Our guest today on Forthright Radio is writer, analyst and investigative journalist, Casey Michel. He is Director of the Combating Kleptocracy Program at the Human Rights Foundation, where he works on topics ranging from kleptocracy, oligarchy, illicit finance and dark money, as well as foreign lobbying and foreign interference. In addition, he is also a Senior Non-Resident Fellow with the Center for International Policy.

Among his books are FOREIGN AGENTS: How American Lobbyists and Lawmakers Threaten Democracy Around the World; AMERICAN KLEPTOCRACY: How the U.S. Created the World’s Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History; and his most recent book is , United States of Oligarchy: How America’s Wealthiest Ally With Dictators, Weaken the U.S., and Destroy Democracy, published earlier this month by St. Martin’s Press.

We spoke with Casey Michel on August 24, 2026 via Zoom.

“Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official… It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country.” –Theodore Roosevelt

“We have, therefore, reached the point as a nation where we must take action to save the Constitution from the Court and the Court from itself. We must find a way to take an appeal from the Supreme Court to the Constitution itself. We want a Supreme Court which will do justice under the Constitution and not over it. In our courts we want a government of laws and not of men. I want – as all Americans want – an independent judiciary as proposed by the framers of the Constitution. That means a Supreme Court that will enforce the Constitution as written, that will refuse to amend the Constitution by the arbitrary exercise of judicial power – in other words by judicial say-so. It does not mean a judiciary so independent that it can deny the existence of facts which are universally recognized.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1937

Articles, etc. pertinent to our interview with Casey Michel:

New Orleans Book Festival 2025 https://bookfest.tulane.edu/authors/casey-michel

“Foreign Agents” by HRF’s Casey Michel https://hrf.org/latest/new-book-release-read-foreign-agents-by-hrfs-casey-michel/

HRF’s Casey Michel Sanctioned by Russian Regime https://hrf.org/latest/hrfs-casey-michel-sanctioned-by-russian-regime/

As Ukraine fights back, every other ex-Soviet republic but Belarus distances itself from Moscow. https://hrf.org/latest/russia-has-lost-its-near-abroad/

Tech Leaders Haven’t Stopped the Billionaire Tax So Far. Will Ads Work? https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/25/us/california-billionaire-tax-ballot-question.html

How Trump is Making the U.S. the Money Laundering Capital of the World https://newrepublic.com/post/214373/donald-trump-treasury-anti-corruption-database

Donald Trump’s Crypto Firm Gets Approval To Operate As A Bank. What Could Go Wrong? https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-crypto-bank_n_6a85e09fe4b0e9f1dd270377?origin=home-latest-news-unit

An Ancient Sumerian Solution to Our $40 Trillion Deficit https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/22/opinion/us-debt-40-trillion.html

Paul Krugman Has a Theory On Oligarchs in the U.S. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b30scw0dQYA

The Transparent Election Initiative (The Montana Plan) https://transparentelection.org