Trump Aides Go Where Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay Went Before

[babylonsister]

Trump Aides Go Where Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay Went Before
Sweatshops no longer rule the Northern Mariana Islands. Now, a sketchy casino industry dominates.

Noah Lanard
May. 30, 2018 6:00 AM


When the Best Sunshine Live casino opened in the Northern Mariana Islands in late 2015, the local press described it as a temporary training facility for a forthcoming permanent casino. It was nestled in a drab duty-free mall on Saipan—a US island nearly 4,000 miles west of Hawaii—and lacked the usual trappings of a casino, such as a hotel. A year later, Bloomberg reported that it might be “the most successful casino of all time.” Best Sunshine’s VIP tables were each bringing in nearly eight times as much money per table as those at the biggest casinos in Macau, the most lucrative gambling haven in the world. Macau gambling promoters told Bloomberg that Imperial Pacific, the casino’s Hong Kong-based owner, was either inflating its numbers or facilitating money laundering. Eight casino executives and analysts later said there was no way to generate such high betting volumes legitimately.

Local critics have alleged that Imperial Pacific, with the backing of the islands’ government, has evaded regulation as it puts workers in danger and enables a sketchy scheme for Chinese gamblers to convert money into foreign currencies. But as the company and the government make their latest push in Washington, seeking permission from Congress to hire foreign workers for the casino and other businesses, they have powerful allies on their side: two former Donald Trump campaign aides and their Washington lobbying firm with ties to onetime Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.

Their work is part of a now-familiar pattern of former Trump advisers signing up lobbying clients with ties to foreign officials or companies battling allegations of misconduct. The efforts to trade on connections to Trump often aren’t subtle. Turnberry Solutions, the firm founded by the Trump campaign aides lobbying for the Northern Mariana Islands, shares a name with the Trump Turnberry golf resort in Scotland.

A few months after Trump became president, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) hired former Trump campaign adviser Jason Osborne to be its man in Washington. A business card obtained by Mother Jones lists Osborne as the director of the Washington office of the CNMI government. And in September 2017, the CNMI hired Turnberry Solutions, founded by Osborne and fellow Trump campaign veteran Mike Rubino, to secure the extension of a foreign work visa program that drives the local economy, including the casino. The Northern Marianas Business Alliance, a newly formed group of local business interests that includes Imperial Pacific, hired Turnberry one week later.

Politico reported in November that Lewandowski was working and sleeping in Turnberry’s Capitol Hill office when he was in Washington and that he had once been on a conference call with Turnberry and one of its clients. His friend John Fredericks told Politico the building could be considered the “Turnberry Embassy” before adding, “Nobody knows what Turnberry is, so I would call it the Lewandowski Embassy.” But Lewandowski has denied any involvement with Turnberry. Osborne told Mother Jones this month that Lewandowski “has nothing to do with the CNMI or the firm.” Fox News reported soon afterward that Lewandowski is joining Vice President Mike Pence’s political action committee to work on the 2018 and 2020 elections.

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https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/05/trump-aides-go-where-jack-abramoff-and-tom-delay-went-before/

[Achilleaze]

1. Comrade Casino* & his KGOP republican Casino Rats

are possessed of deplorable republican family values.

* aka republican Draft-Dodger-in-Thief