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Masters of Corruption: How the Federal Bureaucracy Sabotaged the Trump Presidency
This book tells a remarkable true story of bureaucratic assassination during the Trump presidency, revealing in vivid detail how career federal employees thwarted President Trump’s efforts to drain the swamp.
Mark Moyar, a senior political appointee at the US Agency for International Development, discovered evidence of corruption involving five career bureaucrats and reported it to agency officials in 2018. Senior bureaucrats orchestrated a sophisticated retaliatory plot, which began when a Special Operations general fraudulently accused Moyar of divulging classified information, and ended with the termination of Moyar’s employment.
The bureau that Moyar had been on track to lead, with an annual budget exceeding $300 million, fell into the hands of one of his bureaucratic assassins. The leading perpetrator of the corruption exposed by Moyar subsequently escaped punishment by transferring to another federal agency.
A multi-agency cover-up followed. Moyar sought help from three Offices of the Inspector General—the government’s main bulwarks against whistleblower retaliation—but all three conducted flimsy investigations that absolved the bureaucracy. When Senator Charles Grassley demanded that agency officials fill the gaps in the government’s story, he was met with lies and evasions.
This suspense-filled drama provides an insider’s view of the federal bureaucracy’s corruption, its weaponization of bureaucratic procedures, and its failures to protect employees from retaliation. In telling his story, Moyar reveals how future administrations can drain the swamp and draws a roadmap for the restoration of integrity to the United States government.
Mark Moyar, a senior political appointee at the US Agency for International Development, discovered evidence of corruption involving five career bureaucrats and reported it to agency officials in 2018. Senior bureaucrats orchestrated a sophisticated retaliatory plot, which began when a Special Operations general fraudulently accused Moyar of divulging classified information, and ended with the termination of Moyar’s employment.
The bureau that Moyar had been on track to lead, with an annual budget exceeding $300 million, fell into the hands of one of his bureaucratic assassins. The leading perpetrator of the corruption exposed by Moyar subsequently escaped punishment by transferring to another federal agency.
A multi-agency cover-up followed. Moyar sought help from three Offices of the Inspector General—the government’s main bulwarks against whistleblower retaliation—but all three conducted flimsy investigations that absolved the bureaucracy. When Senator Charles Grassley demanded that agency officials fill the gaps in the government’s story, he was met with lies and evasions.
This suspense-filled drama provides an insider’s view of the federal bureaucracy’s corruption, its weaponization of bureaucratic procedures, and its failures to protect employees from retaliation. In telling his story, Moyar reveals how future administrations can drain the swamp and draws a roadmap for the restoration of integrity to the United States government.
- GenresNonfictionHistory
379 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 21, 2024
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June 9, 2025
This book is eye opening and incredibly frustrating all at the same time. I cannot believe the lack of morals and decency and the abundance of incompetence and corruption that truly lies in the swamp (career bureaucrats who are unelected and think they are above the law). Here are the notes I took on this book. These are items that stood out to me from Moyar's own personal experiences at the USAID offices. And let me say- we NEED these people shaken up and ousted.
*Barack Obama (upon meeting) struck him as a combination of liberal naivete and Machiavellian narcissism (I personally am not shocked with this one).
*The attributes of toxic leaders have changed little since the (Biblical) time of Nebechadnezzar. Toxic leaders are far more concerned with their own power and success than with the good of the organization and its people. When subordinates succeed, toxic leaders claim credit for their work, when subordinates fail, toxic leaders blame the subordinates. Toxic leaders surround themselves with flatterers and sycophants and shun constructive criticism. They kiss up to those above them in the organizational hierarchy, while kicking down at those below. In leading, they prefer coercion and intimidation to encouragement and inspiration.
