#10 Hillary Clinton Donor and #4 McCain Donor Indicted; Are HRC and the GOP joined at hip?

[Melinda]

ProSense posted most of this a few weeks ago, but it was lost in the midst of teeth gnashing. For the benefit of those who missed it, and with a few revisions:

Abramoff GOP Lobbying Firm Indicted, Major Hillary Clinton Donor

Greenberg Traurig (GT), a major GOP partisan law and lobbying shop, has been indicted on federal charges in the Marianas Islands sweatshop case. The firm employed notorious political fixer Jack Abramoff.

Abramoff’s firm has a long history as a conduit for illegal foreign campaign contributions. GT were Bush's Campaign Lawyers during the 2000 Florida Recount, and is now a major donor to HRC's presidential campaign, according to the lastest FEC data.

Greenberg Traurig and the Tan Family, who are the center of the Saipan sweatshop and prostitution scandal, have both made large HRC campaign contributions.

-SNIP-

Records show that beginning in the mid-1990s, Hillary Clinton developed a donor relationship with the Tan Family, a wealthy Chinese ethnic clan that owns many of the businesses implicated in the Marianas bribery, prostitution, and human trafficking scandal.

Tan money flowed into the HRC campaign coffers as recently as 2005. This raises two questions, what does John McCain and his staff know about Clinton’s ties to the Tan that the public doesn't? Why is the US Attorney recommencing the Fraud and Conspiracy trial now after it was shut down in 2002 in the first of the now notorious US Attorney firings?

ABC News:

Abramoff Firm Indicted on Theft, Conspiracy
Abramoff, His Firm and Guam Official Indicted on Nine Felony Counts
BY JUSTIN ROOD March 13, 2008

Jack Abramoff's old lobby firm has been slapped with its first indictment stemming from his misdeeds.

The attorney general for Guam issued an indictment Monday against the Greenberg Traurig firm, Abramoff and a former Guam government official on nine felony counts of theft, conspiracy and misconduct.

From 2001 to 2003, the indictment alleges, Guam Superior Court official Anthony P. Sanchez funneled $324,000 in public funds to Abramoff and Greenberg Traurig in a series of $9,000 checks, disguised as payments to a third party. The court reportedly wanted Abramoff to keep it from becoming subject to rulings by the Guam Supreme Court. Abramoff agreed to represent the court at a meeting at his Washington, D.C. restaurant, Signatures, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The payments, which were publicly reported in U.S. papers in 2005, had formed the basis of a 2002 investigation by the U.S. attorney for the region at the time, Frederick Black.

Read more: http://www.abcnews.go.com/print?id=4445847

Abramoff's Firm Fined for Illegal Foreign Campaign Donations

Greenberg Traurig (GT) has a long history as both a major GOP partisan law firm and as a conduit for illegal foreign campaign contributions. GT were Bush's campaign lawyers during the 2000 Florida Recount.

That law firm, which hosted Abramoff's lobbying shop, was previously convicted of knowingly accepting illegal foreign campaign contributions. A German paid the largest fine to date for that offense after a foreign contribution went through a GT lobbyist in 1998. Under Federal Election Commission laws, foreign individuals and companies are barred from contributing to American political campaigns and parties.

Under Abramoff’s lead, lobbying pumped more than $26 million into GT’s coffers in 2003, alone, a seven-fold increase over what it had been before Bush-Cheney took the White House.

This raises an obvious question: when are we ever going to hear more about how Jack Abramoff funneled money to the GOP from Islamic banks and fees from groups tied to terrorist finance? According to reports published in The Hill, a respected Washington political newsletter, after 9/11, Abramoff continued to do business at GT on behalf of Islamic banks that had been accused of financing terrorist groups. We must now ask, is this part of the Republican influence-peddling scheme ever going to be revealed in court documents, or is it forever going to be buried as part of Jack's plea agreement with the Bush Justice Department?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/10/17/122311/72

Abramoff’s law firm was aware of his unlawful practices months before The Washington Post first reported on them in 2004. Greenberg Traurig claims it had no knowledge of Abramoff's wrongdoing until it was revealed in The Post.

Reporting in national media, including The Washington Post which has been covering the Abramoff story closely, have virtually ignored foreign sources of fees and funding collected by Abramoff and his various shell companies, money which if it were commingled with Jack's political contributions to the Republican Party would be a violation of federal law.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/12/13/91057/126

Greenberg Traurig and the Tan Family are both major HRC campaign contributors.

