Harry Reid is Implicated in Another Major Scandal…Well, I’m Shocked
march 24, 2015 by steven ahle
The inspector general of Homeland Security could have saved himself a lot of time and could have been more thorough if only they would read my columns. This is not bragging on my abilities, it’s just that I’m not owned by liberal America and their willing co-conspirators in the press. For the past few months, the Inspector General of Homeland Security has been investigating the politics behind the EB-5 visa program. He has identified three projects in which democratic heavy hitters aided by Alejandro Mayorkas used the EB-5 program as a private piggy bank. There are actually four.
The first example I wrote about on April 6th, 2013. It involved an electric car company by the name of MyCar, which was the result of a partnership between longtime scam artist, Terry McAuliffe (Global Crossing, IBEW land scam, illegal contingency fees, etc etc) and Anthony Rodham, brother to Hillary for whom she bought a gold mine in Haiti using other people’s money. Their car company manufactured exactly one car, which was used for exhibition purposes. The company took in millions from shady Chinese investors. Though they lost their entire investment, none complained because they weren’t buying a share of MyCar, they were buying visas.
The second case involves Harry Reid aiding his top campaign donor, Sheldon Adelson who makes his money from Las Vegas casinos. Adelson was looking for much needed capital, so he turned to the man he has given millions to, Harry Reid. Reid, working with Mayorkas approved EB-5 visas and Adelson got his money and the Chinese got their visas to live in the US forever. Reid and Mayorkas were working so closely together, that Mayorkas had one of his aides give Reid’s office updates weekly on the progress.
http://www.theblaze.com/wp-content/u...PM-620x463.png
The third case involved business deals in Los Angeles that I don’t have the details to but will make them available as they are released.
Now, for the fourth one that’s not mention, that also involves Harry Reid and his son Rory. You may remember the story without knowing that it had anything to do with EB-5 visas. That is what was behind the invasion of the Bundy ranch. You see, Reid’s son Cory represented the ENN Energy Group, which wanted to build a solar plant in Southern Nevada and they were planning on financing a lot of it with investors through the EB-5 program, which gives visas to foreign investors who sink half a million or more into a business within the United States.
People who tried to discredit my reporting pointed out that the Bundy Ranch was over 100 miles away from the location where the plant was to be built. But what they didn’t understand is that you just can’t build a large wind farm or solar farm anywhere you wish. That is because you have to have a mitigation area, where wild animals can forage for food and have an ample water supply. Tonapah is also located nearby. Tonapah is another clean energy company, run by Ronald Pelosi, Nancy’s brother in law. That’s why the BLM dismantled Bundy’s water lines and watering holes. Reid failed to get the Bundy land and the EEN company pulled out of the deal. The other part of the story is 93 acres needed to complete the mitigation area is owned byReid Bunkerville L.L.C. But the EB-5 visas are still good.
After these four incidents, Obama rewarded Mayorkas by promoting him to the number two position just below Jeh Johnson. So why did the IG even decide to investigate? A large number of whistle blowers came forward with information that many of the Chinese who were given EB-5 visas had been turned down because they posed national security risks. I guess Obama decided it was better if it looked like the government was leading the investigation, which they will close once the heat is off.
And Harry Reid goes rolling merrily along.
http://redstatements.co/harry-reid-i...ll-im-shocked/
Watchdog Asks DOJ to Investigate Reid, McAuliffe Over Immigration Favoritism
Cause of Action: top Dem officeholders improperly obtaining U.S. visas for investors
BY: Lachlan Markay
March 26, 2015 3:00 pm
A legal watchdog group on Thursday asked the Department of Justice to investigate allegations that two senior Democratic officeholders illegally pushed federal officials to reward investors in companies to which they had personal, financial, or political ties.
Investors in those companies eventually received U.S. visas through a federal program despite concerns that they were involved in illegal activities or had tried to hide sources of their income from U.S. immigration officials.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) and Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) of Virginia may have illegally facilitated that process at the expense of less politically connected applicants for the same program, according to Cause of Action, a conservative legal watchdog group.
