MICHAEL MORELL
FORMER ACTING DIRECTOR, CIAOnce the Democratic and Republican parties officially nominate their Presidential candidates at their political conventions this summer, the nominees will be offered intelligence briefings before the general election. We asked Michael Morell, the former Deputy Director and twice Acting Director of the CIA, to explain how these briefings work.The Cipher Brief: Can you tell us why the sitting President offers those briefings to the nominee from each party?Michael Morell: There is a great deal of confusion about these briefings in the media. After a candidate has been formally nominated by her/his national convention, she/he is offered a one-time intelligence briefing (sometimes over multiple days if there are time constraints or if a candidate wants to go deeper on a particular topic). They do not receive a daily briefing. They do not receive regular update briefings during the campaign. They do not receive the President’s Daily Briefing. Those only come for the president-elect, after the election in November.There is also confusion in the media as to why every post-war president has offered these one-time, post-convention briefings to the candidates. The objective is not to start preparing the candidate to deal with the myriad national security issues that they will face six months down the road, if they win the election. The objective is to protect national security during the campaign by giving the candidates a deep sense of the national security landscape. Let me explain: both our adversaries and our allies and partners will be listening closely, extremely closely, to what the candidates say about the issues during the campaign, and saying the wrong thing could damage our national security. The briefings are meant to help prevent that.Let me be clear, though: during the initial, one-time briefing, the candidates are not advised on what to say or what not to say about national security issues on the campaign trail. The hope is that by simply giving them an objective, unbiased understanding of the issues, the dialogue on those issues during the campaign will be carried out in a way that does not undermine U.S. interests.TCB: Who is actually involved in the briefings?MM: On the government side, the briefing teams are usually composed of senior leaders from the analytic arms of the Intelligence Community agencies, along with senior analysts who, on a day-to-day basis, cover the issues to be discussed. I played the former role in a number of briefings for candidates over the years.On the candidate’s side, they are permitted to bring their closest national security aides. In my experience, that has ranged from just one person to two-to-three people. But there is no just showing up. The IC (Intelligence Community) must approve in advance all of the attendees.TCB: Are there any limits to what the nominees can be told? For instance, will they be provided with classified information or details of ongoing operations? Are the candidates in essence given security clearances?MM: Absolutely, there are limits on what candidates are told. The briefings are classified Top Secret, but the candidates are only provided the analytic judgments of the IC and the information used to support those judgments. They are not provided with the details of how that information was collected-what the IC calls sources and methods. They are not provided with any information on any ongoing covert actions programs related to the issue being discussed. They are not provided with any operational information. Those only come after a candidate wins the election.TCB: How does the IC prepare for the briefings? Will the briefings be the same for each candidate? What issues would you emphasize in the briefings?MM: The leadership of the IC, most likely the DNI (Director of National Intelligence), will decide on the topics, perhaps to be approved by the White House. If I were putting the list together, I would include the threat to the U.S. Homeland and to U.S. interests abroad posed by ISIS and al Qaeda; the threat posed by a variety of actors in cyber space; the political and military situation in Iraq and Syria; the situation in Afghanistan; as well as national security issues related to Iran, Russia, North Korea, and China.The briefing team will go into the room with the goal of providing the same analytic judgments to both candidates, but I would expect the two briefings to be very different. I would expect the briefing for Secretary Hillary Clinton (the presumptive Democratic nominee) to delve into issues more deeply and to be more of a dialogue than the briefing for Donald Trump (the presumptive Republican nominee), which I would expect to be more of a tutorial, more of a first cut at the issues, with the need to provide the history and background on issues. This is simply because the Secretary is starting at much greater level of understanding based on her experience working these issues, her experience working with the IC, and her knowledge of the IC judgments (she was a daily and engaged consumer of both IC collection and analysis). Trump, most likely, will be starting at square one. No value judgments here; just the reality of the situation.TCB: Any personal observations about a nominee’s response to a briefing you provided? Without getting into names, has a nominee seemed surprised by the information? Has it altered a position on an issue or impacted how the nominee publically presented a view?MM: In general, candidates who have not been involved in national security are surprised by the number of threats facing the U.S., by the seriousness of those threats, by the complexity of the threats, and by just how difficult they are to mitigate. They quickly realize that there are not simple solutions. They quickly realize that their sound bites on the campaign simply don’t fit realty. And, they quickly realize just how important intelligence is going to be keeping the country safe.Not surprisingly, the briefing team will get a sense of a candidate. Does the candidate know what they don’t know, are they trying to understand the issue, do they want to learn, are they open-minded, are they able to grasp complexity, do they ask good questions? Or do they try to convince the analysts of their point of view, are they just trying to find facts to fit their world view or their policy views, do they look at the issues through the lens of national security or through the lens of politics?The IC knows the Secretary well, and its expectation will be that she will fall into the first category because that is what she demonstrated as Secretary of State. I’m sure the analysts will be very interested to see where Donald Trump falls – largely because they will want to know what he would be like if he were to become their “First Customer,” as some analysts at CIA like to call the president. And they will be interested simply because of the nature of the campaign so far, the nature of the candidate so far.
