Spooky Dude Soros is Back with Big Bucks for Hillary

Posted on July 27, 2016July 27, 2016 by Denise Simon

NYT’s

When some new policy, decision or regulation comes out from government that we question, it generally has Soros behind it. Lately we are hearing so much about prison reform and criminal sentencing reform. Well, when it comes to these discussions, seems Soros was behind much of this as well going back to 2010 funding legal assistance for terrorists. What you say? Yup…..for a summary go here and you will find names like Sammy “The Bull” Gravano, “the Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel Rahman and Weather Underground terrorist David J. Gilbert.

George Soros rises again

The billionaire, who had dialed back his giving, has committed more than $25 million to supporting Hillary Clinton and other Democratic candidates and causes.

PHILADELPHIA — George Soros is back.

Politico: The billionaire investor, who scaled back his political giving after a then-unprecedented $27 million spending spree to try to defeat George Bush in 2004, has quietly reemerged as a leading funder of Democratic politics — and as a leading bogeyman of conservatives.

Soros has donated or committed more than $25 million to boost Hillary Clinton and other Democratic candidates and causes, according to Federal Election Commission records and interviews with his associates and Democratic fundraising operatives. And some of his associates say they expect Soros, who amassed a fortune estimated at $24.9 billion through risky currency trades, to give even more as Election Day nears.

The 85-year-old Hungarian-born New Yorker had planned to attend his first-ever Democratic convention here to watch Clinton, with whom he has a 25-year relationship, accept the Democratic presidential nomination on Thursday. But an associate said he decided to cancel the trip this week because Soros, who recently returned to active trading, felt he needed to closely monitor the economic situation in Europe.

Nonetheless, people close to Soros say he seems more politically engaged than he’s been in years, motivated they say by a combination of faith in Clinton and fear of her GOP rival Donald Trump, who Soros has accused of “doing the work of ISIS” by stoking fears.

Soros’s political adviser Michael Vachon said his boss “has been a consistent donor to Democratic causes, but this year the political stakes are exceptionally high.” Vachon added: “They were high even before Trump became the nominee because of the hostility on the other side toward many of the issues George cares most about and has worked to support for many years, including immigration reform, criminal justice reform and religious tolerance.”

The willingness of Soros to turn on the cash spigot full force to beat Trump is seen in Democratic finance circles as a very good sign for Clinton. Perhaps more than any other donor on the left, Soros is seen as having the potential to catalyze giving by others rich activists.

To be sure, other elite liberal donors are also stroking big checks, including San Francisco environmentalist Tom Steyer (who has donated $31 million in 2016, albeit almost entirely to a super PAC he controls), New York hedge funder Don Sussman ($13.2 million to various campaigns and committees) and media moguls Haim Saban and Fred Eychaner ($11.1 million each). But few have the bellwether effect of Soros.

The cumulative effect of the mobilization of the left’s richest benefactors has helped Clinton’s campaign and its allied outside groups mount a massive financial advantage over committees backing Trump, who is regarded with suspicion at best by the GOP donor class. That’s allowed Clinton and her allies to build a humming campaign machine that dwarfs Trump’s.

Soros has had a hand in funding many pieces of that.

Through the end of June, Soros had donated $7 million to a super PAC supporting Clinton called Priorities USA Action, according to FEC filings, making it the biggest recipient of his political largesse this cycle. And three Democratic operatives say he’s considering donating another $3 million to the group.

FEC records also show Soros gave $2 million to American Bridge 21st Century, an opposition research super PAC that has been targeting Trump and other Republican candidates, and $700,000 to an assortment of Democratic party committees, PACs and campaigns, including Clinton’s.

Soros has committed $5 million to a super PAC called Immigrant Voters Win that’s devoted to increasing turnout among low-propensity Hispanic voters in key swing states, though FEC records show he’d donated only $3 million through the end of June, the period covered by the most recent filings.