In a letter to the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, Cause of Action alleges that Reid and McAuliffe used their considerable political clout to expedite consideration of visas for investors in the SLS Las Vegas Hotel and Casino and GreenTech Automotive.
McAuliffe founded GreenTech; he resigned from the company before running for governor. The former’s parent company hired Reid’s son Rory in 2012 to help it obtain government incentives. Its executives donated thousands to Sen. Reid after its Chinese investors obtained U.S. visas.
Cause of Action’s letter comes on the heels of, and relies in large part on, a report from the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general released on Tuesday.
That report revealed additional details about Reid’s and McAuliffe’s communications with Alejandro Mayorkas, then the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which administers the EB-5 visa program, as it is known.
Cause of Action is asking DOJ to investigate potential criminal conduct by Mayorkas in addition to McAulfife and Reid.
The governor’s office did not respond to a request for comment. Spokesmen for Reid and USCIS referred to their previous statements regarding the report when asked for comment.
Career USCIS officials described Mayorkas’ work on GreenTech’s behalf as “politically motivated,” according to the report. The IG found that Mayorkas “created an appearance of favoritism and special access” by pushing for USCIS to expedite its EB-5 applications.
The report also exposed previously unknown details of Reid’s advocacy on behalf of SLS’ EB-5 investor petitions. Reid requested and received regular updates from Mayorkas and other USCIS officials on those petitions and requests to expedite them.
The report suggests that Reid’s advocacy on SLS’ behalf was “substantially beyond what is legally compliant behavior,” according to Dan Epstein, Cause of Action’s executive director.
The IG report noted that other applicants for EB-5 visas complained to USCIS that SLS was receiving preferential treatment. One called the process “blatantly unfair” and asked USCIS officials to “look into who is getting favorable treatment before it becomes an extreme political football.”
Epstein said that such complaints suggest that Reid and McAuliffe advantaged EB-5 applications from SLS and GreenTech at the expense of other applicants, who were forced to wait in line while those companies saw their applications expedited.
“Senator Reid and then-candidate McAuliffe may have sued their political power to … pressure USCIS employees in a way that impeded USCIS functioning as a neutral adjudicator of USCIS visas,” Epstein told reporters during a conference call on Thursday.
Cause of Action is asking the Justice Department to investigate whether there is probable cause to believe that criminal conduct took place.
“Given the individuals involved, the pattern of malfeasance and the importance of public oversight, it is incumbent your division immediately investigate these matters,” the group’s letter said.
If its Public Integrity Section finds reason to believe that legal violations took place, U.S. Attorneys in the relevant states will decide whether to request an indictment.
The U.S. Attorney for the state of Nevada, Daniel Bogden, owes his position to Reid’s advocacy, but Epstein said he hopes the process will be free from the type of meddling that Cause of Action has criticized at USCIS.
“We hope [DOJ officials] are pursuing things based off the facts … and that those kinds of political considerations will not taint the proceedings of a fair investigation.”
http://freebeacon.com/issues/watchdo...on-favoritism/
The Real Reason Harry Reid is Retiring
by Michael Patrick Leahy
28 Mar 2015
1065 comments
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) explains his shocking decision to not seek re-election and retire when his term ends in 2016 by telling the New York Times, “he was worried his race would consume campaign money that would be needed in other competitive states as Democrats try to regain control of the Senate.”
“I think it is unfair for me to be soaking up all the money to be re-elected with what we are doing in Maryland, in Pennsylvania, in Missouri, in Florida,” Reid told the Times.
Reid said neither his recent eye injury nor concern over his chances of winning played a factor in his decision.
But the real reason Reid is retiring may have nothing to do with any of these excuses and everything to do with his concerns that a possible Republican Presidential victory in 2016 would lead to the appointment of a Republican Attorney General in January 2017.
