See also
- Cui bono, a Latin phrase meaning "To whose benefit?", suggesting a hidden motive.
- Cherchez la femme, a French phrase taking women to be the chief motive in crimes.
- Follow the Money (online newspaper) , Dutch news website
- OpenSecrets
"Follow the money" is a catchphrase popularized by the 1976 docudrama film All the President's Men , which suggests political corruption can be brought to light by examining money transfers between parties.
For the film, screenwriter William Goldman attributed the phrase to Deep Throat, the informant who took part in revealing the Watergate scandal. However, the phrase is mentioned neither in the non-fiction book that preceded the film nor in any documentation of the scandal. [1] The book has the phrase "The key was the secret campaign-cash, and it should all be traced," which author Bob Woodward says to Senator Sam Ervin. [2]
The phrase Follow the money was mentioned by Henry E. Peterson at the 1974 Senate Judiciary Committee hearings as Earl J. Silbert was nominated to U.S. Attorney. [3] A 1975 book by Clive Borrell and Brian Cashinella, Crime in Britain Today, also uses the phrase.
Since the 1970s, "follow the money" has been used several times in investigative journalism and political debate. One example is Follow the Money, a series of CBS reports.
In September 2016, the Trump campaign used the phrase to criticise Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation, a humanitarian aid non-profit; for several events that took place, including a controversial uranium deal approved by the US State Department under Clinton after her charitable foundation received large donations from people with stakes in the deal; Clinton's relationship with Irish telecom billionaire Denis O'Brien; and a 2009 deal over the disclosing of the identities of American account-holders, which the State Department concluded with the Swiss bank UBS; a Clinton Foundation donor. [4]
In February 2017, Carl Bernstein, who with Woodward exposed the Watergate scandal, used the phrase to encourage reporters to discover President Trump's potential conflicts of interest. [5] The Trump Foundation was later found guilty of illegal campaign contributions and other financial crimes. In November 2019, Trump was ordered to pay a $2 million settlement for misusing the foundation for his business and political purposes. [6] [7]
The Watergate scandal was a major political scandal in the United States involving the administration of President Richard Nixon which ultimately led to Nixon's resignation. It revolved around members of a fundraising organization associated with Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters located in the Watergate Office Building in Washington, D.C., on June 17, 1972, and Nixon's subsequent attempts to conceal his administration's involvement.
All the President's Men is a 1974 non-fiction book by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, two of the journalists who investigated the June 1972 break-in at the Watergate Office Building and the resultant political scandal for The Washington Post. The book chronicles the investigative reporting of Woodward and Bernstein from Woodward's initial report on the Watergate break-in through the resignations of Nixon Administration officials H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman in April 1973, and the revelation of the Oval Office Watergate tapes by Alexander Butterfield three months later. It relates the events behind the major stories the duo wrote for the Post, naming some sources who had previously refused to be identified for their initial articles, notably Hugh Sloan. It also gives detailed accounts of Woodward's secret meetings with his source Deep Throat, whose identity was kept hidden for over 30 years. Gene Roberts, the former executive editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer and former managing editor of The New York Times, has called the work of Woodward and Bernstein "maybe the single greatest reporting effort of all time."
The Teapot Dome scandal was a political corruption scandal in the United States involving the administration of President Warren G. Harding. It centered around Interior Secretary Albert Bacon Fall, who had leased Navy petroleum reserves at Teapot Dome in Wyoming, as well as two locations in California, to private oil companies at low rates without competitive bidding. The leases were the subject of an investigation by Senator Thomas J. Walsh. Convicted of accepting bribes from the oil companies, Fall became the first presidential cabinet member to go to prison, but no one was convicted of paying the bribes.
Robert Upshur Woodward is an American investigative journalist. He started working for The Washington Post as a reporter in 1971 and now holds the honorific title of associate editor though the Post no longer employs him.
Carl Milton Bernstein is an American investigative journalist and author. While a young reporter for The Washington Post in 1972, Bernstein was teamed up with Bob Woodward, and the two did much of the original news reporting on the Watergate scandal. These scandals led to numerous government investigations and the eventual resignation of President Richard Nixon. The work of Woodward and Bernstein was called "maybe the single greatest reporting effort of all time" by long-time journalism figure Gene Roberts.