Soros has committed another $5 million to a non-profit devoted to fighting conservative efforts to restrict voting, according to the associate. That group, the Voting Rights Trust, is run partly by Clinton’s campaign lawyer Marc Elias. It’s registered under a section of the tax code that doesn’t require it to disclose its donors, meaning that Soros’s donations and those of other donors will never be formally publicly reported to the government, and also that it could be possible that some donations might be passed through from other groups.

Likewise, Vachon said Soros has committed or donated $2 million to a voter mobilization group called America Votes that doesn’t disclose its donors and another $1 million or so to a handful of state-based voter mobilization groups that are not required to disclose their donors.

And this month, according to Vachon, Soros donated $1.5 million each to Senate Majority PAC, a super PAC boosting Democratic Senate candidates, and to Planned Parenthood Votes, a super PAC that boosts candidates who support abortion rights, including Clinton.

The giving pattern and motivations seem similar to 2004, when Soros, motivated by a deep and abiding opposition to the Iraq War and other Bush administration policies, sprinkled $27 million around a handful of liberal groups boosting John Kerry’s unsuccessful challenge to Bush.

That spending, coupled with Soros’s inflammatory rhetoric — he compared the Bush administration’s rhetoric to that of the Nazis and described defeating the Bush as “a matter of life and death” — made him a target of sometimes vicious personal attacks from conservative politicians and media outlets casting him as a puppet-master, a self-hating Jew, a communist or worse.

Some allies say the public chastisement ate at Soros, as did the inability of his political spending spree to oust Bush, and his perhaps slightly ironic concerns that campaign finance laws allowed rich Americans like himself too much influence in politics.

And, after 2004, he dialed back his political giving, suggesting he might never again spend as heavily on politics, characterizing his involvement during the 2004 election as “an exception.”

Instead, he focused his philanthropic attention on his international foundations, which have donated more than $13 billion over the past three decades to non-profits that aim to defend human rights, shape the democratic process in Eastern Europe and expand access to healthcare and education in the U.S. and around the world.

And he played a formative role in the 2005 launch of a secretive club of major liberal donors called the Democracy Alliance. It sought to steer cash away from groups fighting short-term electoral battles and towards ones seeking to build intellectual infrastructure for long-term fights outside the Democratic Party, such as combating climate change, income inequality and the outsize role of big money in politics.

One liberal operative this week recalled asking someone close to Soros why the billionaire had reduced his spending on partisan politics.

“The answer was that he found it ‘odious’ for any one individual to throw too much political weight around through donations,” recalled the operative. “Maybe, in light of what’s happened in the last few cycles, it seems less so, or he feels like he needs to help balance the outside-money scales a bit,” the operative added.

Additionally, though Soros backed Barack Obama over Clinton in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, he quickly soured on the Democratic president, who he felt was insufficiently aggressive in pursuing liberal priorities. He expressed frustration with Obama during a private Democracy Alliance meeting in 2010, which some interpreted as a willingness to back a primary challenger in 2012. And though he backed Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, that year he told a close Clinton ally that he regretted supporting Obama over her, and praised Clinton for giving him an open door to discuss policy, according to emails released late last year by the State Department.

Soros “said he’s been impressed that he can always call/meet with you on an issue of policy and said he hasn’t met with the President ever (though I thought he had),” Clinton ally Neera Tanden wrote to the then-Secretary of State. Tanden continued that Soros “then said he regretted his decision in the primary — he likes to admit mistakes when he makes them and that was one of them. He then extolled his work with you from your time as First Lady on.”

The Soros associate dismissed the conversation characterized in Tanden’s email as “idle dinner party chatter,” suggesting it did not represent Soros’s full assessment of Obama.

But Jordan Wood, the national finance director for a PAC called End Citizens United, on Tuesday suggested Soros’s giving may have slumped in recent years partly because of Obama. “With George, his giving has spiked because of Hillary. He really likes Hillary Clinton and he didn’t like Obama as much,” said Wood, in an interview at a reception at a Center City bar for the campaign finance reform group Every Voice.

