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Larry Flynt ... no stranger to offering rewards.
Larry Flynt ... no stranger to offering rewards. Photograph: Dan Tuffs/Getty Images
Larry Flynt ... no stranger to offering rewards. Photograph: Dan Tuffs/Getty Images

‘$10m for the removal of Donald Trump’ – do political bounties ever work?

This article is more than 6 years old

The Hustler publisher Larry Flynt has promised a large reward for information that leads to the downfall of the US president. Such offers are an age-old weapon in the arsenal of the aggrieved

If there is something public discourse could arguably do without right now, it’s a seventysomething man they call “the porn king” flopping a $10m (£7.5m) cheque on the table. But here comes Larry Flynt, the American publisher of Hustler, laying down perhaps the biggest bounty in political history.

Flynt wants information that would lead to the downfall of Donald Trump. In a full-page advert in the Washington Post Sunday, he argued that Trump is “dangerously unfit” for office, adding: “Impeachment would be a messy, contentious affair, but the alternative – three more years of destabilising dysfunction – is worse.”

The pornography baron has set up a hotline and an email address, promising confidentiality to anyone who might be motivated to bring down a president but has so far been sitting on compromising information.

Bounties are an age-old weapon in the arsenal of the aggrieved, typically offered for a criminal’s head or capture, and synonymous with the less evocative “reward”. In the early 18th century, Alexander Spotswood, the governor of Virginia, offered – and later paid – £100 for the head of Blackbeard, the notorious British pirate. More recently, the US paid $15m each for the capture of Saddam Hussein’s sons, Qusay and Uday, in 2003.

Political bounties are rarer, if typically less bloody. And Flynt is no stranger to them. In 1998, he offered $1m for evidence of sexual impropriety involving incoming house speaker Bob Livingston, who had tried to impeach Bill Clinton. Livingston resigned after Flynt published details of an affair. In 2012, he offered another $1m for the tax returns of Mitt Romney, the then Republican presidential candidate. Last year, in the wake of the Access Hollywood “grab ’em by the pussy” tape, the hardcore pornographer boldly positioned himself as a champion of women and offered yet another $1m for further scandalous recordings.

There is a tradition of bounties in politics in parts of India, where they can be dramatic and done for show. In Uttar Pradesh, bounties have been offered for the tongues of misspeaking political rivals. “It’s a way to convey our anger and anguish,” businessman Satya Prakash Tittal told the Hindustan Times last year. Angry at Dayashankar Singh, the state’s vice-president, Tittal had offered 30,000 rupees (£350) to anyone who painted Singh’s face with black paint.

The only British politician to come close to falling as a result of a bounty in recent times was the man accused of offering it. In 2012, Pakistani newspaper the Express Tribune reported that Labour peer Lord Ahmed had offered £10m for the capture of Barack Obama or George W Bush in response to a US government reward of that amount for the capture of an extremist. Labour suspended Ahmed, but reinstated him when it emerged he had been misquoted – Ahmed had not offered a bounty, he said, and had been calling for the arrest of Bush and Tony Blair for war crimes.

The Flynt hotline is due to stay open, during business hours, for two weeks. Flynt told the Washington Post he expected results “within a few days”. He also defended his cash-for-dirt modus operandi. “Just because you pay for it does not mean it’s not any good,” he said. “I can’t think of something more patriotic to do than to try to get this moron out of office.”

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