Category Archives: Industry Jobs Oil Economics
Examples of POTUS Power Over Agencies
Primer: CFPB Director: PHH Corp. took kickbacks for mortgage insurance referrals
Requires firm to pay $109M to the CFPB
FAS: Congressional authority to establish federal agencies with independence from political control is under scrutiny in a case pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (D.C. Circuit). At issue in PHH Corp. v. CFPB is whether the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) structure violates the constitutional principle of separation of powers. The CFPB is headed by a single director who enjoys a certain amount of protection from removal by the President, and the agency is funded outside of the annual appropriations process. As elaborated below, PHH claims that the restrictions on the President’s power to remove the Director improperly encroach on the executive power vested in the President under Article II of the Constitution, and that the combination of insulation from executive control and independence from yearly congressional appropriations violates separation of powers by shielding the agency from “democratic accountability.”
The Constitution divides the power of the federal government among the legislative, judicial, and executive branches. While the text does not contain a “separation of powers” provision, the Supreme Court has recognized a separation of powers principle that underlies the constitutional division of the federal government’s authority. Among other things, this doctrine prevents one branch of government from impermissibly encroaching on the powers of another or inappropriately delegating its own authority to another branch of government. These limits, in turn, shape the structure of federal agencies that exercise governmental power.
For example, a recurring theme in separation of powers cases is the extent to which Congress may impose restrictions on the President’s power to remove executive officers. Article II of the Constitution vests the executive power in the President, and the President is authorized to keep executive officers accountable by removing them. However, the Supreme Court has recognized that this power is not absolute. In Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, the Court held that Congress could establish independent agencies overseen by officers whom the President could only remove for “good cause.” The Court upheld similar restrictions on the President’s authority to remove lower-level officials in Morrison v. Olson. In Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Oversight Board, however, it invalidated the combination of these two otherwise permissible features – removal restrictions on both the principal and certain inferior officers within a single agency – as violating Article II’s vesting of executive power in the President because it improperly impeded his “constitutional obligation to ensure the faithful execution of the laws.”
Another constitutional provision that informs separation of powers is Article I’s prohibition on drawing money from the Treasury unless authorized by “Appropriations made by Law.” Congress thus has the “power of the purse” and controls the funding of executive branch agencies. While the Court has not faced a challenge to an independent agency receiving funds outside of the annual appropriations process, various federal entities, such as the Federal Reserve Board, are currently funded through their own earnings, rather than through the appropriations process.
The CFPB was established by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Financial Protection Act, which consolidated and expanded federal regulation of consumer financial products. Broadly, the Act gave the CFPB rulemaking, supervisory, and enforcement power over certain financial institutions. It also bestowed rulemaking and enforcement power under various consumer financial protection statutes, and more generally the authority to deter unfair, deceptive, or abusive practices by regulated entities. In this case, the Director of the CFPB concluded that a mortgage lender, PHH, violated the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, imposed injunctive relief to prevent further violations, and required PHH to disgorge “kickback payments” it had received in violation of the Act. PHH appealed the decision to the D.C. Circuit, claiming that, among other things, the agency’s structure violates separation of powers.
The legislation establishing the CFPB provided the agency with a structure intended to ensure independence from the political influence of Congress and the President. The CFPB is headed by a single Director who is appointed by the President to a five-year term and removable by the President only for cause. Although established within the Federal Reserve System, the agency is considerably independent from the Federal Reserve Board’s authority, and the Federal Reserve Board is barred from intervening in the CFPB’s decisions or directing its employees. However, a supermajority of the Financial Stability Oversight Council—of which the Chairman of the Federal Reserve is a voting member—may veto CFPB regulations that would put the safety of the banking system or the financial system’s stability at risk.
Finally, the agency is funded via a transfer from the Federal Reserve System’s earnings, rather than through annual appropriations.