End Citizens United, which supports candidates including Clinton who pledge to push campaign finance reforms, this year received a $5,000 check from Soros, the maximum he could legally give to that group. He also has donated to Every Voice, as has his son Jonathan Soros, who attended Tuesday’s reception.

Jonathan Soros wouldn’t comment on his father’s increased political giving, but he pointed to George Soros’s recent writing about Trump, which includes one column in which Soros warned voters that it’s important to “resist the siren song of the likes of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz” if the U.S. is to effectively fight terrorism.

IRS/FBI Get Clinton Foundation Referral, No DNC?

Posted on July 27, 2016July 27, 2016 by Denise Simon

While this is a very positive step that IRS Commissioner Koskinen has approved an audit of the Clinton Foundation, what is the timeline? Further, a referral has also been made to the FBI and the Federal Election Commission.

Then, the former top attorney general and the Department of Justice told us during his talk at the Democrat convention in Philadelphia that he has known Hillary for 25 years. Ah, so he knows all but, ‘facts don’t matter’, do they? Nah and Holder went on to talk about criminal justice reform. Is all this talk about criminal justice reform really to head off any future prosecution of the powerbrokers in DC? Hah!

The Daily Caller has reported, “The Exempt Organization Program is the division of the IRS that regulates the operations of public foundations and charities. It’s the same division that was led by former IRS official Lois Lerner when hundreds of conservative, evangelical and tea party non-profit applicants were illegally targeted and harassed by tax officials.” The House referral letter is found here with evidence.

Two particular areas of focus of the requested audit include Laureate Education and Uranium One. Read the complete details here from Daily Caller.

**** So what about the Federal Election Commission and the IRS auditing the entire DNC? Seems lawyers were quite busy as noted here by Free Beacon:

Democratic Party lawyers had to step in repeatedly to prevent illegal or prohibited political fundraising by a new Democratic National Committee group designed to coordinate legal strategy with hundreds of friendly attorneys, internal documents show.

Multiple proposed fundraising pitches by the new Democratic Lawyers Committee (DLC) invoked the names of high-ranking administration officials in what would have been violations of federal laws and White House policies against political activity by administration officials, according to emails between the group’s top staffers and their attorneys.

The hacked emails, released by the group WikiLeaks last week, provide a detailed narrative of the DLC’s formation and its hectic first few months, which saw celebrity attorney Gloria Allred micromanaging the group’s self-described “propaganda,” a senior DNC staffer admonishing colleagues for nearly spoiling its rollout with illicit fundraising asks, and DNC staffers pretending to be then-chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz on email in order to land a venue for a high-dollar fundraiser.

“The stated goal of the DLC is to organize the legal community and [we] must arm them with the information, contacts, and inspiration they need to provide significant support for the Democratic Party’s fight to maintain control of the White House and help elect Democrats up and down the ballot in 2016,” according to talking points circulated internally. More to the story here.

The comes the White House collaborating with the DNC and concocting an event for foreign money. Ya don’t say huh?

“Hi Vet Team, we would like to do a finance event at Hogan Lovells US LLP … on June 14th with White House Political Advisor David Simas and DNC CEO Amy Dacey,” Chalupa wrote in an email. “Can you let us know if this venue passes vet? Thanks!”

One day later, Alan Reed, the DNC’s compliance director, responded to the request by saying that he saw “no real issues.” Reed wanted to make sure everyone was fine with using the venue given the “significant lobbying” that they perform.

Attached to the email was the background check for the firm, which noted, “Hogan Lovells lobbies the federal government on behalf of a number of U.S. groups and organizations.” It contained a list of departments the firm lobbies, which included the House and the Senate along with the Departments of Defense, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, State, and Interior, among others.

The event was given the go-ahead.

The background check said Hogan Lovells did not appear in the Justice Department’s Foreign Agents Registration Unit (FARA).

