Peter Schweizer > Quotes

“Those who wonder why the American tax code is so complex, convoluted, and constantly changing fail to appreciate what a wonderful tool it is for extortion.”
― Peter Schweizer, Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets

“Novelist and essayist George Orwell wrote the masterpiece 1984 about a dystopian future. But he was also a shrewd observer of political life in democracies. He warned about the political choices people make regularly in an elective system of government. “A people that elect corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves and traitors are not victims, but accomplices.”4 The progressive message continues to be “hand us more power.” What they are asking us to do is ignore history—including their history—in how such power is actually exercised. We must ask ourselves: Why trust someone with more power when you cannot even trust them with the little they already have?”
― Peter Schweizer, Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America's Progressive Elite

“Even if nothing illegal occurred, one has to wonder about the political judgment involved. Surely the mere appearance of selling American power and influence to foreign interests should be enough to cause a former US president—and a possible future one—to steer well clear of such potentially”
― Peter Schweizer, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich

“The Clintons are perhaps the most politically sophisticated public figures of their generation. They know how things work in the corridors of power and around the world; they know that foreign governments are trying to”
― Peter Schweizer, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich

“The reality is that most of what happens in American politics is transactional. People look for ways to influence those in power by throwing money in their direction.”
― Peter Schweizer, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich

“Eliminating politicians’ ability to raise money while in session would force them to devote their time exclusively to their job: lawmaking.”
― Peter Schweizer, Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets

“It is important to note that this deal was with the Chinese government—not with a Chinese company, which means that the Chinese government and the son of the vice president were now business partners.”
― Peter Schweizer, Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America's Progressive Elite

“Politics in modern America has become a lucrative business, an industry that has less to do with policy and a lot more to do with accessing money and favors. As we will see, bills and regulations are often introduced not to effect policy change, but as vehicles for shaking down people for those money and favors.”
― Peter Schweizer, Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets

“The ruling party of Mexico, through its consulates, was on the “front line” of “civil resistance” in the United States. This is the very definition of subversion.”
― Peter Schweizer, The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon – The New York Times Bestseller Exposing Mass Migration as a National Security Threat

“The beauty of migration as a weapon was that it twisted the reputation of America as a champion of human rights around the country’s neck”
― Peter Schweizer, The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon – The New York Times Bestseller Exposing Mass Migration as a National Security Threat

“This is civilizational warfare: first, arrive surreptitiously; second, cultivate allegiance to hostile foreign entities; and third, sabotage the cultural norms of your host country.”
― Peter Schweizer, The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon – The New York Times Bestseller Exposing Mass Migration as a National Security Threat

“A people that elect corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves and traitors are not victims, but accomplices.”4”
― Peter Schweizer, Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America's Progressive Elite

“FBI investigations alone will never take corruption out of politics. They take too much effort, and they attack the problem serially, one target at a time.”
― Peter Schweizer, Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets

“But Mexican companies don’t run these ports; a Chinese company does. The international terminals at both ports are controlled and operated by Hutchison, which is largely owned by Li Ka-shing, whose ties to the Chinese triads were documented previously. The company also enjoys a close working relationship with the Chinese”
― Peter Schweizer, Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans

“Reagan’s activity in foreign affairs is not an improvisation, is not a chain of spontaneous initiatives, but a carefully planned and coordinated action, something of an integrated front of action under the slogans of world advocacy of the idea of freedom.”
― Peter Schweizer, Reagan's War: The Epic Story of His Forty-Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism

“The law dictates how much politicians can collect in campaign contributions, limits their ability to make money on the side, and requires the disclosure of those contributors. Hopefully, politicians are also limited to some extent by their conscience. A sense of decency and good judgment ought to prevent politicians on both sides of the aisle from engaging in certain transactions—even if they think they can get away with it.”
― Peter Schweizer, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich

“Chinese companies have been smuggling pill presses illegally into the United States, mislabeling them as machine tools or other items or sending them disassembled to avoid detection.69 The destination is drug dealers and criminal gangs70 for the “mass production” of street drugs.71 Now Chinese companies send large quantities of pill presses to Mexico, too, including the metal cast dies to imprint pills with counterfeit numbers such as “M523” and “10/352,” which are the markings of real oxycodone pills. In other words, these Chinese companies are helping dealers produce counterfeit and illegal street drugs.72 In April 2020, the DOJ sent out an alert to law enforcement agencies with a blunt headline: “Chinese Pill Presses Are Key Components for Illegally Manufactured Fentanyl.” In the document, which was obtained by the author, the DOJ noted the “relatively moderate pricing” of $1,000 per pill press—essentially at cost. Why are Chinese companies not charging a huge markup to sell the pill presses to the drug cartels? The DOJ also noted that the “ambiguous export regulations in China allow traffickers to use vague manifest descriptions to describe pill press machines to avoid scrutiny from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) personnel.”73 Chinese pill press manufacturers are required by US law to alert the DEA when they ship pill presses to the United States so federal authorities can track those who might be illegally producing drugs.”
― Peter Schweizer, Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans

“embarrassing entanglements. “Bribery interferes with trade, investment, and development,” Hillary Clinton said at the OECD’s fiftieth-anniversary forum in 2011. “It undermines good governance and encourages greater corruption. And of course, it is morally wrong—and far too common.” On that we can all agree.”
― Peter Schweizer, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich

“Throw Them All Out,”
― Peter Schweizer, Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends

“But the problem is not just with accumulated power, but also with those who seek it. As scientist and author David Brin pointedly noted, “It is said that power corrupts, but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible.”
― Peter Schweizer, Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America's Progressive Elite

“Nine out of ten times in the House of Representatives, and eight out of ten times in the Senate, the candidate who spends the most money wins.”
― Peter Schweizer, Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets

“The assumption is that we need to protect politicians from outside influences. But how about protecting ourselves from the politicians?”
― Peter Schweizer, Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets

“Extorting money in the form of campaign contributions is not simply about getting reelected. Many politicians aggressively fund-raise even though they face little or no opposition for reelection. Politicians have discovered a creative way to transfer donations into subsidies designed to benefit their lifestyles”
― Peter Schweizer, Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets

“Solving problems and settling issues is good lawmaking, but it’s not lucrative. It is gridlock, confusion, and rehashing fights that create streams of income—like an annuity—for the Permanent Political Class.”
― Peter Schweizer, Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets

“Complexity is a useful and lucrative method of legal extortion for politicians”
― Peter Schweizer, Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets

“According to Waggoner, the trouble is that complicated laws enrich those who make the laws while making the rest of society poorer.”
― Peter Schweizer, Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets

“grilled me on my findings about the Clinton Foundation and failed the most basic test of integrity: come clean with conflicts of interest.”
― Peter Schweizer, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich – A Meticulously Researched Exposé

“the amount of schmoozing involved and crossing lines and one person putting money in a foundation, and then Clinton getting unbelievable amounts for his speeches, and then contracts going one way or another, it’s not good. Those blurry lines have been seen by many people over the years. This book describes them.”
― Peter Schweizer, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich – A Meticulously Researched Exposé

“What if politics is really largely about fund-raising and making money?”
― Peter Schweizer, Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets

“They were directed to hire certain well-connected advisers and lobbyists in Washington. “You hear about bribery in China,” says Herbold. “They have nothing on us. We are just more sophisticated about it.”
― Peter Schweizer, Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets