Tangled Webs: How False Statements Are Undermining America: From Martha Stewart to Bernie Madoff

· Penguin
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496
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About this ebook

Bestselling author James B. Stewart's newsbreaking investigation of our era's most high-profile perjurers, revealing the alarming extent of this national epidemic.

Our system of justice rests on a simple proposition: that witnesses will raise their hands and tell the truth. In Tangled Webs, James B. Stewart reveals in vivid detail the consequences of the perjury epidemic that has swept our country, undermining the very foundation of our courts.

With many prosecutors, investigators, and participants speaking for the first time, Tangled Webs goes behind the scene of the trials of media and homemaking entrepreneur Martha Stewart; top White House political adviser Lewis "Scooter" Libby; home-run king Barry Bonds; and Wall Street money manager Bernard Madoff.

The saga of Martha Stewart's conviction captured the nation, but until now no one has answered the most basic question: Why would Stewart risk prison, put her entire empire in jeopardy, and lie repeatedly to government investigators to save a few hundred thousand dollars in stock gains? Moreover, how exactly was the notoriously meticulous Stewart brought down?

Drawing on the accounts of then-deputy attorney general James Comey and U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, Stewart sheds new light on the Libby investigation, making clear how far into the White House the Valerie Plame CIA scandal extended, and why Libby took the fall.

In San Francisco, Giants home-run king Barry Bonds faces trial due to his testimony before a grand jury investigating the use of illegal steroids in sports. Bonds was warned explicitly that the only crime he faced was perjury. Stewart unlocks the story behind the mounting evidence that he nonetheless lied under oath.

Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme is infamous, but less well known is how he eluded detection for so long in the face of repeated investigations. Of the four he is the only one who has admitted to lying.

The perjury outbreak is symptomatic of a broader breakdown of ethics in American life. It isn't just the judicial system that relies on an honor code: Academia, business, medicine, and government all depend on it. Tangled Webs explores the age-old tensions between greed and justice, self-interest and public interest, loyalty and duty. At a time when Americans seem hungry for moral leadership and clarity, Tangled Webs reaffirms the importance of truth.

Ratings and reviews

5.0
1 review
A Google user
Is there no end to the victimization of Martha Stewart? Ms. Stewart has moved on with her life in an inspiring fashion. She has triumphed over evil in "quite the comeback" (Bloomberg interview with James Stewart), which is now in the crosshairs for annihilation by James Stewart with the complicity of the propagandist media, including Charlie Rose and the Opinionator (New York Times). Martha Stewart engaged in no "unethical behavior," and she never "crossed to the dark side." She made a small personal stock sale. If Ms. Stewart had ignored the Bush goons and gone about her business, they could do nothing to her about her personal, legal stock sale, and none of the trumped-up charges would have come into existence, including the big-time trumped-up charge of 10 years in prison and a $2 million fine, which was thrown out in court as totally baseless. She would never have been victimized by grossly incompetent legal representation, which enabled, aided, and abetted the trumped-up charges against her. Targeting the destruction of Martha Stewart resulted in the colossal waste of taxpayer resources, the destruction of several hundred jobs and millions of dollars in shareholder value, and the unconscionable wasting of Ms. Stewart's own resources. Using the freedom of the press as a weapon of mass destruction on Martha Stewart, James Stewart is now targeting the destruction of jobs embodied by Ms. Stewart and shareholder value. "The journalist James B. Stewart" is a First Amendment parasite lining his pockets with his ruthless exploitation of Martha Stewart in featuring her name on the cover of his book of yellow journalism and falsely linking her to perjury and "false statements." Not one single word spoken by Martha Stewart or any of the Bush goons was recorded in a transcript or in sworn testimony. Of almost 8,000,000 million ImClone shares traded, she sold 3,928 shares in a legal, personal stock sale; only a mere two months earlier, she made the decision to sell ALL of her ImClone stock in a tender offer from Bristol-Myers Squibbs based on sound investment management principles. She made the decision to sell ALL of her ImClone stock to Bristol-Myers despite ImClone's rebuff of Bristol-Myers' takeover bid. This is the fundamental truth of the legal stock sale by Martha Stewart. James Stewart is a lying propagandist that "Martha Stewart came closest to getting away with it...(and) done things they have gotten away with before." No evidence of this exists. Prosecutorial malfeasance converged with legal malpractice in the Martha Stewart case, which is a condemnation of the legal system. The criminal persecution of Martha Stewart is a blot on American democracy; she is owed a presidential pardon from President Barack Obama. In condoning prosecutorial malfeasance, legal malpractice and victimizing Martha Stewart in a vendetta of lies, James Stewart, a liar himself, is devoid of professional ethics and integrity and devoid of any morality.
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About the author

James B. Stewart is the author of Heart of a Soldier, the bestsellers Blind Eye and Blood Sport, and the blockbuster Den of Thieves. A former Page One editor at The Wall Street Journal, he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for his reporting on the stock market crash and insider trading.

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