However, the firm does appear on the FARA database and is currently registered to work on behalf of both the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia and the government of Japan in 2016, FARA disclosures show. Free Beacon has additional information here.

So, what about the collusion between the DNC and the Clinton Foundation? Ah glad you asked.

Taken in part from the Washington Examiner: A hacker who claims to have infiltrated the Democratic National Committee’s server posted documents on Tuesday he says came from the party’s digital files. Many of the new documents contained information about how the Clinton campaign and its allies should respond to criticism of the Clinton Foundation’s revenue sources given controversy over the fact that the philanthropic network accepted donations from foreign entities while Clinton served as secretary of state. More here.

Guccifer 2.0 DNC Clinton files: 2016er Attacks by Washington Examiner on Scribd

Hey FBI, the Investigation into the DNC Hacking is Over Here

Posted on July 26, 2016July 26, 2016 by Denise Simon

Anyone ever see that Jack Ryan movie ‘Shadow Recruit’? It is playing out in a more nefarious form in real time.

May 2016: Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said today that presidential campaigns are a target for cyber intruders and that this political season has already seen some attempted hacks.

“We have already had some indications of that,” he said in response to a question about campaign website hacking, after speaking at the Center for Bipartisan Policy in Washington, D.C.

“I anticipate as the campaigns intensify, we will probably have more of it,” he added. He did not provide specifics about any attacks, but it has been reported that some hacking groups, such as Anonymous, have threatened to launch “total war” against Donald Trump‘s presidential campaign. Read more from ABC here.

**** So –>> Director of National Intelligence James Clapper says the FBI is helping campaigns tighten up to protect against the threat and how has that worked out so far?

*****

Via ThreatConnect: In our initial Guccifer 2.0 analysis, ThreatConnect highlighted technical and non-technical inconsistencies in the purported DNC hacker’s story as well as a curious theme of French “connections” surrounding various Guccifer 2.0 interactions with the media. We called out these connections as they overlapped, albeit minimally, with FANCY BEAR infrastructure identified in CrowdStrike’s DNC report.

Now, after further investigation, we can confirm that Guccifer 2.0 is using the Russia-based Elite VPN service to communicate and leak documents directly with the media. We reached this conclusion by analyzing the infrastructure associated with an email exchange with Guccifer 2.0 shared with ThreatConnect by Vocativ’s Senior Privacy and Security reporter Kevin Collier. This discovery strengthens our ongoing assessment that Guccifer 2.0 is a Russian propaganda effort and not an independent actor.

Analyzing the Headers from Guccifer 2.0 Emails

On June 21, 2016, TheSmokingGun reported they communicated with Guccifer 2.0 via a French AOL account. We examined the French language settings observed in Guccifer 2.0’s Twitter metadata as well as a pattern of Twitter follows that suggested Guccifer 2.0’s account was created from a French IP address. We hypothesized at the time that Guccifer 2.0 might be using French infrastructure to interact with the media.

During the Email Import process ThreatConnect analyzes an email message header and highlights indicators of interest with a color code that reveals if the indicators already exist within the platform. This helps overburdened eyes or greenhorn analysts quickly understand what they are seeing. At the same time ThreatConnect excludes legitimate or benign details that are not of value to our investigation.

As we can see here within ThreatConnect, Guccifer 2.0’s AOL email message reveals the originating IP address as 95.130.15[.]34 (DigiCube SaS – France). This is the IP address of the host which authenticated into AOL’s web user interface and sent the email. We can also tell this IP was not spoofed because the metadata was added by AOL when sent from within their infrastructure with appropriate DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) configurations.

The fact that Guccifer 2.0 is indeed leveraging a French AOL account stands out from a technical perspective. Very few hackers with Guccifer 2.0’s self-acclaimed skills would use a free webmail service that would give away a useful indicator like the originating IP address. Most seasoned security professionals will be familiar with email providers that are more likely to cooperate with law enforcement and how much metadata a provider might reveal about their users. Taken together with inconsistencies in Guccifer 2.0’s remarks that make his technical claims sound implausible, this detail makes us think the individual(s) operating the AOL account are not really hackers or even that technically savvy. Instead, propagandist or public relations individuals who are interacting with journalists.

Drilling into Guccifer 2.0 Infrastructure: Picture of a VPN Starts to Emerge

As we focused in on IP Address 95.130.15[.]34 we queried public sources such as Shodan as well as Censys to discover what services might be enabled on this host. The goal of this was to better understand if this infrastructure is owned and operated, leased or co-opted by Guccifer 2.0 and how the infrastructure might be used to create space between an originating “source” network and investigators, or curious journalists.

According to Shodan, OpenSSH (TCP/22), DNS (UDP/53) and Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) (TCP/1723) services have been enabled on this host. Secure shell (SSH) and point-to-point tunneling protocol services strongly suggest a VPN and/or a proxy, both of which would allow the Guccifer 2.0 persona to put distance between his originating network and those with whom he is communicating.

The SSH fingerprint can be used as an identifier, linking other IP addresses that use the same SSH encryption key. The SSH fingerprint for 95.130.15[.]34 (DigiCube SaS – France) is Fingerprint: 80:19:eb:c8:80:a1:c6:ea:ea:37:ba:c0:26:c6:7f:61. Searching for other servers that share this fingerprint at the time of writing, we discovered six additional IP Addresses over the course of our research (95.130.9[.]198; 95.130.15[.]36; 95.130.15[.]37; 95.130.15[.]38; 95.130.15[.]40; 95.130.15[.]41).

Each IP address falls within the 95.130.8.0/21 network range. This range is assigned to Digicube SAS, a French hosting provider which is assigned the Autonomous System AS196689. An IP address is analogous to the apartment numbers in an apartment building. The entire building is owned and operated by AS196689, but certain IP addresses may be let out to other companies and organizations.

The fact that Guccifer 2.0 would use a proxy service is not surprising, and our first stop was to check with various TOR proxy registration sites. None of these seven IP addresses are part of reported TOR infrastructure from what we were able to uncover. Read the full comprehensive detailed cyber investigation as published here by ThreatConnect.

*****

Meanwhile: FAS: The headquarters complex of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) of the Russian Federation has expanded dramatically over the past decade, a review of open source imagery reveals.

Since 2007, several large new buildings have been added to SVR headquarters, increasing its floor space by a factor of two or more. Nearby parking capacity appears to have quadrupled, more or less.

The compilation of open source imagery was prepared by Allen Thomson. See Expansion of Russian Foreign Intelligence Service HQ (SVR; Former KGB First Main Directorate) Between 2007 and 2016, as of July 11, 2016.

Whether the expansion of SVR headquarters corresponds to changes in the Service’s mission, organizational structure or budget could not immediately be learned.

Russian journalist and author Andrei Soldatov, who runs the Agentura.ru website on Russian security services, noted that the expansion “coincides with the appointment of the current SVR director, Mikhail Fradkov, in 2007.” He recalled that when President Putin introduced Fradkov to Service personnel, he said that the SVR should endeavor to help Russian corporations abroad, perhaps indicating a new mission emphasis.

Russian intel buildings Russian intel from air Photos courtesy of FAS

Saudi Arabia Plotting to Overthrow the Iranian Regime?

Posted on July 25, 2016July 25, 2016 by Denise Simon

This has been building for sometime but is the White House listening?

