Peter Schweizer

Peter Franz Schweizer (November 24, 1964) is an American author, academic, and political consultant. He is currently the president of the Government Accountability Institute, and is a former William J. Casey Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution.^[1] He is also Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large.^[2]

Career

Schweizer's early work at Jeremiah Denton's National Forum Foundation (NFF) focused on major fronts in the Cold War. He co-authored a National Review article with Denton's son, James (often cited as Jim), called "Murdering SDI", about the suspicious deaths of several European officials who supported the Strategic Defense Initiative.^[3] While at the NFF, Schweizer also published a report titled "The Meaning and Destiny of the Sandinista Revolution".^[4]

Schweizer is credited as the executive producer on In the Face of Evil: Reagan's War in Words and Deed (2004), which is based on his 2003 book Reagan's War. Rotten Tomatoes has given the film an 11% freshness rating based on just 9 reviews.^[5] Writing in The New York Times, Ned Martel criticized the film for casting "all issues and personalities exclusively in black and white". He concluded that "Reagan's praises are sung in an operatic documentary that rises to new heights, slipping the surly bonds of hagiography."^[6] In The Daily News, Robert Dominguez praised the film for "good use of historical footage to show how a B-list Hollywood actor made the unlikely ascension to commander-in-chief". However, he concludes that, because the film relies so heavily on talking heads like Schweizer and Caspar Weinberger, it "comes off as so much Republican Party propaganda".^[7]

From 2008–2009, Schweizer served as a consultant to the Office of Presidential Speechwriting in the White House.^[8] In March 2009, Schweizer parlayed that experience into a new venture with fellow White House speechwriter Marc Thiessen. Together, Schweizer and Thiessen opened Oval Office Writers LLC. The firm specializes in preparation for Congressional testimony, as well as pitching Op-Eds, and book proposals.^[9] As a political communications expert, Schweizer's notable clients include Sarah Palin, who he advised on foreign policy.^[10]

In 2012, Steve Kroft used Schweizer's work as the basis for a blockbuster report on CBS’ 60 Minutes about Congressional insider trading. Titled "Insiders: The road to the STOCK act", Kroft relied heavily on Schweizer's reporting in Throw Them All Out, which CBS independently verified, to demonstrate how members of Congress trade stocks unethically.^[11] The book demonstrates how politicians like Nancy Pelosi and Spencer Bachus have inoculated themselves against criminal charges for insider trading.^[12] The following year, Kroft revisited Schweizer's work to create another 60 Minutes report on how members of Congress use the funds of their political action committees for private inurement.^[13]

In 2012, Schweizer's GAI authored a report about President Obama's daily briefs. The report consisted of three pages: an executive summary, and a 2-page table with monthly tallies of how many times the daily briefing appeared on the President's calendar according to www.whitehouse.gov. The report concluded that Obama only attended 42.09% of his daily briefings.^[14] Schweizer's business partner at Oval Office Writers, Marc Thiessen, promptly penned a column in the The Washington Post titled "Why is Obama skipping more than half of his daily intelligence meetings?",^[15] which yielded a flood of media coverage and an attack ad from American Crossroads. Two weeks later, The Washington Post fact-checked the charge that Obama skipped more than half of his daily briefings and assigned it "Three Pinocchios".^[16] The Post asserted Schweizer misrepresented the President's Daily Brief as a meeting, when it is actually a Top Secret document that Obama reads daily, citing its own previous reporting on how Obama approached the PDB.^[17]

A year later, Schweizer authored another GAI report about the Obama administration which claimed that the President failed to meet often enough with Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius during the height of the botched roll out of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).^[18] He publicized the report with a story for Politico titled "When Barry Met Kathy: Almost never, it turns out".^[19] Schweizer's report relied on publicly available information about the President's schedule, but three months later, after making FOIA requests of non-public documents, The Hill found evidence of multiple meetings with both scheduled to attend, including seven specifically about the ACA.^[20]

In addition to his prolific non-fiction writing, Schweizer has co-authored two novels with former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. Schweizer is also a member of the Research Advisory Council of the James Madison Institute.^[21]

Schweizer contributed to Glenn Beck's book Broke: The Plan to Restore Our Trust, Truth and Treasure.^[22]

Clinton Cash

In 2015, Harper Collins will publish Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, a 186-page book investigating the donations made to the Clinton Foundation by foreign entities.^[23] Several media outlets received advanced copies, including The New York Times, Washington Post, and Fox News, all of whom agreed to pursue stories found in the book.^[23] The New York Times noted that Schweizer mainly wrote the book in the voice of a neutral journalist, and provided meticulous documentation of its sources.^[23]

The imminent publication of Clinton Cash was met with mixed reactions from the media.^[24] Time and Politico faulted the book for inadequate sourcing, both writing that Schweizer presents "little evidence" for his claims.^[25] Time noted Schweizer's heavy use of loaded questions, "allegations are presented as questions rather than proof".^[26]

Schweizer writes that Bill Clinton received $600,000 for speeches by Irish businessman Dennis O’Brien allegedly in return for his help in securing telecommunications contracts in Haiti, but the Clinton Foundation reported that neither Clinton, nor the foundation was compensated for these speeches.^[27]

Personal life

Schweizer lives in Florida with his wife Rhonda (often cited as Rochelle) and their children.^[28][29] The two have co-authored books about Disney and the Bush family. They met while she worked at the National Forum Foundation (NFF), which merged with Freedom House in 1997.^[30][31]

Bibliography

• Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, 2015 (ISBN 978-0062369284)
• Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets, 2013 (ISBN 978-0544103344)
• Throw Them All Out: How Politicians and Their Friends Get Rich off Insider Stock Tips, Land Deals, and Cronyism That Would Send the Rest of Us to Prison, 2011 (ISBN 978-0547573144)
• Architects of Ruin: How a Gang of Radical Activists and Liberal Politicians Destroyed Trillions of Dollars in Wealth in the Pursuit of Social Justice, 2009 (ISBN 0-061-95334-2)
• Makers and Takers: Why conservatives work harder, feel happier, have closer families, take fewer drugs, give more generously, value honesty more, are less materialistic and envious, whine less … and even hug their children more than liberals, 2008 (ISBN 0-385-51350-X)
• Chain of Command, with Caspar Weinberger, 2006 (ISBN 0-74343-774-8)
• Do as I Say (Not as I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy, 2005 (ISBN 0-385-51349-6)
• The Bushes : portrait of a dynasty, 2004, co-authored with Rochelle Schweizer (ISBN 0-385-49863-2)
• Reagan's War: The Epic Story of His Forty Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism, 2002 (ISBN 0-385-50471-3)
• Disney: The Mouse Betrayed: Greed, Corruption and Children at Risk, 1998 (ISBN 0-89526-387-4)
• The Next War, with Caspar Weinberger, 1998 (ISBN 0-89526-447-1)
• Victory: The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union, 1994 (ISBN 0-87113-567-1)
• Friendly Spies: How America's Allies Are Using Economic Espionage to Steal Our Secrets, 1992 (ISBN 0-87113-497-7)

References

External links

• Official website for In the Face of Evil: Reagan's War in Words and Deed.
• Schweizer's discredited report about the President's Daily Briefing (pdf).
• Schweizer's discredited report about President Obama's meetings with Secretary Sebelius (pdf).
• Schweizer's official website: www.peterschweizer.com
• Profile at the James Madison Institute
• Schweizer's Bio at Oval Office Writers LLC
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Peter Schweizer at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by or about Peter Schweizer in libraries (WorldCat catalog)