*Many of the Democrats now howling about Trump’s lack of character and integrity had claimed that character and integrity weren’t important during the 1992 campaign after it had come to light that Bill Clinton had cynically manipulated the draft system to evade service in Vietnam. They made the same argument several years later when opposing the impeachment of the Clintons following the appearance of a sullied blue dress that proved he'd lied about an affair with a White House Intern. The combined praise of Democrats for Bill Clinton decades later did further injury to the notion that America needed to be governed by the sort of person you’d want marrying your daughter. When Democrats took to the airwaves to denounce Trump for outrageous or erroneous statements, it reminded Republicans of how often Democrats had trotted out their own absurdities and falsehoods. And it wasn’t just the Clintons. Barack Obama and his lieutenants had misrepresented, concealed, or destroyed information on a myriad of scandals, including the bungled gunrunning of Operation Fast and Furious; the murders of four Americans in Benghazi, the targeting of conservative organizations by the IRS, the abandonment of Iraq to its maniacs, the leaking of details in the Bin Laden raid to sycophantic journalists and film producers, the payola schemes that funneled Chinese and Ukrainian money into the pockets of Hunter Biden, the Justice Dept’s surveillance of journalists, the CIA’s hacking of Senate computers, Obama’s smearing of police officers in Massachusetts, Missouri, and Maryland with false allegations of racism and excessive force, James Clapper’s lying to Congress about the collection of private phone call data, Eric Holder’s prosecution of whistleblower Thomas Drake, and Ben Rhode’s hoodwinking of the media about the Iran Nuclear Deal.
*The opinions of media figures bounced off Trump as impotently as the opinions of doctors who thought he should replace the hamburgers and candy bars in his diet with chickpea lettuce wraps and seaweed pudding. When the media took swings at Trump, he swung back, and without any concern about butchering liberal sacred cows that other Republicans dreaded to touch. The sheer impertinence of Trump and the ire he aroused among the media appealed to Americans who were fed up with the haughty lecturing of liberal newscasters, talk-show hosts, and entertainers.
*Re: USAID: Career staff had devised ingenious schemes for hiding money from political appointees, which enabled them to steer money to their preferred projects and to their friends who worked for contractors, non-profit organizations, and multinational companies.
*Types of bureaucrats: highly animated, no lack of lively engaging talkers. Their voices, hand gestures, and body language convinced the person in the opposite chair that they were sincere and knew what they were talking about, even if neither was true. Such skills are useful in any organization, and can be particularly helpful to an organization that often has to sell itself to skeptics in Congress and the White House. The preeminence of talkers, however, also came with a large downside. People who are good at talking generally like to have meetings where they can talk, and during all the time they are meeting and talking, they are NOT DOING. The amount of time spent chatting in meetings helped account for the agency’s glacial pace in completing tasks and projects.
The excellent style of the talkers, moreover, often exceeded the substance of the words emanating from their mouths. Their eloquence could be so overwhelming that listeners didn’t bother to question them on substantive matters. The lack of scrutiny in turn heightened the talkers’ confidence, making them even more persuasive and less inclined to deepen their own knowledge. It also emboldened those who were tempted to spread falsehoods.
Some of the talkers studiously refused to put anything in writing. I suspected they knew that without their oral eloquence, the flaws in their thinking would stand out. When on occasion I saw them forced to put something in writing, the results called to mind the B- papers I had graded when teaching college students. The verbiage and buzzwords were so profuse as to obscure any bits of worthwhile content. Fluffy and overgrown sentences sprouted.
*upon taking a position at USAID: I was taking over on of USAID’s most dysfunctional offices. The individuals who had led the office prior to my arrival stood accused of bullying, harassment, use of government resources for private gain, and other offenses. The personnel and ethical problems were so daunting that they became my primary focus.
*The risks of corruption (no punishment) were low in comparison with the rewards (USAID monies and cushy jobs, especially).
*Among the most important reasons for the ineffectiveness of the federal government is its aptitude for alienating and driving out its best people (all people of quality were forced out or relentlessly harassed and driven to quite/relocate)
*His own experiences: The endless interrogations, shutting out of investigations, suspended or revoked security clearances based on unsubstantiated accusations, unsubmitted paperwork (that they claimed had been submitted), blatant lies, gaslighting and backstabbing from higher ups who were supposed to be on the same side, the crafting and recrafting of punishments to deprive the accused of due process rights, the prompt termination of employment without severance, etc.