President Obama’s readiness to negotiate with the Iranians met with considerable alarm in Riyadh. Though less openly vocal than the Israeli government, WikiLeaks documents and other sources indicated that Saudis were exceedingly frustrated by the Obama imitative. To the Saudi elite, the JCPOA was an indication of Washington’s willingness to tolerate Iran’s expansionism at the cost of its historical alliance with the Arab states in the Middle East. To make their feelings known, some officials in the royal circle urged the kingdom to match Iran’s nuclear advances. For example, Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former Saudi intelligence chief and an influential member of the elite, declared that Riyadh will not live in the shadow of a nuclear-armed Iran. In 2011, he stated that should Iran cross the nuclear threshold, Saudi Arabia may react by building its own nuclear enrichment capabilities.

In fact, Saudi Arabia has already laid down the foundation for its own nuclear infrastructure. Admittedly, the nuclear energy program could provide the infrastructure for a clandestine weapons program, especially if Riyadh decides to enrich its own uranium. But observers have argued that purchasing enrichment technology or, better still, nuclear weapons from Pakistan is a more plausible scenario. Saudi Arabia has a long history of collaboration with Pakistan and, by all accounts, financed Abdul Qadeer Khan, the “father” of its nuclear weapons. In 2013, Mark Urban, the BBC defense correspondent, claimed that, as part of the finance deal, the Pakistanis fabricated a number of warheads to be transferred to Riyadh in an emergency. Other journalists have supported the “off-the-shelf” Pakistani arsenal theory as well. However, it is hard to assess the veracity of these reports. The Saudis have a vested interest in demonstrating that the nuclear deal with Iran would spur proliferation. Having objected to the impending JCPOA, Saudis found it useful to disclose information strengthening the proliferation scenario. More comprehensive important details here.

Prince Turki bin Faisal Al-Saud Drops Bombshell at Iranian Opposition Rally

At the annual gathering of Iranians outside of Paris, France on 9 July 2016, where some 100,000 showed up to express support for regime change in Tehran, one of the guest speakers dropped a bombshell announcement. Even before he took the podium, Prince Turki bin Faisal Al-Saud, appearing in the distinctive gold-edged dark cloak and white keffiyeh headdress of the Saudi royal family, of which he is a senior member, drew commentary and lots of second looks. The Prince is the founder of the King Faisal Foundation, and chairman of the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, and served from 1977-2001 as director general of Al-Mukhabarat Al-A’amah, Saudi Arabia’s intelligence agency, resigning the position on 1 September 2001, some ten days before the attacks of 9/11.

He took the podium late in the afternoon program on 9 July and, after a discourse on the shared Islamic history of the Middle East, launched into an attack on Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, whose 1979 revolution changed the course of history not just in Iran, but throughout the world. His next statement sent a shock wave through the assembly: Bin Faisal pledged support to the Iranian NCRI opposition and to its President-elect Maryam Rajavi personally. Given bin Faisal’s senior position in the Saudi royal family and his long career in positions of key responsibility in the Kingdom, it can only be understood that he spoke for the Riyadh government. The hall erupted in cheers and thunderous applause.

Iranians and others who packed the convention center in Bourget, Paris came for a day-long program attended by representatives from around the world. Organized by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the event featured a day filled with speeches and musical performances. A senior-level U.S. delegation included Linda Chavez, Chairwoman of the U.S. Center for Equal Opportunity; former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich; former Governor of Pennsylvania and Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge; Judge Michael Mukasey; former Governor of Vermont and Presidential candidate Howard Dean; and former national security advisor to President George W. Bush, Fran Townsend.

The NCRI and its key affiliate, the Mujahedeen-e Kahlq (MEK), were on the U.S. Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) list until 2012, having been placed there at the express request of Iranian president Khatami. Iranian university students formed the MEK in the 1960s to oppose the Shah’s rule. The MEK participated in the Khomeini Revolution but then was forced into exile when Khomeini turned on his own allies and obliterated any hopes for democratic reform. Granted protection by the U.S. under the 4th Geneva Convention in 2004, remnants of the MEK opposition have been stranded in Iraq, first at Camp Ashraf and now in Camp Liberty near Baghdad since U.S. forces left Iraq. Completely disarmed and defenseless, the 2,000 or so remaining residents of Camp Liberty, who are desperately seeking resettlement, come under periodic deadly attack by Iraqi forces under Iranian Qods Force direction. The most recent rocket attack on July 4th, 2016 set much of the camp ablaze and devastated the Iranians’ unprotected mobile homes. The MEK/NCRI fought their terrorist designations in the courts in both Europe and the U.S., finally winning removal in 2012. The NCRI’s national headquarters are now located in downtown Washington, DC, from where they work intensively with Congress, the media, and U.S. society to urge regime change and a genuinely liberal democratic platform for Iran.

