David Cay Johnston covered Donald Trump's business dealings as a reporter for nearly three decades before Trump ran for president, and this book compiles that reporting into a single narrative of how the Trump Organization actually operated.
He documents recurring patterns: contractors and vendors left unpaid until they sued or settled for less, ties to organized-crime-linked concrete and casino suppliers in 1980s New York and Atlantic City, and a business built as much on litigation and branding as on the underlying real estate.
Johnston is a tax specialist by training, and much of the book's detail concerns disputed tax filings, aggressive valuation claims, and regulatory scrutiny by state gaming and tax authorities — the paper trail behind claims about Trump's actual net worth versus his public claims about it.
Read alongside a tracker documenting the current wave of family enrichment, it argues the pattern isn't new: it's the same operating style, now applied to the machinery of the federal government instead of a single company.