* There were career agency employees who admitted, openly in an online video, to obstructing Trump’s policies and leaking to the press. The video was a 2hr zoom event entitled “Democracy Defense! A Guide for Federal Workers” which was a group of federal workers teaching other federal workers how to derail the Trump Administration. At the beginning, the organizers gave a tutorial on undermining Trump’s policies and reelection campaign. Several speakers, including two gov’t lawyers, offered the federal employees tips for thwarting Trump appointees, such as concocting excuses for procedural delays, demanding protracted legal reviews, leaking information to sympathetic journalists, and bringing complaints to the inspector general. A PowerPoint slide advised attendees to claim that their actions amounted to “protecting democracy” in order to spare themselves from prosecution under the Hatch Act, which prohibited federal employees from engaging in partisan activities. Because “Protecting Democracy” is non-partisan (they said). Over 150 people had logged in- They did NOT lose their security clearances or their jobs. Not a one- not even the person “leading” this meeting.
*Religious belief is key to moral behavior, which in turn is the key to the American preservation of freedom through limited gov’t (according to Tocqueville). Religion also imparts the intellectual humility that promotes openness to the ideas of others and wariness of concentrated power. We believe in the dignity of man. We believe that he was created in the image of God, who is the Father of us all. It is this faith that makes us determined that every citizen in our own land shall have an equal right and an equal opportunity to grow in wisdom and in stature, and to play his part in the affairs of our nation. However, we have, as a nation, turned our backs on God. Leading our nation’s elites away from baleful secular ideologies and back toward God and country requires focusing on the original source of the problem- higher education. The liberals and leftists responsible for purging God and country and Western Civilization from American higher education defend themselves by claiming that college isn’t a place for imbuing students with values. They didn’t heed their own bromides about “value-free” education, but instead imposed new values, including secularism, multiculturalism, and socialism. They promoted the theory that American history was little more than the oppression of minorities, women, and the poor, and cited the need to halt the oppression as justification for enlarging the resources and authorities of the state. Disinterested in the founding of the US, they ignored the dangers of unchecked governmental power that had led to the US Constitution. They dismissed the foundational American tenet that a healthy society requires the free exchange of ideas, preferring instead to suppress voices that articulated viewpoints different from their own.They literally destroy anyone who gets in their way.
*Toxic people have always gravitated to government because it is the easiest place for them to function and thrive. The prevalence of toxicity in government serves as a reminder that our founders were wise to impose checks and balances on the government and to allow the replacement of officials through elections. However, even with these protections, the govt needs virtuous people if it is to prevent the squandering of taxpayer dollars and the violation of the citizenry’s rights by overreaching bureaucrats. No system of govt can succeed if the govt’s people and its culture are corrupt to the core.
And this is where we are today- will we actually make a change, or continue down a path that leads to our undoing? I am thankful for all the eyes being turned to fully scrutinize each department and their accounting records, and am hopeful that change will ACTUALLY occur.
*Barack Obama (upon meeting) struck him as a combination of liberal naivete and Machiavellian narcissism (I personally am not shocked with this one).
*The attributes of toxic leaders have changed little since the (Biblical) time of Nebechadnezzar. Toxic leaders are far more concerned with their own power and success than with the good of the organization and its people. When subordinates succeed, toxic leaders claim credit for their work, when subordinates fail, toxic leaders blame the subordinates. Toxic leaders surround themselves with flatterers and sycophants and shun constructive criticism. They kiss up to those above them in the organizational hierarchy, while kicking down at those below. In leading, they prefer coercion and intimidation to encouragement and inspiration.
*Many of the Democrats now howling about Trump’s lack of character and integrity had claimed that character and integrity weren’t important during the 1992 campaign after it had come to light that Bill Clinton had cynically manipulated the draft system to evade service in Vietnam. They made the same argument several years later when opposing the impeachment of the Clintons following the appearance of a sullied blue dress that proved he'd lied about an affair with a White House Intern. The combined praise of Democrats for Bill Clinton decades later did further injury to the notion that America needed to be governed by the sort of person you’d want marrying your daughter. When Democrats took to the airwaves to denounce Trump for outrageous or erroneous statements, it reminded Republicans of how often Democrats had trotted out their own absurdities and falsehoods. And it wasn’t just the Clintons. Barack Obama and his lieutenants had misrepresented, concealed, or destroyed information on a myriad of scandals, including the bungled gunrunning of Operation Fast and Furious; the murders of four Americans in Benghazi, the targeting of conservative organizations by the IRS, the abandonment of Iraq to its maniacs, the leaking of details in the Bin Laden raid to sycophantic journalists and film producers, the payola schemes that funneled Chinese and Ukrainian money into the pockets of Hunter Biden, the Justice Dept’s surveillance of journalists, the CIA’s hacking of Senate computers, Obama’s smearing of police officers in Massachusetts, Missouri, and Maryland with false allegations of racism and excessive force, James Clapper’s lying to Congress about the collection of private phone call data, Eric Holder’s prosecution of whistleblower Thomas Drake, and Ben Rhode’s hoodwinking of the media about the Iran Nuclear Deal.