Given the Obama administration’s close alignment with the Tehran regime, it is perhaps not surprising that the NCRI and Riyadh (both feeling marginalized by the U.S.) should find common cause to oppose the mullahs’ unceasing quest for deliverable nuclear weapons, aggressively expansionist regional agenda, and destabilizing involvement in multiple area conflicts, especially its extensive support for the murderous rule of Bashar al-Assad. Nevertheless, the implications of official Riyadh government support for the largest, most dedicated, and best-organized Iranian opposition movement will reverberate through the Middle East.

Although not openly stated by bin Faisal, the new NCRI-Riyadh alliance may be expected to involve funding, intelligence sharing, and possible collaboration in operations aimed at the shared goal of overthrowing the current Tehran regime. The alignment doubtless will change the course of events in the Middle East, and while Saudi Arabia can hardly be counted among the liberal democracies of the world, the woman-led NCRI movement declares a 10-point plan for Iran that does embrace the ideals of Western Civilization. The impact of the Saudi initiative will not be limited to Iran or the surrounding region but at least as importantly, surely will be felt internally as well, among a young and restless Saudi population that looks hopefully to the rule of King Salman and his 30-something son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman al-Saud.

DNC Emails: Big Donors Get Big Jobs in Govt

Posted on July 25, 2016July 25, 2016 by Denise Simon

Votes kinda sorta matter but money, PAC’s, foreign contributions, big donors, bundlers matter more.

But it was not a good morning for Debbie Wasserman Schultz as she addressed Florida delegates.

DNC emails: Behind the scenes look at care of big donors

McClatchy: PHILADELPHIA: In May, after yet another State Dinner at the White House passed, major Democratic donor Cookie Parker dashed off a frustrated email that was forwarded to Democratic Party officials about her failure to receive any coveted invites or board appointments.

“I have been patient and not kicked up a stink because it is not my style. But as the Obama Administration winds down, I am feeling very down about this,” wrote Parker, founder and owner of KMS, a Los Angeles software company. “I raised a lot of money for the DNC for both cycles … and here I sit venting and feeling very much under appreciated.”

On another occasion, days before a coveted State Dinner for Nordic leaders, Democratic National Committee Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz asked White House officials if they could find an extra ticket for another major donor, Florida lawyer Mitchell Berger.

On yet another, Erik Stowe, the DNC finance director for Northern California, outlined benefits given to different tiers of donors to the Democratic convention: priority booking at high-end hotels and tickets to major convention events and exclusive VIP parties.

Those were among the examples of special care – and sometimes special scrutiny – of major donors that were in thousands of leaked emails hacked from the DNC.

Many showed that while the White House often denies donors are given special treatment, the donors demand and expect it. And staff at the Democratic National Committee worked to reward donors with tickets to White House events and seats next to President Barack Obama based on a contributor’s financial generosity, many times after they blatantly asked for perks.

I think the DNC needs to get to the bottom of the facts and then take appropriate action on any of these emails Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook on ABC

About 20,000 emails were released Friday by WikiLeaks, which provided a searchable database of correspondence of seven DNC officials between January 2015 to May 2016. McClatchy could not independently verify the emails.

The White House and the DNC did not respond to requests for comment. Berger said he was grateful that Wasserman Schultz tried to get him into a State Dinner, though she was unsuccessful and he still has never been. He said both Democrats and Republicans try to reward donors. “It’s not necessarily an unusual thing thing for political parties to do,” he said. “This is my 11th presidential election. It’s not unusual.”

