HBO Sets Premiere Dates For Alex Gibney Docs ‘Ohio Confidential' & ‘Wealth Of The Wicked'
The Dark Money Game investigates the shadowy world of political donations and fundraising 15 years after the Supreme Court's Citizen's United decision, which enabled unlimited spending by hidden sources on political campaigns. Inspired by Jane Mayer's book Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, the project features interviews with journalists including Mayer, as well as lawmakers, judges, FBI investigators, whistleblowers and insiders on both sides of the issue. Through two separate stories, the films reveal how an untraceable web of money from wealthy individuals and corporations representing business interests or religious agendas flows through nonprofits and super PACs (political action committees) to support candidates and political movements.
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Ohio Confidential finds a powerful political lobbyist shot to death, his apparent suicide highlighting a bizarre turn in Ohio's largest public corruption case accidentaly uncovered by federal investigators that was nearly concealed by loose super PAC campaign financing rules. FBI wiretap recordings ultimately unravel a conspiracy involving a secret $61 million slush fund for Ohio's Speaker of the House to secure power in order to pay back corporate donors with a billion-dollar corporate bailout at the expense of the state's taxpayers.
Participants in the doc include Dark Money author Mayer; Maureen O'Connor, former Chief Justice of Ohio's Supreme Court; Laura A. Bischoff, journalist at the Columbus Dispatch; Jeffrey Williams, former FBI agent; Tyler Fehrman, former Republican campaign manager; Emily Glatfelter, assistant U.S. Attorney, Southern District of Ohio; and David M. Devillers, former U.S. Attorney, Southern District of Ohio.
Wealth of the Wicked traces the tangled history of campaign finance back to the creation of the Federal Election Commission in 1975, the 2002 McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Bill, and the Citizens United decision of 2010 that has molded the shape and opacity of present-day super PACs which now flood the system with money. The film looks at the stealth influence of religious groups and explores the fine line between a bribe and a political 'gratuity' or donation, and the reciprocity between well-funded special-interest groups and the political process as well as attempts to influence the judiciary at the highest levels.
In addition to Mayer, documentary subjects include former U.S. senator Russ Feingold; Rev. Robert Schenck; James Bopp, attorney for the National Right to Life Committee; David M. McIntosh, co-founder of the Federalist Society; Jonathan Riehl, author of Inside the Federalist Society; and O'Connor.
Written and directed by Gibney, an Academy Award winner who most recently took to HBO with Wise Guy: David Chase and The Sopranos, The Dark Money Game is produced by Trevor Davidoski, Gibney and John Jordan. Exec producers included Mayer and Richard Perello, as well as Nancy Abraham, Lisa Heller and Sara Rodriguez for HBO.
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