Why are a big GOP law firm and lobbying shop giving so much money to Hillary?

GT appears right in the middle of the list of 20 HRC Top Contributors.

HILLARY CLINTON (D)
Top Contributors
DLA Piper $490,800
Goldman Sachs $426,100
Morgan Stanley $368,670
Citigroup Inc $353,900
EMILY's List $283,142
Lehman Brothers $254,400
JP Morgan Chase & Co $231,220
National Amusements Inc $217,500
Skadden, Arps et al $198,610
Greenberg Traurig LLP $185,400
Kirkland & Ellis $182,550
PricewaterhouseCoopers $173,650
Merrill Lynch $165,750
Time Warner $163,650
University of California $161,318
Microsoft Corp $152,570
Latham & Watkins $148,788
Cablevision Systems $146,013
Bear Stearns $145,090
Patton Boggs $142,550

Open Secrets: http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/co...019&cycle=2008


GT is listed as the #4 donor among 20 top McCain Top Contributors by Open Secrets:

JOHN MCCAIN (R)
Top Contributors
Merrill Lynch $209,050
Blank Rome LLP $191,500
Citigroup Inc $186,184
Greenberg Traurig LLP $161,937
Goldman Sachs $115,600
AT&T Inc $111,600
JPMorgan Chase & Co $98,050
Credit Suisse Group $92,100
Univision Communications $86,600
IDT Corp $84,850
Lehman Brothers $84,450
Bank of New York Mellon $82,350
Morgan Stanley $80,651
Wachovia Corp $76,750
MGM Mirage $71,500
Bridgewater Assoc $69,900
Blackstone Group $69,250
Bear Stearns $66,800
Irvine Co Apartment Community $66,100
UBS AG $65,665

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/co...424&cycle=2008

But, Greenberg Traurig does NOT appear as a Top Contributor for Barak Obama:

BARACK OBAMA (D)
Top Contributors
Goldman Sachs $522,228
UBS AG $327,302
JPMorgan Chase & Co $316,892
Lehman Brothers $302,697
National Amusements Inc $293,022
Citigroup Inc $290,146
University of California $275,046
Sidley Austin LLP $271,857
Harvard University $264,941
Google Inc $259,010
Skadden, Arps et al $248,743
Exelon Corp $227,661
Morgan Stanley $225,976
Time Warner $221,878
Jones Day $212,525
Latham & Watkins $187,208
Kirkland & Ellis $181,976
University of Chicago $179,147
Citadel Investment Group $175,900
Microsoft Corp $167,990

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.asp?id=N00009638&cycle=2008

GT actually gave $35,000 more to HRC than the $150,000 it donated to McCain.

And:

Then there are Clinton's campaign donors. Any major candidate has some dubious supporters, but Clinton's gotten money from particularly noxious sources. Start with her donation from Rupert Murdoch, who's given to no other Democrat. Add in massive amounts of money from Washington lobbyists and from industries like defense, banking, health care, and oil and energy providers (though Obama's also gotten a lot from some of these industries). Then there's Norman Hsu, who brought in over $850,000 to Hillary's campaign after returning to the US following his flight to evade a fraud conviction (Hsu was subsequently rearrested, sentenced to three years, and is facing further federal charges, and the campaign eventually returned the money he'd raised). There's the Nebraska data processing company InfoUSA, whose CEO, Vin Gupta, used private corporate jets to fly the Clintons on business, personal, and campaign trips, gave Bill Clinton a $3.3 million consulting contract, and is now being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly diverting company money to his own personal uses. Mississippi attorney Dickie Scruggs recently canceled a major December 15 Hillary fundraiser (with Bill Clinton headlining) after being indicted for trying to bribe a judge. Major international sweatshop owners, the Saipan-based Tan family, have given Clinton $26,000, complementing their previous massive support for Jack Abramoff and Tom Delay. That doesn't even count dubious supporters from the past, like Peter Paul, the convicted con-artist turned event producer who coordinated a massive Hollywood Clinton fundraiser during the 2,000 election. Taken together, it's a pretty tainted constellation of backers.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-loeb/hillary-clintons-sleaze-_b_82183.html

And:

The Securities and Exchange Commission has launched an investigation into InfoUSA, a Nebraska company that used corporate funds to fly Hillary Rodham Clinton around the country, and one of only two companies to put Bill Clinton on its payroll after he left the White House.

