Research that resonates.

He's the president of the Government Accountability Institute, Peter Switzer.

Peter Schweitzer. Peter Schweitzer. Peter Schweitzer has spent many years, in fact, probably

done a more comprehensive job than anyone's ever done, chronicling the corruption by the powerful in Washington. The very prescient Eric Eggers.

Join me right now is Government Accountability Institute Research Director, Eric Eggers.

We're going to take information that we've learned that people like Peter Schweitzer have uncovered,

and we're going to try to go further.

Great investigative reporting, Peter. You're the only one doing it.

Thank God.

Eric Eggers from the Government Accountability Institute and co-hosts of that great podcast,

The Drill Down with Peter Schweitzer.

This is The Drill Down with Peter Schweitzer.

Hi, this is Peter Schweitzer and welcome to the Drill Down.

Merry Christmas, happy new year, and what an eventful year it has been. Eric, you ready for Christmas? I am ready for Christmas. I'm excited for this. I think it's an officially like a Christmas episode of The Drill Down. If you're watching on YouTube, you will notice that we're in a little more casual attire. We are. We have our festive background behind us. We do. And, you know, it's we felt that would feel a little bit more intimate. It's like you, we welcome you into this family gathering of this drill down experience. We're so happy you made us a part of your podcast family. We're happy you're part of ours. And we just thought we'd celebrate for this final episode of 2026. Yeah, looking back on 2025,

the great thing about doing a program like this where we do a retrospective is all the bad

predictions we don't necessarily have to bring up the good ones we can highlight, but we wanted

to give you a sense of the major highlights for us of this year. We try to cover things in a very deep way, a very analytical way,

and we like to think that we have some predictive abilities of what is happening. And I think

we did actually ride some pretty amazing stories pretty early on that proved to be, I think,

decisive in the kind of year that we had. Well, it was a big year. And I said the last episode of 2026. Of course, I'm looking forward already. It's the last episode of 2025. But it was a big year. Of course, Donald Trump had yet to take office, but we knew that he would mean something to like upend so much of the status quo. And then, of course, you know, you and I spend so much time looking at

how much do status quo change or not change? And if they don't change, like, who's making money off of the status quo that's not changing? And so one of his first picks earlier on, one of his first cabinet picks, RFK Jr. and we're like, well, how big of a deal could he mean to kind of kind of changing things in Washington, D.C.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

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