Thread by @SethAbramson

The #1 book in America on the Russia-Ukraine crisis—a 576-page hardcover—is now just $7.96. Please RETWEET.

✅ "A searing indictment"—NPR
✅ "A strong case"—Kirkus
📶 USA Today / Amazon / Audible / Apple Books bestseller
💟 "⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️"—510 Amazon ratings amazon.com/dp/1250272998?…

1/ The top question Americans will be asking as Europe falls into the most substantial armed conflict since World War II is, "What does this have to do with us?"

It was the question America asked in 1939 and it is the question that—sadly—will again be asked by many millions now.

2/ The simple fact is this: America’s *up to its eyeballs* in the Russia-Ukraine crisis. That’s not mere speculation—that’s the *current* reality. Russia is in an ongoing cyberwar against the United States. Trump was impeached for trying to use Ukraine to steal the 2020 election.

3/ The Republican Party has *repeatedly* used the Russia-Ukraine crisis to try to extract political value from both the Kremlin and pro-Kremlin Ukrainians. The imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine *is* a *long-term* move against NATO—which Putin and Trump want to see *destroyed*.

4/ You want to know how closely tied our politics is to all this? The coming Russian invasion of Ukraine is just Part 2 of a Russian war in Europe that was provoked in 2014—exactly 8 years ago today—by two men: Trump 2016 campaign manager Paul Manafort and his Kremlin-agent boss.

5/ When Manafort told Trump’s best friend in January 2016 that he needed to “get to” Trump to offer him his services for “free”—which led to him colluding with Russian intelligence as Trump’s campaign manager—he was working under an insanely lucrative multi-year Kremlin contract.

6/ One of the foci of that contract was that Manafort was tasked by the Kremlin with ensuring that Putin and his oligarchs could continue to use Ukraine as a vassal state—essentially a nation-state-sized ATM. Manafort *continued that work* under Trump and *brought Trump into it*.

7/ Trump and Manafort worked together—with men we later learned were Kremlin agents—to craft the foreign policy piece of the MAGA agenda, which was focused, above all, on aiding Russia and damaging Ukraine. The agenda was so seminal to MAGAism it informed Trump’s *2020* campaign.

8/ Most people don’t realize that the 2019-2020 Trump-Ukraine scandal—which launched a sequence of events that ended with a POTUS being impeached twice for the first time in our history—was *not* about Trump partnering with Ukraine.

He partnered with *Putin’s agents* in Ukraine.

9/ That’s right: the 2019-20 election-theft plot Trump was impeached for was a Trump-Russia plot—not a Trump-Ukraine plot. Trump and his agents worked with Kremlin agents in Russia and Ukraine to *exculpate* Russia for 2016 election interference and *blame it on Ukraine instead*.

10/ If you didn’t know any of this until now, you can probably understand why I am so excited that PROOF OF CORRUPTION—which outlines all of it using *exclusively* 5,000 major-media citations and government reports—is now headed toward #1 on Amazon on the eve of a war in Europe.

11/ You can’t understand why Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Donald Trump, and most on the far-right on supporting Russian war crimes in Europe until you understand how we got here. Even Ted Cruz’s proposed sanctions—designed to drive a wedge into NATO and the EU—are part of this.

12/ The *only* way America could be *more* involved in the imminent war in Europe is if we fired the first shot. As it is, the right-hand man of the leader of the Republican Party could reasonably be said to have started this war through political machinations Trump was aware of.

13/ During the march to the current crisis, then–President Trump *withheld military aid from our European ally Ukraine* until it would promise him to blame *itself* for the 2016 Russian cyberwar against America *and* help him steal the 2020 election.

And he did it *three times*.

14/ And *now* the very Republican operatives who have *made the last eight years of American politics in every way possible about Russian and Ukraine* are going on-air and issuing statements and tweeting out messages saying, “Why should we care about Ukraine? Let Russia have it!”

15/ PROOF OF CORRUPTION attempted to sound this clarion call regarding a national emergency—an *American* national emergency that was *based* in the Russia-Ukraine crisis—in late 2020. The book was a bestseller, but it still got comparatively little attention.