Deep Throat is the pseudonym given to the secret informant who provided information in 1972 to Bob Woodward, who shared it with Carl Bernstein. Woodward and Bernstein were reporters for The Washington Post, and Deep Throat provided key details about the involvement of U.S. president Richard Nixon's administration in what came to be known as the Watergate scandal. In 2005, 31 years after Nixon's resignation and 11 years after Nixon's death, a family attorney stated that former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Associate Director Mark Felt was Deep Throat. By then, Felt was suffering from dementia and had previously denied being Deep Throat, but Woodward and Bernstein then confirmed the attorney's claim.
Richard Mellon Scaife was an American billionaire, a principal heir to the Mellon banking, oil, and aluminum fortune, and the owner and publisher of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. In 2005, Scaife was number 238 on the Forbes 400, with a personal fortune of $1.2 billion. By 2013, Scaife had dropped to number 371 on the listing, with a personal fortune of $1.4 billion.
Alexander Porter Butterfield is a retired United States Air Force officer, public official, and businessman. He served as the deputy assistant to President Richard Nixon from 1969 to 1973. He revealed the White House taping system's existence on July 13, 1973, during the Watergate investigation but had no other involvement in the scandal. From 1973 to 1975, he served as administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration.
The Senate Watergate Committee, known officially as the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, was a special committee established by the United States Senate, S.Res. 60, in 1973, to investigate the Watergate scandal, with the power to investigate the break-in at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and any subsequent cover-up of criminal activity, as well as "all other illegal, improper, or unethical conduct occurring during the controversial 1972 presidential election, including political espionage and campaign finance practices".
Hugh W. Sloan Jr. was treasurer of the Committee to Re-elect the President, Richard M. Nixon's 1972 campaign committee. Previously, he was an aide to White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman.
Barry Sussman was an American editor, author, and public opinion analyst who dealt primarily with public policy issues. He was city news editor at The Washington Post at the time of the Watergate break-in and supervised much of the reporting on the Watergate scandal.
Kenneth Harry Dahlberg was an American businessman and highly decorated World War II fighter ace. According to reporter Bob Woodward, a cheque made out to Dahlberg was a key part in connecting the Watergate scandal to President Richard Nixon's re-election campaign, though Dahlberg himself was not accused of any wrongdoing.
The Final Days is a 1976 non-fiction book written by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein about the Watergate scandal. A follow-up to their 1974 book All the President's Men, The Final Days concerns itself with the final months of the Presidency of Richard Nixon including battles over the Nixon White House tapes and the impeachment process against Richard Nixon.
All the President's Men is a 1976 American biographical political thriller film about the Watergate scandal that brought down the presidency of Richard Nixon. Directed by Alan J. Pakula, with a screenplay by William Goldman, it is based on the 1974 non-fiction book by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, the two journalists investigating the scandal for The Washington Post.
Silent Coup is a book written by Len Colodny [1938 - 2021] and Robert Gettlin that proposed an alternate explanation for the Watergate scandal that led to the 1974 resignation of US President Richard Nixon. The first edition was published in 1991, followed by an expanded second edition in January 1992.
The impeachment process against Richard Nixon was initiated by the United States House of Representatives on October 30, 1973, during the course of the Watergate scandal, when multiple resolutions calling for the impeachment of President Richard Nixon were introduced immediately following the series of high-level resignations and firings widely called the "Saturday Night Massacre". The House Committee on the Judiciary soon began an official investigation of the president's role in Watergate, and, in May 1974, commenced formal hearings on whether sufficient grounds existed to impeach Nixon of high crimes and misdemeanors under Article II, Section 4, of the United States Constitution. This investigation was undertaken one year after the United States Senate established the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities to investigate the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex during the 1972 presidential election, and the Republican Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement; during those hearings the scope of the scandal became apparent and the existence of the Nixon White House tapes was revealed.
During Hillary Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State, a number of individuals, organizations, and countries allegedly contributed to the Clinton Foundation either before, or while, pursuing interests through ordinary channels with the U.S. State Department.
The Donald J. Trump Foundation was a New York-based tax-exempt private foundation formed in 1988 by Donald Trump and dissolved by court order in 2018 after various legal violations came to light.
The Uranium One controversy involves various conspiracy theories promoted by conservative media, politicians, and commentators that characterized the sale of the uranium mining company Uranium One to the Russian state-owned corporation Rosatom as a $145 million bribery scandal involving Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation. No evidence of wrongdoing was ever found.
Fear: Trump in the White House is a nonfiction book by American journalist Bob Woodward about the presidency of Donald Trump. The book was released on September 11, 2018. Woodward based the book on hundreds of hours of interviews with members of the Trump administration. The book's publisher Simon & Schuster announced that it had sold 1.1 million copies in the first week of its release, making it the fastest selling opener in the company's history.
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