There is not a single revelation in these pages. No anonymous source spoke to me in a parking garage. No whistleblower slipped me documents. I have uncovered nothing, broken nothing, exposed nothing. Every fact in this book — every quote, every dollar figure, every court ruling, every taped confession — has already been reported, published, litigated, or entered into the public record by someone else. If you followed the news closely for the past decade and a half, there is nothing here you have not, at some point, already known.
That last clause is the reason this book exists. At some point. Because I would wager that you have forgotten most of it. I know I had. And the forgetting is not an accident. It is the mechanism.
— L.J.H.
04 · The Author
Laurence J. Hale
Laurence J. Hale is the pen name of an American lawyer and businessman who has spent his career following the money. His work has taken him from auditing the nation’s largest banks on behalf of a federal regulator to working fraud cases for banks and for the regulators who police them, with an internship in a district attorney’s financial crimes unit along the way.
He grew up in a political household. His father was active in party politics, and dinner was a nightly debate. Trained in political science, he has been a political junkie ever since, and remains a centrist by temperament.
THE RECORD is his first book: fifty years of court filings, verdicts, sworn testimony, and reporting, gathered in one place and in order, so the public record can finally be read whole.
He lives in New York State with his wife and children. When he isn’t working or writing, he is traveling, trying a new restaurant, or at a rock show, as many as he can get to.
05 · The List
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