Peter Overby
Peter Overby has covered Washington power, money, and influence since a foresighted NPR editor created the beat in 1994.
Overby has covered scandals involving House Speaker Newt Gingrich, President Bill Clinton, lobbyist Jack Abramoff and others. He tracked the rise of campaign finance regulation as Congress passed campaign finance reform laws, and the rise of deregulation as Citizens United and other Supreme Court decisions rolled those laws back.
During President Trump's first year in office, Overby was on a team of NPR journalists covering conflicts of interest sparked by the Trump family business. He did some of the early investigations of dark money, dissecting a money network that influenced a Michigan judicial election in 2013, and — working with the Center for Investigative Reporting — surfacing below-the-radar attack groups in the 2008 presidential election.
In 2009, Overby co-reported Dollar Politics, a multimedia series on lawmakers, lobbyists and money as the Senate debated the Affordable Care Act. The series received an award for excellence from the Capitol Hill-based Radio and Television Correspondents Association. Earlier, he won an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton for his coverage of the 2000 elections and 2001 Senate debate on campaign finance reform.
Prior to NPR, Overby was an editor/reporter for Common Cause Magazine, where he shared an Investigative Reporters and Editors award. He worked on daily newspapers for 10 years, and has freelanced for publications ranging from Utne Reader and the Congressional Quarterly Guide To Congress to the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post.
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Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine accepted $160,000 worth of free travel and gifts while serving as governor and lieutenant governor of Virginia. It was all legal and disclosed. NPR explores if it is still a campaign issue.
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NPR's politics team has annotated Clinton's speech, providing analysis and context and fact-checking key portions.
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The reports from the Clinton committees put her in better financial shape than either President Obama or challenger Mitt Romney in 2012. Trump's fundraising has improved but still lags Clinton's.
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It's a big increase in Trump's fundraising but because of how the fundraising committees were set up, Trump's campaign only gets to keep a fraction of the money.
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It's illegal for candidates to ask for money from non-citizens, which watchdog groups say Trump has done. But what's legal has been clouded by the 2010 Supreme Court ruling known as Citizens United. -
By picking Mike Pence as his vice presidential candidate, Donald Trump may cost his campaign contributions from the financial services industry. -
The Supreme Court ruled Monday on whether to uphold the conviction of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell on federal corruption charges.
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Two-thirds of the groups that faced extra scrutiny from the IRS were conservative. But the agency also closely examined applications for tax-exempt status from liberal and nonpartisan groups. -
Some groups are putting pressure on corporations that have pledged money for the Republican convention saying it would help promote Donald Trump and compromise their policies against discrimination. -
He can do it through a joint fundraising apparatus for his campaign, the Republican National Committee and 11 state Republican parties. It's something Hillary Clinton has been doing since last year. -
The biggest spending came from the campaign of Democrat Bernie Sanders. Outside groups dominated spending on the Republican side.
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After starting as an "underdog," Sanders has outspent the Clinton campaign in almost every major category.