Other donors could not be reached for comment Sunday.

The emails include those that raise questions about the organization’s impartiality during the Democratic presidential primary between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, which cost chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz her job Sunday, and show how the DNC coordinated its message with others and responded to inquiries from journalists, including those at McClatchy.

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Waserman Schultz will no longer be given a major speaking role at the Democrats’ convention that starts Monday ion Philadephia

The emails also show several instances where Democratic staffers disagreed about which donor was more worthy of the reward.

In one exchange, National Finance Director Jordan Kaplan and Mid-Atlantic Finance Director Alexandra Shapiro argue which contributor should be allowed to sit next to Obama at a DNC event.

Kaplan told Shapiro to move Maryland ophthalmologist Sreedhar Potarazu and give the seat to New York philanthropist Philip Munger because he is the largest donor to Organizing for America, a group that pushes Obama’s policies. “It would be nice to take care of him from the DNC side,” Kaplan wrote.

But Shapiro explained that the Potarazu family had contributed $332,250 while Munger had only donated $100,600.

[Get the political buzz of the day, every day from McClatchy]

In another email, Michael Rapino, chief executive officer and president of Live Nation Entertainment, wrote that he assumed he received an invitation to the Nordic state dinner because he was not happy to be passed over the previous time.

“I know they are trying to make it up to me bc I would not donate to his party said I was done with demo party bc they should have invited me to the Canadian state dinner given I am Canadian,” he wrote to a consultant, who passed the message to the DNC.

On another occasion, the emails showed several DNC staffers busy searching for a photo from a 2015 Kennedy Center Honors reception of Obama and a donor. They couldn’t find one but the donor kept contacting them. The last email noted, “The donor just emails me again. Any news?”

Yet another email noted that Democrats were trying to connect with donor Gus Arnavat, who served in the Obama administration as the executive director for the United States on the Inter-American Development Bank and could help them meet other donors. “He is working with a group of ambassadors who want to be in Philadelphia and coordinate their own event,” DNC communications director Luis Miranda explains in an email to a convention official.

It just goes to show you their exact moral compass. I mean, they will say anything to be able to win this. I mean, this is time and time again, lie after lie Republican Donald Trump

In the hunt for dollars, the DNC was sometimes, but not always, willing to overlook potential donors with questionable backgrounds, the emails show.

The DNC approved the attendance of Roy Black, a Miami-based attorney who has represented singer Justin Bieber on a driving under the influence charge; the founder of the sexually-charged “Girls Gone Wild” video series; baseball star Alex Rodriguez in a 2013 steroid case; and conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh.

In a May 12, 2016, email, DNC finance assistant Karina Marquez asked the committee’s vetting operation to review Black as one of six possible hosts for an Obama event. Black was approved to host an Obama event in 2007.

Kevin Snowden, a DNC deputy compliance officer, wrote in a May 12, 2016 email that “the only issue is Roy Black. New issues have come up since his last vet in February 2016.” White House aide Bobby Schmuck agreed in a May 12 email that Black shouldn’t host the event but it would be “fine” for him to attend.

The DNC vetted George Lindemann Jr. after he was convicted of three counts of wire fraud in 1995 in connection with a federal investigation into insurance fraud and horse killing.

“Finance asked us to vet as potential POTUS host/donor,” Chadwick Rivard, senior research supervisor, compliance, for the DNC, wrote in a May 9, 2016, email to DNC staffers and Schmuck.

An email with summary research notes on Lindemann said that after serving 21 months in prison he “has attempted to rehabilitate his image with philanthropic activity” and has made “sizeable contributions to Democratic and Republican candidates, committees and PACs. A few of these contributions have been returned.”

Schmuck sent an email to Claytron Cox, a DNC regional finance director, and wrote that Lindemann, Jr., “fails for everything.”

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