PHH argues that the combination of these features insulates the agency from “democratic accountability” and violates separation of powers. First, PHH claims that while Humphrey’s Executor upheld removal restrictions for nonpartisan, multi-member expert boards, its logic does not support upholding the restrictions here because the CFPB is headed by a single director and is not intended to be “non-partisan.” Further, PHH argues that just as the combination of two otherwise-permissible removal restrictions in Free Enterprise violated separation of powers, the marriage of removal restrictions with an independent funding stream is entirely unprecedented and grants the agency novel freedom from both presidential and congressional control. In response, the CFPB disputes PHH’s reading of Humphrey’s Executor, arguing that the Court upheld removal restrictions for agency heads because of the functions the officers performed, which mirror the duties of the CFPB Director. In addition, the CFPB distinguishes the principles announced in Free Enterprise – in that case, two otherwise-permissible removal restrictions combined to impede the President’s power under Article II. Here, in contrast, “each branch retains its constitutional powers” because the removal restriction does not reduce Congress’s authority over appropriations under Article I, and the independent funding mechanism does not hamper the President’s Article II duty to execute the law.
At oral arguments before a panel of the D.C. Circuit, Judge Kavanaugh, who has articulated a broad reading of Free Enterprise in the past, questioned CFPB’s counsel about the nature of the agency’s independence. In particular, he focused on whether restrictions on the President’s removal power were permissible for agencies headed by a single director. He noted that historically, most removal restrictions for independent agencies applied to multi-member commissions, rather than agencies with a single head. The justification being, he noted, that while typical agency heads must be subject to presidential control, removal restrictions are appropriate for a multi-member board because it is nonpartisan or bipartisan.
Resolution of the case may have important implications for the structure of the executive branch and the scope of presidential control over “independent” agencies. Several other agencies, whose principal officers enjoy removal protection, are also headed by a single director, including the Social Security Administration, the Office of Special Counsel, and the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Further, given the D.C. Circuit’s exclusive jurisdiction to hear challenges to a variety of federal agency actions, the court’s reading of Free Enterprise will be an important guidepost concerning future challenges to agency structural features.
At the DC Airport? I thought this was a Joke
Hat tip to CNN… and it seems that airport security and TSA may have bigger issues than we know or they will admit.
CNN Finds Somali War Criminal Working Security at DC Area Airport
FreeBeacon: CNN has found an alleged war criminal from Somalia now working in the United States as an airport security guard.
Yusuf Abdi Ali was a commander during the Somali Civil War during the 1980s and has been accused of ordering the torture and executions of civilians in what has been called a genocide.
When CNN found out that he was living and working in the United States, they sent a crew to his workplace, Dulles International Airport in Northern Virginia, just minutes from Washington, D.C. The film crew found a man matching Ali’s description working security and began asking him questions.
“What’s your name?” a CNN producer asked.
“Ali,” the guard responded.
“Yusuf Ali,” the producer said.
“Yeah,” Ali said.
“Where are you originally from?” the producer asked.
“Somalia,” Ali said.
CNN correspondent Kyra Phillips reported that Ali came to the United States from Canada with the assistance of his wife who helped him secure a visa into the United States. Ali was deported from Canada due to his past, but that did not prevent him from being able to get into the United States.
Phillips also reported that Ali has been removed from his position as a security guard and that his past did not come up during a background check.
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In 2014:
One of the two Americans killed while fighting for the Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist organization in Syria had worked at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport cleaning planes before he went overseas to become a jihadist, an investigation has revealed.
Abdirahmaan Muhumed, 29, who died in the same battle as Minnesota native Douglas McCain, was employed by Delta Global Services, a cleaning company owned by Delta Airlines. Two former employees confirmed they’d worked with Muhumed, who had been married three times and was the father of nine children. While earlier this year, the airport’s cleaning contract was taken over by Airserv, another contractor, Muhumed would have had to had security clearance to work for Delta. More here from NewsMax.
This past April:
ClarionProject: Brussels airport is partially reopening today for the first time since it was hit by twin suicide bombs on March 22 in attacks that killed 35 people.
The airport reopening was delayed by a strike called by police officers who de3maqnded extra security measures. Specifically they requested checks at the main entrance to the departure lounge. Authorities feared this could create bottlenecks going into the airport.
A group of police officers wrote an open letter to the press criticizing alleged security failings at Zaventem airport. They alleged that 50 ISIS supporters are still working at the airport.
Some people suspected of having fought in Syria came to the airport as “false tourists”. We reported their presence but we do not know if anything was done with that information, the letter read according to the Daily Mail.
