UNTOUCHABLE: How Powerful People Get Away With It, and why we need to make sure they don't again

UNTOUCHABLE: How Powerful People Get Away With It
ELIE HONIG
HarperCollins
$12.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: An exploration of America’s two-tier justice system, explaining how the rich, the famous, and the powerful— including, most notoriously, Donald Trump—manipulate the legal system to escape justice and get away with vast misdeeds

How does he get away with it? That question, more than any other, vexes observers of, and participants in, the American criminal justice process. How do powerful people weaponize their wealth, political power, and fame to beat the system? And how can prosecutors fight back?

In Untouchable, CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig exposes how the rich and powerful use the system to their benefit, revealing how notorious figures like Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, and Bill Cosby successfully evaded justice for decades. He demonstrates how the Trump children dodged a fraud indictment. He makes clear how countless CEOs and titans of Wall Street have been let off the hook, receiving financial penalties without suffering criminal consequences. This doesn’t happen by accident.

In this vital, incisive book, Honig explains how the system allows the powerful to become untouchable, takes us inside their heads, and offers solutions for making the system fairer and more honest, ensuring true justice for all—holding everyone, no matter their status, accountable for their criminal misdeeds.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT FROM THE PRIME LENDING SERVICE. USE THEM OFTEN, THEY PAY AUTHORS FOR OUR USE.

My Review: First, read this: "This is no defeatist eulogy for our justice system. This is, rather, a guide to navigate it. If we understand how bosses exploit systemic vulnerabilities, then we can meaningfully call upon the people who make the big decisions- primarily prosecutors- to fight back and pursue justice, no matter how daunting the challenge."

I'm sure every one of y'all can remember the Epstein Files by name. I'll wager far fewer can can summon a name or a picture of the figure(s) associated with the 2008 financial crash that very likely cost some of you a job, a home, your retirement savings; at the time all the focus was on people like Ben Bernanke and other high-minded banksters who switched to the government's side long enough to be sure there was no lasting damage to do it again when they changed sides back to banking. Because Epstein's name and his image dominate the perception of heinous crimes committed, there are zero other faces or names you're likely to put with the disgusting crime of trafficking young women to satisfy the Gross Old Pedophiles in their lustful desires' satisfaction...even if that meant dying for them. (Never happened, scream apologists and defenders, burying any mentions of a certain ranch in New Mexico tied to Epstein and its grisly murdered women's bodies. There's no coverage of investigation, their presence remains unexplained.)

Different crimes, same playbook. Distract attention, put a single face on crimes that harmed few in numbers and studiously work to keep faces out of sight when they could be attached to widespread harm. It's an old trick. The Mafia uses it, United Healthcare uses it, Paul Linebarger's post-Army intelligence life saw him publish Psychological Warfare in 1948, revised in 1954 (free Gutenberg download of that edition at the link), with many ideas for dirty tricks later developed into Mafia techniques. (Author Honig is an ex-prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, and he was involved in prosecutions of dozens of Mafia members, including capos and other high-ranking members; he's literally seen it all.)

You know what caused me to shelve this book for a couple years lest I have more strokes? Look into the Supreme Court's 8-0 decision (in a case litigated by Jack Smith) from 2016 to exonerate convicted bribe-taking Virginia governor Bob McDonnell from his crimes because the bribes were not in themselves official acts.

A Supreme Court ruling determining that taking a bribe is not an official act so it's not punishable. We will hear A LOT MORE ABOUT THAT in the next few years.

I'm putting this review up on Tuesday, Election Day 2026, because no matter what happens we as a Body Politic need to be informed and ready to see through the time-tested tactics that allow the guilty to go unpunished, whether legally or by the public exercising their inalienable right to talk about whatever factual matter they care to discuss, whether in public or in private. It is time to make the world hotter for the people who, by words and (mis)deeds, too hot for us all to survive. Talk about facts: El Ni&ntil;o is biting, and climate change is making the naturally occurring event worse.