-snip-

Two sources familiar with the company's troubles suggested that investigators would focus their attention on executives' use of company money to feather their own nests. Gupta has been a major financial supporter of the Clintons since he met the president in the mid-1990s. Gupta and his company donated $1 million to help underwrite a lavish year 2000 New Year's Eve celebration at the White House and on the Mall.

He paid the former president $200,000 to deliver a speech to InfoUSA executives in Papillion, Neb., and signed the former president to a $3.3 million consulting deal. For the past four years, both Clintons have used Gupta's corporate plane, flying to Switzerland, Hawaii, Jamaica and Mexico -- about $900,000 worth of travel, The Post reported in May.

Earlier this year, the company's spending on the Clintons gave rise to a shareholder lawsuit complaining that hiring the former president was a "waste of corporate assets." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/21/AR2007112102280.html?hpid=topnews

So my questions are these: Why is HRC accepting contributions from George W. Bush* 2000 campaign attorneys aka Abramoff's indicted GOP Lobbying Firm who also happen to be the #4 contributor to John McCain's presidential campaign? And what exactly do Murdoch, Hsu, and Gupta have up their sleeve? Why the millions of dollars invested in the Clintons?

Does this have anything to do with the Clintons DLC affiliations?

Things that just make ya go, hmmmm.

[cali]

1. REZCO!!! Damnit, Rezco.

The amount of dirty money that the Clintons are involved with is mind boggling. Watch hillfans spin this.

[Melinda]

2. And don't forget!!

Look, quick - over there: shiny round things!



:hi:

[Melinda]

3. Fuck it, I'll go first. Did Rezko contribute to the GOP while contributing to Obama?

Did he contribute to Obama's competitor at the same time he contributed to Obama?

[merh]

4. awww, shiney bright things

neato ....

[rinsd]

5. Obama received at least $81,000 from the same firm

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/search.asp?txtCID=N00009638&name=%28all%29&employ=Greenberg+Traurig&state=%28all%29&zip=%28any+zip%29&submit=OK&amt=a&sort=A

Though this only let's me look at direct employee contributions.

I do the same thing for Hillary and I get only $116,120(including her 2006 Senate run).

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/search.asp?txtCID=N00000019&name=%28all%29&employ=Greenberg+Traurig&state=%28all%29&zip=%28any+zip%29&submit=OK&amt=a&sort=A

I can't find donations to either from the company's PAC

http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/expend.asp?strID=C00266585&cycle=2008&sort=N&Format=&Page=1

OPen Secrets on how they compile Top Contributor numbers

The organizations listed as "Top Contributors" reached this list for one of two reasons: either they gave through a political action committee sponsored by the organization, or individuals connected with the organization contributed directly to the candidate.

Under federal law, all contributions over $200 must be itemized and the donor’s occupation and employer must be requested and disclosed, if provided. The Center uses that employer/occupation information to identify the donor’s economic interest. We do this in two ways:

*

First, we apply a code to the contribution, identifying the industry. Totals for industries (and larger economic sectors) can be seen in each candidate and race profile, and in the Industry Profile section of the OpenSecrets website.
*

Second, we standardize the name of the donor’s employer. If enough contributions came in from people connected with that same employer, the organization’s name winds up on the Top Contributor list.

Of course, it is impossible to know either the economic interest that made each individual contribution possible or the motivation for each individual giver. However, the patterns of contributions provide critical information for voters, researchers and others. That is why Congress mandated that candidates and political parties request employer information from contributors and publicly report it when the contributor provides it.

In some cases, a cluster of contributions from the same organization may indicate a concerted effort by that organization to “bundle” contributions to the candidate. In other cases—both with private companies and with government agencies, non-profits and educational institutions—the reason for the contributions may be completely unrelated to the organization.

Showing these clusters of contributions from people associated with particular organizations provides a valuable—and unique—way of understanding where a candidate is getting his or her financial support. Knowing those groups is also useful after the election, as issues come before Congress and the administration that may affect those organizations and their industries.

Other Democrats to receive money from this firm are Patrick Kennedy, Barbara Mikulski, John Kerry, Barbara Boxer, Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, Wes Clark, Dick Gephardt, Chris Dodd, Howard Dean, Harold Ford Jr., Jon Tester, Bob Casey, John Edwards, Al Gore, MoveOn, the DNC etc.