The officers complained about people who worked at the airport whom they allege celebrated the Paris attacks.
“When we checked these people, we were surprised more than once. It was men with a radical ideology and a long police history,’ they said.
‘Even today, there are at least 50 supporters of the Islamic state who work at the airport. They have a security badge and have access to the cockpit of a plane”
DOJ: Lawyers Behind the N. Carolina Bathroom Lawsuit
Radicals….throughout the whole Justice Department but here are the backgrounds of those who Loretta Lynch has assigned to sue North Carolina on the bathroom (genderless) lawsuit. Terrifying….
The Justice Department sent out the guidance letter to public schools in several languages and that document is here.
This is a matter placed under Title IX, Sex Discrimination.
By the way, make sure you use proper words as you could be sued in this regard as well.
These Are the Radical DOJ Lawyers Suing North Carolina Over Transgender Bathroom Use
PJ Media published the Every Single One series in 2011. The series documented the Obama administration’s hiring of radical lawyers to fill the career ranks in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.
Every single one of the new attorney hires were radical leftists or partisans.
Since 2011, the situation has only gotten worse. Much worse.
The Civil Rights Division exercises enormous power over the everyday lives of Americans: they are involved in employment, education, housing, religious liberty, abortion, prisons, policing, and much, much more.
The radical beliefs of these radical lawyers have turned into radical administration policies.
The most recent example? The lawsuits aimed at North Carolina intended to create a federal civil right for men to use women’s bathrooms and locker rooms.
We have already provided the resumes of the new lawyers who will oversee the 2016 elections. Now let’s meet the ones who want to oversee bathrooms.
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The complaint filed by North Carolina had Justice Department lawyers from the Employment Litigation section as well as other DOJ Civil Rights Division sections.
Chief Delora Kennebrew
The Employment Section is headed by Delora Kennebrew.
Kennebrew hails from Savannah, Georgia. She was president of the Black Law Student Association at Mercer University’s law school in Macon.
Under Kennebrew, the Employment Section has pursued case after case against fire departments and other municipal entities, forcing them to abandon qualification tests where blacks and Hispanics scored lower than whites. Other settlements have forced municipalities to pay tens of thousands of dollars for using qualification tests for fire and police jobs.
One case she oversaw against Austin, Texas, forced the city to set aside 30 jobs for black and Hispanic applicants.
Kennebrew is listed as the point of contact in the letter North Carolina received from the Justice Department this month. That means she is the central manager on the matter.
Kennebrew is most certainly a member of the Senior Executive Service. That means that an incoming Trump administration can move her after January 2017 to any other federal agency in any part of the country, such as the National Weather Service in Duluth.
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Candyce Phoenix
Candyce Phoenix is also on the complaint suing North Carolina.
Her resume noted her senior thesis was devoted to a “case study of race and FedEx field,” the football stadium where the Washington Redskins play.
Phoenix majored in “Comparative Ethnic Studies” at Columbia, where she was a columnist for the student newspaper. You can read her writings here. Her favorite topics? Race, race, and race.
In a column titled “Hear Ye, Hear Ye, All Negroes,” she wrote about President George Bush’s “bogus” visit to Howard University:
[Bush] was ecstatic to be able to visit the Negroes on such an important occasion. Needless to say, Bush was not well received, which was to be expected given his recent two percent approval rating among African Americans. One of my classmates said it best when she complained that having Bush on campus was “like inviting the master to the slave cabins for dinner.”
Phoenix also penned “It Was Raining Oreos,” which refers to former RNC Chairman Michael Steele with a racial epithet. She wrote “What I Learned from White People at Howard” (she learned the best ones are “race traitors”). She also wrote “I’m Black,” which stated: “Our curriculum places disproportionate importance on white scholars and effectively denies the importance of scholars of color.”
Yes, yes, we heard it all before. But these are the sort of views held by lawyers earning six-figure taxpayer-funded salaries to fundamentally transform America.
The race-soaked discontent with America no longer is confined to crackpots on campus.
Candyce Phoenix
Phoenix’s qualifications didn’t end with her tiresome critical race studies dogma. She was an activist from the start. Phoenix served as the “United Students of Color Campus Liaison” at Columbia — a real office.
She served as the events chair for the American Constitution Society, a left-wing lawyers club that has mostly failed in its efforts to match the heft and influence of the Federalist Society. She worked with the left-wing “Election Protection” organization, which funnels potential plaintiffs toward civil rights organizations.