*The opinions of media figures bounced off Trump as impotently as the opinions of doctors who thought he should replace the hamburgers and candy bars in his diet with chickpea lettuce wraps and seaweed pudding. When the media took swings at Trump, he swung back, and without any concern about butchering liberal sacred cows that other Republicans dreaded to touch. The sheer impertinence of Trump and the ire he aroused among the media appealed to Americans who were fed up with the haughty lecturing of liberal newscasters, talk-show hosts, and entertainers.
*Re: USAID: Career staff had devised ingenious schemes for hiding money from political appointees, which enabled them to steer money to their preferred projects and to their friends who worked for contractors, non-profit organizations, and multinational companies.
*Types of bureaucrats: highly animated, no lack of lively engaging talkers. Their voices, hand gestures, and body language convinced the person in the opposite chair that they were sincere and knew what they were talking about, even if neither was true. Such skills are useful in any organization, and can be particularly helpful to an organization that often has to sell itself to skeptics in Congress and the White House. The preeminence of talkers, however, also came with a large downside. People who are good at talking generally like to have meetings where they can talk, and during all the time they are meeting and talking, they are NOT DOING. The amount of time spent chatting in meetings helped account for the agency’s glacial pace in completing tasks and projects.
The excellent style of the talkers, moreover, often exceeded the substance of the words emanating from their mouths. Their eloquence could be so overwhelming that listeners didn’t bother to question them on substantive matters. The lack of scrutiny in turn heightened the talkers’ confidence, making them even more persuasive and less inclined to deepen their own knowledge. It also emboldened those who were tempted to spread falsehoods.
Some of the talkers studiously refused to put anything in writing. I suspected they knew that without their oral eloquence, the flaws in their thinking would stand out. When on occasion I saw them forced to put something in writing, the results called to mind the B- papers I had graded when teaching college students. The verbiage and buzzwords were so profuse as to obscure any bits of worthwhile content. Fluffy and overgrown sentences sprouted.
*upon taking a position at USAID: I was taking over on of USAID’s most dysfunctional offices. The individuals who had led the office prior to my arrival stood accused of bullying, harassment, use of government resources for private gain, and other offenses. The personnel and ethical problems were so daunting that they became my primary focus.
*The risks of corruption (no punishment) were low in comparison with the rewards (USAID monies and cushy jobs, especially).
*Among the most important reasons for the ineffectiveness of the federal government is its aptitude for alienating and driving out its best people (all people of quality were forced out or relentlessly harassed and driven to quite/relocate)
*His own experiences: The endless interrogations, shutting out of investigations, suspended or revoked security clearances based on unsubstantiated accusations, unsubmitted paperwork (that they claimed had been submitted), blatant lies, gaslighting and backstabbing from higher ups who were supposed to be on the same side, the crafting and recrafting of punishments to deprive the accused of due process rights, the prompt termination of employment without severance, etc.
* There were career agency employees who admitted, openly in an online video, to obstructing Trump’s policies and leaking to the press. The video was a 2hr zoom event entitled “Democracy Defense! A Guide for Federal Workers” which was a group of federal workers teaching other federal workers how to derail the Trump Administration. At the beginning, the organizers gave a tutorial on undermining Trump’s policies and reelection campaign. Several speakers, including two gov’t lawyers, offered the federal employees tips for thwarting Trump appointees, such as concocting excuses for procedural delays, demanding protracted legal reviews, leaking information to sympathetic journalists, and bringing complaints to the inspector general. A PowerPoint slide advised attendees to claim that their actions amounted to “protecting democracy” in order to spare themselves from prosecution under the Hatch Act, which prohibited federal employees from engaging in partisan activities. Because “Protecting Democracy” is non-partisan (they said). Over 150 people had logged in- They did NOT lose their security clearances or their jobs. Not a one- not even the person “leading” this meeting.
