OPINION
Americans are told to obsess over super PACs and dark money. We are told to watch every dollar that moves through campaigns and political committees.
Meanwhile, one of the simplest and most obvious channels for foreign influence has been sitting in plain sight. It doesn't move through super PACs. It doesn't even pretend to be "issue advocacy."
It goes straight into the personal bank accounts of our most powerful politicians, and it comes from abroad.
I'm talking about the giant "book deals" that foreign owned German publishing houses handed to the leadership of the Democratic Party in the years leading up to the war in Ukraine.
If you stripped the names off this story and described it as a spy novel, every reader would know exactly what was going on.
Foreign media dynasties in a country that bet its economy on Russian gas quietly send tens of millions of dollars to the personal accounts of the American politicians who will soon oversee Russia policy.
Then those same politicians go soft on the very pipeline that frees Moscow from dependence on Ukraine.
In fiction, we would call that plot "too on the nose."
In Washington, we call it business as usual.
Start with the basics.
Two German conglomerates, Bertelsmann and Holtzbrinck, sit on top of a sprawling web of American imprints.
They don't publish under "Bertelsmann of Gütersloh" or "Holtzbrinck of Stuttgart."
They publish under names that sound safely domestic. Knopf. St. Martin’s Press. Flatiron. Metropolitan. Ballantine.
Macmillan. Penguin Random House.
—The covers say New York.
—The ownership is German.
—The profits flow back to Germany.
—The money, at the end of the chain, is German.
These companies did not just buy manuscripts.
They bought access and goodwill with the most powerful Democrats in America.
Look at the Bertelsmann side first.
Its American flagship is Penguin Random House, which sits on top of Knopf, Penguin Books, Ballantine Books, Random House itself and more.
According to public reporting, Bill Clinton received a $15 million advance from Knopf for his memoir, money that ultimately traces back to Bertelsmann.
Barack Obama and his wife Michelle signed a package reported at roughly $65 million with Penguin, also owned by Random House and then by Bertelsmann.
Then-Senator Kamala Harris reported receiving approximately $325,000 for her book through Penguin.
A book by Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., brought in around $400,000 through Ballantine on book advances, which sits inside Penguin Random House.
A book deal for Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., was roughly $275,000 through Ballantine as well.
Former Robert S. Mueller deputy Andrew Weissman published his Trump era memoir through Random House itself, another Bertelsmann imprint, in a deal whose exact dollar figure has not been disclosed.
Different labels on the spine, same German corporate family behind them all.
Holtzbrinck Publishing Group used its control of Macmillan to build a parallel stable.
Then former Vice President (and future President) Joe Biden and his wife Jill reportedly received an $8 million book advance through Flatiron Books, which is owned by Macmillan and then by Holtzbrinck.
A book deal for Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt, with St. Martin's Press, another Macmillan imprint, is reported at about $795,000.
A book deal for Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., with Metropolitan Publishers, part of Macmillan, brought her roughly $4.6 million
Trump nemesis and former FBI director James B. Comey signed a book contract reported at about $2 million with Flatiron.
Another Trump nemesis former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe's deal with St. Martin’s Press has not been publicly disclosed, nor have the terms of former CIA director John Brennan's book with Celadon Books or former congressman John Delaney's work with Macmillan
By my tally, the reported advances alone for this small group of Democratic politicians and officials add up to nearly ninety $93 million dollars, before you even count the undisclosed deals or any downstream royalties.
Even when individual numbers were never disclosed, the pattern is obvious. This was not about selling a few extra hardcover copies at the airport.
This was about putting foreign owned publishing houses at the heart of the Democratic Party’s personal finances.
Now set that money trail next to the pipeline that defined Russia’s energy leverage over Europe.
Germany made a strategic decision.
It would tie its industrial future to Russian gas through Nord Stream 2 $11 billion pipeline.
Pipelines that used to cross Ukraine would become less important. Moscow would gain a new, more direct energy weapon, and Kyiv would lose one of its main sources of leverage.
For years, American national security officials warned that Nord Stream 2 would give Vladimir Putin more freedom of action.
If Russia could send gas straight to Germany under the Baltic Sea, it would care less about what happened to the pipes that crossed Ukrainian territory.
Sanctions on Nord Stream 2 became one of the few real tools Washington had to signal that there would be a price for turning Ukraine into a battlefield.
Then Democrats took power in Washington.
The same party whose leaders had become intertwined with German publishing money now controlled the White House and the State Department.
What did the Biden administration do?
It did not treat Nord Stream 2 as a red line. It waived key sanctions.
It tried to "manage" the issue with temporary deals and diplomatic language.
It sent all the right signals to Berlin that Washington would not truly stand in the way of German dependence on Russian gas.
Put yourself in Putin's position. Germany is hooked on your gas.
Its publishing dynasties have spent years enriching the American politicians who now talk about "shared values" and "alliances."
The United States blinks on Nord Stream 2, then announces that if Russia crosses the line, there will be sanctions later.
Is that the only reason Putin rolled into Ukraine?
Of course not.
He has his own ideology and his own obsessions.
However, it's insane to pretend that money and dependency don't shape the environment in which those decisions are made.
When the people who set American policy are personally taking millions from firms rooted in a country that depends on Russian gas, you have created a textbook conflict of interest.
We are not talking about some intern at a think tank.
We are talking about presidents, vice presidents, and would be presidents whose personal wealth is tied to foreign owned companies that have a direct stake in soft American policy toward Russia and Nord Stream.
It may, or may not, all be technically "legal."
It's still corrupt, in the real-world sense of the word.
Ask yourself a simple question: if these were Republican leaders taking eight figure checks from Russian or Chinese controlled companies, would the media treat it as "just publishing"?
Or would we be living through another multiyear influence scandal with primetime hearings and special counsels?
Everyone knows the answer.
Democrats now wrap themselves in Ukrainian flags and accuse Republicans of being "soft on Putin." They do this after presiding over years of indulgence for German dependence on Russian gas and after cashing huge checks from the very companies that profited from that dependence.
It's long past time to draw a bright line.
If you want to serve in high office in the United States, you shouldn't be allowed to take giant personal payments from foreign controlled corporations.
Period.
That should apply to presidents, vice presidents, cabinet officials, and members of Congress. It should apply to book deals.
It should apply to "speaking fees." It should apply to ghostwritten memoirs that no one reads but everyone understands as a payoff.
At a bare minimum, every foreign owner behind every big dollar publishing contract with a sitting official should be disclosed in bold print.
Not just the New York imprint on the spine.
The actual country and family that owns the company wiring the money.
For the sitting senators who received foreign money and did not report it as foreign money, they should be required to return all funds to the U.S. Treasury.
We can argue about energy policy and sanctions strategy.
Reasonable people can disagree about exactly how much blame to assign to any one decision. But the idea that American leaders should be personally on the payroll of foreign publishing dynasties in a country that bet its future on Russian gas should not be controversial at all.
The German families behind these houses made a clear bet.
They would invest in Democratic politicians who looked like the future.
They would deepen their country’s dependence on Russian energy and trust that the people whose names were on their book jackets would never truly stand in the way.
Looking at Nord Stream, looking at the slow walk on sanctions, and looking at the rubble in Ukraine today, it's hard to say that bet did not pay off for them.
It didn't pay off for Ukrainians, or for American taxpayers.
It certainly didn't pay off for our security.
If Republicans are serious about confronting foreign adversaries and defending American sovereignty, they should start by cutting off the quiet, glittering streams of foreign money that have been flowing into the personal accounts of their Democratic opponents for years. The book signings were not just about books.
They were about power. And it'stime we treated them that way.
Dan Rice is the President of the American University Kyiv and served as Special Advisor to the Ukraine Commander in Chief General Zaluzhnyi in 2022-2023. He an investigative journalist who has advocated for increased U.S. support and weapons for Ukraine since May 2022. He is a graduate West Point, with an MBA from Kellogg/Northwestern, master's in journalism from Medill/Northwestern and an master's in education from University of Pennsylvania School of Education.
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