She also did a stint with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, an organization that routinely fights election integrity laws like Voter ID. (Thankfully, those efforts have recently failed, such as in North Carolina.)
Now, buckle up:
After a Danish cartoonist was nearly murdered by an Islamist with an axe, Phoenix wrote to the Washington Post:
[D]o Muslims really have avenues to express their discontent by what we consider normal democratic means? And if they do, do we listen?
Phoenix started at DOJ less than a year ago, which means she hasn’t vested into civil service protections and can also be moved by a new administration.
Alisa Philo
Philo, hired in October 2015, was co-president of Women of Stanford Law, an organization with a “Social Justice Committee” that organizes “donation based efforts and social justice programing” at Stanford Law School.
Philo clerked for First Circuit Court of Appeal Judge Sandra Lynch (appointed by Clinton) and federal Judge Keith Ellison (Clinton). Philo also began her tenure at Justice less than a year ago; she too has not vested her employment.
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Nadia Said
Said was a fellow at Equal Justice America, but her real Civil Rights Division bona fides came from her time spent at the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights.
The Chicago Lawyers’ Committee was originally designed to end official discrimination, but it has since morphed into a Tides Foundation, Soros-funded leftist organization pushing radical legal theories.
The group has opposed election-integrity measures. It has deployed teams of lawyers to polling locations ostensibly to protect voting rights, but in practice to aid Democrats.
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Christina Cheung
Christina Cheung says she worked as a political consultant prior to her hiring at the Justice Department in 2015. Since becoming a Justice Department lawyer, she has also become a Hillary Clinton donor. When working with Gloria Allred in private practice, Cheung was involved in attempts to torque campus sexual assault cases against universities such as Boise State.
That complaint said colleges are required to “take proactive measures to prevent sexual harassment and violence,” and that “the mere presence” of an accused perpetrator on campus “gives rise to a sexually hostile atmosphere.”
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Richard Sexton
Sexton came to the Justice Department from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commision. While at the EEOC, he brought cases against businesses such as Service Master, Terminix, Subway franchises, and prison management companies.
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Catherine Sellers
Sellers worked at “Legal Voice,” a group in Seattle dedicated to “transgender rights,” “protecting reproductive justice,” and “advancing economic justice.”
The resume Sellers submitted to the Justice Department for employment consideration documents her time at the Yale University Art Gallery. Wrote Sellers:
Recruited diverse student groups to co-host gallery events and organized “Yale Liberal Party debate on art repatriation, Day With(out) Art” event recognizing LBGT artists and a collaborative tour focusing on women’s issues.
She was involved in the Immigrant Families Advocacy Project, a group dedicated to providing legal services to illegal aliens.
See below: the Justice Department does not want you to see her entire resume. They redacted a portion pertaining to “interests”:
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Kunti Dudakia Salazar
Kunti Dudakia Salazar was an A-team leftist activist before she came to the Justice Department in June of 2015. She graduated summa cum laude with a Woman’s Studies degree from UCLA. There, she was active in both the African student union as well as the Indian student union. She also won the Constance Coiner award for “research on feminist/working class issues.”
At law school in Berkeley, she was a founding member of the “Women of Color Collective,” a group dedicated to providing “a supportive space for African-American, Asian-American, Latina, Native-American, and other women and transgender students of color.” Hard to imagine that could have been in short supply at Berkeley.
The Facebook page for the organization toggles between farce and frightening, reframing the student experience through the lens of race and oppression.
She also worked for the Henderson Center for Social Justice on issues “regarding black women, mental health and incarceration,” and served as the “activist coordinator” for the “Berkeley Critical Race Studies Scholars Society.”
She worked for the ACLU in Los Angeles on “racial profiling” and “police misconduct” issues.
The Justice Department also redacted her interests, as well as the name of a professor — David Sklansky — with whom she worked on a law review article.
Dudakia Salazar began her time at the Justice Department in June 2015, and thus her probationary period has not yet ended.
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Stay tuned to learn about the other Civil Rights Division sections suing North Carolina over trans rights.
More than 100 McAuliffe/Clinton Donations
Feds Reportedly Examining More Than 100 Donations Made to Both Clinton Foundation and McAuliffe Campaign
LawNewz: Federal investigators are reportedly examining more than 100 donations made to both the Clinton Foundation and Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s campaign as part of a larger probe into whether McAuliffe’s campaign accepted illegal contributions.
McAuliffe is a longtime friend to both Bill and Hillary Clinton, having previously served as Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign chairman and as a board member of the Clinton Global Initiative, a part of the Clinton Foundation.