*Religious belief is key to moral behavior, which in turn is the key to the American preservation of freedom through limited gov’t (according to Tocqueville). Religion also imparts the intellectual humility that promotes openness to the ideas of others and wariness of concentrated power. We believe in the dignity of man. We believe that he was created in the image of God, who is the Father of us all. It is this faith that makes us determined that every citizen in our own land shall have an equal right and an equal opportunity to grow in wisdom and in stature, and to play his part in the affairs of our nation. However, we have, as a nation, turned our backs on God. Leading our nation’s elites away from baleful secular ideologies and back toward God and country requires focusing on the original source of the problem- higher education. The liberals and leftists responsible for purging God and country and Western Civilization from American higher education defend themselves by claiming that college isn’t a place for imbuing students with values. They didn’t heed their own bromides about “value-free” education, but instead imposed new values, including secularism, multiculturalism, and socialism. They promoted the theory that American history was little more than the oppression of minorities, women, and the poor, and cited the need to halt the oppression as justification for enlarging the resources and authorities of the state. Disinterested in the founding of the US, they ignored the dangers of unchecked governmental power that had led to the US Constitution. They dismissed the foundational American tenet that a healthy society requires the free exchange of ideas, preferring instead to suppress voices that articulated viewpoints different from their own.They literally destroy anyone who gets in their way.
*Toxic people have always gravitated to government because it is the easiest place for them to function and thrive. The prevalence of toxicity in government serves as a reminder that our founders were wise to impose checks and balances on the government and to allow the replacement of officials through elections. However, even with these protections, the govt needs virtuous people if it is to prevent the squandering of taxpayer dollars and the violation of the citizenry’s rights by overreaching bureaucrats. No system of govt can succeed if the govt’s people and its culture are corrupt to the core.
And this is where we are today- will we actually make a change, or continue down a path that leads to our undoing? I am thankful for all the eyes being turned to fully scrutinize each department and their accounting records, and am hopeful that change will ACTUALLY occur.
February 20, 2025
Putting political partisanship aside, this book shows how corruption grows within a bureaucracy. The Kafaskeque atmosphere of "The Judgement" novel can be felt throughout the book.
August 11, 2024
I received a copy of the book because the security clearance process plays a major role in the administrative drama that played out for Mark Moyar. I'll start off by saying that Moyar is clearly a great writer/historian - I now want to read his other books about the Vietnam War and U.S. Special Forces. He writes like a historian - which is a difficult road to navigate when the history you're recounting is your own. Probably the most difficult aspect for me to read were the areas where Moyar names names - quite literally calling to task the bureaucracy he was trying to combat, and that he ultimately succumbed to - or at least remains embroiled within. I think we're all entitled to own our narrative - it doesn't mean we're always the most objective analysts of our own lives, but it doesn't mean we're wrong, either.
If you're in government, trying to improve government, or hate the government, there is something for you here. Even if you're like me and don't believe there is a Deep State to eliminate, you can respect that there is a lot of bureaucratic intertia that can absolutely be weaponized against political appointees. There are some take aways for even me to consider - like how a centralized security adjudication apparatus could potentially help with issues like Moyar's - much the way the Investigative Service Provider (ISP) model has been centralized.
If you're in government, trying to improve government, or hate the government, there is something for you here. Even if you're like me and don't believe there is a Deep State to eliminate, you can respect that there is a lot of bureaucratic intertia that can absolutely be weaponized against political appointees. There are some take aways for even me to consider - like how a centralized security adjudication apparatus could potentially help with issues like Moyar's - much the way the Investigative Service Provider (ISP) model has been centralized.
February 5, 2025
If anyone has an interest in why Trump is taking action against senior IG and USAID this book explains it all in great detail. I can only hope the the sewer rats described in this book are rooted out of the Washington swamp. This book explains in detail how senior government workers defraud the government and have a network of fellow thieves to protect them and cover up corruption. If anyone outside the network reports the wrong doing they will be singled out and ruined in any way possible to include collusion of false allegations with no proof or facts. This is an absolute must read!
January 24, 2025
I listened to this book on audible. If you want to about the deep state and how they truly run the government. This is an absolute must read!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews