Our Mission

“TO INVESTIGATE AND EXPOSE CRONY CAPITALISM, MISUSE OF TAXPAYER MONIES, AND OTHER GOVERNMENTAL CORRUPTION OR MALFEASANCE.”

The Government Accountability Institute (GAI) is a nonpartisan team of researchers, writers, editors, fact-checkers, and subject matter experts who work to uncover those politicians who abuse public service to feather their own nests and enrich their own families and associates.

GAI is a tax-exempt, non-profit organization under the IRS’s 501(c)(3) rules. We rely entirely on contributions from individual donors and foundations to pursue our work and accept no government funds of any kind. We welcome your tax-free contribution to keep our mission going.

 

OUR STORY

GAI was founded in 2012 by bestselling author and investigative journalist Peter Schweizer and is based in Tallahassee, Florida. The organization was born to produce deep investigative journalism effectively and share it with other journalists who may lack the time or resources to do it themselves. The largest newspapers and major TV news networks once took pride in spending money and effort on investigative journalism projects. This kind of “enterprise reporting” takes a great deal of digging, patience, and time to do well. It requires a healthy skepticism of official statements, disregard for “narratives,” and a dedication to craft that mainstream media outlets no longer seem to prioritize. Yet, it is GAI’s highest priority.

We do not disclose the details of our current or pending investigations. This is to avoid alerting our targets or giving them a chance to cover their tracks. What we do is not hard to understand, however:

GAI follows the money.

GAI has expertise in tracking transactions, documents, and other information through sophisticated analysis and careful research practices. We document every relevant fact, then fact-check it rigorously before we publish it. We take great pride in not using anonymous sources for anything we report.

 

OUR BOOKS

GAI’s most in-depth research projects are usually published as books written by Peter Schweizer and other members of our team. Most recently, this includes the number one New York Times bestseller, Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win in 2022. In 2020, we published Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite, also a #1 bestseller. In 2018, Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends broke the stories of Hunter Biden’s business dealings in China, Ukraine, Russia, and elsewhere. Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, released in 2015, detailed how the Clintons’ family foundation was used as a way for large companies and foreign governments to pay for influence. 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 was published in 2014 and tackled congressional money politics in exposing the use of so-called “leadership PACs,” among other revelations.  Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets.

Race to the Bottom: Uncovering the Secret Forces Destroying American Public Education by GAI Visiting Fellow Luke Rosiak was published in 2022 with research, fact-checks, and editing support from our team. 

GAI fully produced Eric Eggers’s 2018 book, FRAUD: How the Left Plans to Steal the Next Election and Compromised: How Money and Politics Drive FBI Corruption, co-written by GAI’s Seamus Bruner and Peter Schweizer. 

 

OUR INVESTIGATIVE REPORTS

We also produce and publish shorter, focused investigative reports on a variety of topics related to public corruption, all available on our site. These reports have most recently looked at the political power of the nations two big teachers unions, the corruption and cronyism at the state level surrounding the legalization of cannabis for recreational and medicinal use, frauds and scams within the EBT-SNAP food assistance program, and many others.

 

OUR PODCAST

We produce a weekly podcast called “The Drill Down with Peter Schweizer,” co-hosted by our vice president of Research, Eric Eggers, that addresses current events in the news and applies our research and investigative findings to explain what is really going on behind the scenes. We invite you to subscribe to the podcast and to follow us on our social media channels.

 

OUR FELLOWSHIPS

GAI has also created a Visiting Fellowship program to help other authors research and write their own books on similar topics. We welcomed journalist Luke Rosiak as our first Visiting Fellow in 2020. GAI staff assisted Luke with research, organization, drafts, editing and, of course, fact-checking. That book, Race to the Bottom, Uncovering the Secret Forces Destroying American Public Education was published in March 2022. More such projects will be forthcoming.

 

Our President

 

Investigative journalist and author Peter Schweizer has appeared on the New York Times bestseller list seven times, most recently for his #1 New York Times bestselling book, Red Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win. Three of his previous books, Profiles in Corruption, Secret Empires, and Clinton Cash were also bestsellers. 

Prior to founding the Governmental Accountability Institute in 2012, Peter was a consultant to the Office of Presidential Speechwriting in the White House for President George W. Bush. He has also served as a member of the Ultraterrorism Study Group at the U.S. government’s Sandia National Laboratory and is a former consultant to NBC News. His books have been translated into eleven languages and he is a frequent guest commentator on television networks, radio talk shows, and podcasts. He is also the host of GAI’s own weekly podcast, The Drill Down, which relentlessly exposes cronyism and corruption in Washington.

Peter is also the author of the book Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets. Both Extortion and the preceding book, Throw Them All Out, were featured in segments on CBS’s 60 Minutes program.

His other nonfiction books include Reagan’s War (Doubleday, 2002), which the Washington Post praised as “A fascinating, well-written, useful and important look at one of the three or four most important American political leaders of the 20th century. No serious assessment of the 40th president of the United States can ignore the central importance of anti-communism in his career; after Schweizer none will.” The Los Angeles Times called it “A rousing and compelling case that Reagan’s personal and political odyssey…was central to bringing down the ‘evil empire.” He is also the co-author of The Bushes: Portrait of a Dynasty (Doubleday, 2004), which the New York Times called “Fascinating…Provides illuminating insights into the internal dynamics of the Bush family dynasty.” The New York Post declared “If you want to know as fully as can be told the story of how the Bushes rose from Midwestern obscurity to equal the records of families like the Roosevelts, the Kennedys, and the Adamses — this is the book.”

Other nonfiction works include Architects of Ruin (Harper, 2009) Victory (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1994) , Do As I Say (Not As I Do) (Doubleday, 2005) and Makers and Takers (Doubleday, 2008).

His academic books include Landmark Speeches of the American Conservative Movement (Texas A&M University Press, 2006) The Reagan Presidency: Assessing the Man and His Legacy (Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), and The Fall Of The Wall: Reassessing the Causes and Consequences of the End of the Cold War (Hoover Institution Press, 2000). He was also a contributor to Living in the Eighties (Oxford University Press, 2008)

His articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, National Review, and elsewhere. He has appeared on numerous radio and television programs.

Peter received his M.Phil. from Oxford University and his B.A. from George Washington University. He lives in Florida with his wife, Rhonda, and his children.

 

Our Board of Directors

REBEKAH MERCER, Chairwoman

RON ROBINSON

THOMAS W. SMITH