A report by CNN on Monday indicated that federal investigators have spent the past year examining whether McAuliffe’s 2013 gubernatorial campaign accepted illegal contributions. The probe is reportedly focused on contributions made by Chinese businessman Wang Wenliang. However, sources familiar with the probe also told CNN “investigators have scrutinized McAuliffe’s time as a board member of the Clinton Global Initiative, a vehicle of the charitable foundation set up by former President Bill Clinton.”
Adding to the initial report, federal officials reportedly told NBC News late on Monday that investigators are examining more than 100 contributions made to both the Clinton Foundation and McAuliffe’s 2013 campaign. Wang is reportedly one of the individuals who made overlapping contributions, pledging $2 million dollars to the Clinton Foundation and another $120,000 McAuliffe’s campaign.
There is currently no allegation of wrongdoing on the part of the Clinton Foundation, according to the reports. The investigation is said to be focused on McAuliffe and campaign contributions. Federal law prohibits campaigns from accepting contributions from foreign nationals. However, a spokesman told CNN that Wang has permanent resident status which makes him eligible to make campaign donations.
On Monday, a lawyer for the campaign denied any wrongdoing and promised McAuliffe would cooperate with the investigation. McAuliffe issued his own statement on Tuesday morning denying any wrongdoing and saying he is “confident” Wang is a legitimate donor. According to Politico, the statement reads, in part:
This has nothing to do with the Clinton Foundation. This was an allegation of a gentleman who gave a check to my campaign. I didn’t bring the donor in. I didn’t bring him into the Clinton Foundation. I’m not even sure if I’ve ever met the person, to be honest with you. I know the folks that worked at his company. Has nothing to do with the Clinton Foundation. And I can tell you this, I’ve worked and helped the president on the foundation. I’ve traveled all over the globe with Bill Clinton. And you go to Africa and other places around the globe and you look what he has done for children, health clinics, AIDS research all over the globe, it really is something to see. I’ve traveled to Malawi and seen him with young women businesses over there. They have really done great spectacular work to help people’s lives. And that’s what’s what he’s focused on. He’s done a great job and honestly I’m very proud to be part of it.
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The investigation also involves the Clinton Foundation, according to CNN. CBS reported last year that Wang’s company, Rilin Enterprises, pledged in 2013 to give the organization $2 million. CNN noted that there is “no allegation” of impropriety on the foundation’s part and that McAuliffe formerly served on its board. Last year, the foundation’s decision to accept Wang’s company’s pledge drew pointed criticism because of Wang’s ties to the Chinese government—the billionaire used to be a delegate to the country’s parliament.
“Indirectly the Clinton Foundation has political influence, that’s why people give to it,” Jim Mann, former Beijing bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, told CBS. “People give to the Clinton Foundation particularly because it is the Clintons and because they are prominent politicians in the United States.”
The Department of Justice and the FBI both declined to discuss their investigation with The Daily Beast, and a spokesperson for McAuliffe said the governor would cooperate.
Wang and his company have spent big to influence American politics—$1.4 million from 2012 to 2015 to lobby Congress and the State Department, according to CBS’s estimate. And Dandong Port Co., a subsidiary of Rilin Enterprises, has hired former politicos to lobby for its interests, as lobbying disclosure forms show.
It has also shelled out for nongovernmental efforts, including a grant to New York University in 2010 to create a center for U.S.-China Relations, as well as a grant to launch the Zbigniew Brzezinski Institute on Geostrategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in 2014.
Rilin Enterprises isn’t the first Chinese business to get mixed up in McAuliffe problems. McAuliffe and Tony Rodham, Hillary Clinton’s brother, courted Chinese investors for the troubled electric car company GreenTech Automotive. Politico called Rodham “a kind of traveling salesman” for the company.
During McAuliffe’s 2013 gubernatorial campaign, his work with the company became a liability—especially because of allegations that McAuliffe and Rodham used their political connections to unfairly expedite the visa process for their investors. The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general issued a report in 2015 saying a top official there, Alejandro Mayorkas, made “an appearance of favoritism and special access.”
“Mayorkas intervened in an administrative appeal related to the denial of a regional center’s application to receive EB-5 funding to manufacture electric cars through investments in a company in which Terry McAuliffe was the board chairman,” the report says. “The intervention was unprecedented and, because of the political prominence of the individuals involved, as well as USCIS’s traditional deference to its administrative appeals process, staff perceived it as politically motivated.” More from the DailyBeast.