Until *right now*.

16/ To put this in simpler terms: America is a *non-combatant party* to the imminent Russia-Ukraine war. MAGA is dead set on America participating in this conflict on the Russian side, both to obscure past collusion *and* ensure future political aid in 2022 and 2024. Meanwhile...

17/ ...the Democratic Party is backing our democratic European ally Ukraine—and in doing so is backing NATO and the EU, both of which MAGA has implicitly sought (and now, increasingly, explicitly seeks) to destroy.

{Note: it’d *also* love to drive a wedge between us and Canada.}

18/ If you don’t think the fate of *American* democracy rests in part on the success or failure of the MAGA-Kremlin axis here and in Europe, you need to read PROOF OF CORRUPTION. This isn’t a matter of conjecture or partisanship—it’s just the core facts of geopolitics right now.

19/ As the Democratic Party again lines up against the tyrant Putin—and the Trumpist 90% of the GOP again floods into Putin’s camp—Trump and his allies are making clear that if Putin wants his war crimes in Europe to evade punishment, he’ll help Republicans win in 2022 and 2024.

20/ Russia sought to tamper in *both* the 2016 *and* the 2020 elections for Trump: the first time via hacking, the second time via a disinformation campaign run by *human* agents.

So how could we think that we are in anything but a cold kinetic war and hot cyberwar with Russia?

21/ And in this view, how could we think that *Russia invading Europe for the second time in 96 months*—this time, it now appears, at a scale well beyond what happened in 2014—*doesn’t* profoundly affect the future of American democracy? This is, in very real ways, “our” war too.

22/ It’s for precisely this reason that the now-90%-Trumpist GOP will attempt to convince Americans that the Russia-Ukraine war has nothing to do with us. It’s because they know it has everything to do with *their* future success...but *only* if Russia emerges victorious *again*.

23/ The recent tweet below now looks a bit different, doesn’t it?

Putin and Trump make sweeping gains in their war on U.S. democracy if America comes to believe the Russia-Ukraine war is irrelevant. And the two men are damaged—and our democracy bolstered—if the opposite happens.

24/ I hope this thread gives some perspective on why I’m so invested in folks reading PROOF OF CORRUPTION—even 18 months after its publication. The news the book reports spans the globe—North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa—and is as urgent today as it has ever been.

25/ As much as anything, I’m glad the book is now *under $10*—as I want everyone to see it. Click below to get a copy.

✅ “A searing indictment”—NPR
✅ “A strong case”—Kirkus
📶 USA Today bestseller
📶 Audible bestseller
💟 “⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️”—510 Amazon ratings amazon.com/dp/1250272998?…

UPDATE/ Amazon (and/or its algorithm) has taken note of the meteoric rise of PROOF OF CORRUPTION—now in the Top 1000—as the price has risen just *slightly*, from $7.96 to $10.01. But as this is a 576-page bestselling hardcover, I think we can agree it’s still a great time to buy!

UPDATE/ PROOF OF CORRUPTION just got a new Amazon banner. Can you spot it? 😁

PS/ Note that my excitement is exclusively over the idea that folks are finally seeing this book en masse *and* understanding the significance of the reports inside it. Obviously I wish circumstances in Europe *weren’t* what they are—and had never made a book like this necessary.

UPDATE/ I know I keep harping on it, but what the readers of this feed have done in the last 72 hours *is* extraordinary. 3 days after being #285,000 on Amazon, you all have sent PROOF OF CORRUPTION—a book on the Russia-Ukraine crisis—inside the Top *500*. amazon.com/dp/1250272998?…

NOTE/ I have to credit my friend @JesseDamiani for predicting, years ago, that the books in the Proof Trilogy—Proof of Collusion (2018), Proof of Conspiracy (2019) and Proof of Corruption (2020)—would have a “long tail,” as world events would slowly reveal *why* the books matter.

BOOK UPDATE/ The Amazon buy-it-now price is up to $12.35—but given the $32.50 list price for this 576-page Russia-Ukraine tome, that’s still a very good deal. If you’re considering reading PROOF OF CORRUPTION to prepare for this week’s likely war in Europe, now may be the moment.