This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, May 25, 2016:
One of the perks of having a long, close personal and financial relationship with the Clintons is freedom from prosecution. When informed that the FBI was investigating him for violating campaign finance laws, Terry McAuliffe (shown), Virginia’s governor and FOB (friend of Bill’s), expressed surprise but said, through his lawyer, that he would cooperate whenever they got around to contacting him about it.
McAuliffe’s been there before, probably before some of the investigators were even born. The Department of Justice first began investigating McAuliffe’s deals back in 1995 when Prudential Insurance Company promised to pay McAuliffe, then in the real estate business, a $375,000 fee for arranging for the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) to lease a building belonging to Prudential. On the surface nothing was wrong with that, except that at the time McAuliffe was also running the Business Leadership Forum, a fund-raising arm of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Under federal law all such fees in deals involving federal agencies such as the PBGC are restricted in order to prevent politically-connected people like McAuliffe from taking special advantage over potential rivals. Said Neil Levy, a lawyer who specializes in such deals, “There is not supposed to be any contact with the government to influence the transaction after best and final offers have been submitted.”
McAuliffe’s history is littered with examples of how he managed to turn his political network into profits not only for himself but for the Democrat Party in general and the Clintons specifically.
That same year (1995) a disaffected associate of McAuliffe’s filed suit against him and his company, The Borland Group, claiming that he had been cut out of deals (and their $2.4 million in commissions) which he had helped arrange.
Another former associate sued McAuliffe and his company for getting the shaft, claiming that between 1990 and 1995 McAuliffe’s company had used the political connections of McAuliffe and former Rep. Tony Coelho (D-Calif.) to obtain what he termed as “improper” real estate commissions.
A more recent example serves to illustrate just how McAuliffe manipulates people for his own, and his Democrat party’s, benefit. Global Crossing, a telecommunications company, was founded in 1997 by Gary Winnick. He raised some $35 million in startup capital, presumably with the help of McAuliffe, who got a cut of the action. The company rose and fell like a July 4th pop bottle rocket. In March 2000 the company’s stock traded at $61 a share, but in January 2002 the company filed for bankruptcy. Ranked by assets, it was the seventh largest such filing in U.S. history.
But the corrupt nature of Winnick, and McAuliffe, was revealed when it was learned that managers were granted special permission to receive their accumulated pension plan assets in one lump sum the day before the filing. This left thousands of the company’s employees stranded, never receiving either their severance pay packages or their own pension benefits. McAuliffe, however, saw his modest investment in the company of $100,000 skyrocket to $18 million.
The entry at DiscoverTheNetworks.org summarized the strategy nicely:
The New York Times reports that McAuliffe earned yet additional millions from trading the stock and options after the company went public in 1998. Press reports indicate that McAuliffe also did “political work” for Global Crossing CEO Gary Winnick, and even arranged a golf outing for Winnick with then-President Bill Clinton. Winnick would later contribute $1 million to Clinton’s presidential library.
Shortly after Winnick made this contribution, the Pentagon awarded Global Crossing a $400 million contract. Moreover, GC soon became the Democratic Party’s biggest corporate donor.
The appearance of impropriety in this chain of events is unmistakable.
Just how much money it took for McAuliffe to sell his soul for those millions is unknown, at least in this world. He raised $275 million (a remarkable sum at the time) to help fund Bill Clinton’s various “causes” while he was president, including chairing his legal defense fund to raise money during the Monica Lewinsky affair. That McAuliffe used those connections to make himself and the Clintons wealthy was made clear in an interview with the New York Times in 1999: “I’ve met all my business contacts through politics. It’s all interrelated.” He admitted that a lot of his success came directly or indirectly through his relationship with the Clintons: “No question. That’s a piece of it.”
So grateful is McAuliffe that when the Clintons left office he personally guaranteed the $1.3 million mortgage on their new home in Chappaqua, New York.
Lesson: It pays to be an FOB, even if one has to be an SOB to get there.
Sources:
First on CNN: Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe under federal investigation for campaign contributions
The Wall Street Journal: FBI Investigating Donations to Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe
Mother Jones: MCAULIFFE INC.
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