A Republican Attorney General would be almost certain to initiate a criminal investigation into Reid’s abuse of his political power in a brazen intervention in the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) issuance of EB-5 visas to investors in a Las Vegas casino and hotel that was represented by his son, Rory Reid, as was highlighted in a report released by the Inspector General of DHS last week.
“I think Harry Reid’s getting out of town ahead of the posse,” former U.S. Attorney Joe diGenova tells Breitbart News.
On Thursday, the non-profit group Cause of Action called on the Department of Justice (DOJ) to launch a criminal investigation of Reid. Citing the specific federal statutes that were violated, the group said Reid “participat[ed] in unlawful political activity, possible coercion and fraud related to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program.”
The DOJ under President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder is so highly politicized it would never launch a criminal investigation into the many scandals in which Harry Reid is at the center.
But, as diGenova told Breitbart News on Friday, “[t]here is no doubt in my mind that an independent Department of Justice or an independent U.S. Attorney would open a preliminary criminal investigation into Harry Reid’s intervention into the expediting of EB-5 visas and would in addition convene a grand jury.” (emphasis added)
Reid announced his surprising decision to retire just days after the DHS Inspector General released a report that concluded: “Reid pressured a compliant DHS official to override normal departmental procedures and rush through 230 EB-5 foreign visa applications, thereby freeing up $115 million the applicants invested in the SLS Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.”
As Breitbart News reported, “the owner of that casino project had hired Reid’s son, Rory Reid, to provide legal representation for the project.”
Then there’s Reid’s complicity in Senator Robert Menendez’s (D-NJ) abuse of his political office by intervening in an ongoing Department of Health and Human Services adjudicatory process involving $8.9 million in Medicare overbilling by his friend and campaign funds donor, Dr. Salomon Melgen.
As Breitbart News reported, Reid “hosted a meeting between Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius. At the meeting, Menendez made the case for his friend and donor, Dr. Salomon Melgen, who was at the time embroiled in what was supposed to be an independent adjudicatory process at HHS involving $8.9 million the department said he overbilled Medicare.”
Reid’s intervention came “immediately after Melgen donated $300,000 to the Senate Majority PAC, a Super PAC that has close ties to Reid. By the end of 2012, Melgen’s donations to the Senate Majority PAC totaled $700,000.”
For his part in that intervention, Senator Menendez has been the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation by the DOJ. Press reports indicate that Menedez is expected to be indicted on charges of public corruption very soon, though last minute negotiation efforts by his attorneys may delay or possibly forestall such action.
The damaging information an independent DOJ investigation could turn up with the exercise of subpoena power on hundreds of investors and business associates involved in the numerous Harry Reid scandals could be substantial.
A recent report by ABC News indicates the kinds of embarrassing information likely to turn up when DOJ investigators start turning over the rocks in Reid’s landscape of insider deals.
One of the 230 foreign investors who obtained a visa in return for investing in the SLS Hotel and Casino of Las Vegas, the company represented by Rory Reid, was linked to child pornography in China. Two others, ABC reported, had knowingly submitted false documentation to the DHS as part of their visa application process.
According to the DHS Inspector General’s report, Reid pressured DHS official Alejandro Mayorkas, (then the head of the department’s United States Citizenship and Immigration Services agency, now Deputy Secretary at DHS) to expedite these questionable visa applications and rush them through without the normal rigorous review.
Given the improper level of scrutiny given these three foreign investors in the casino deal by DHS, it is unclear if the remaining 227 foreign investors in this casino deal are equally suspect.
More ominously, this lack of scrutiny may have allowed foreign investors who pose a national security threat to the country to obtain visas and a path to citizenship.
Reid’s retirement announcement was a sudden and dramatic reversal of even his most recent statements about his plans.
To hear Reid tell it, he was planning to stay in the Senate for many years to come. As recently as two months ago, Reid emphatically declared he was running in 2016.
“We have quite an operation in Nevada that hasn’t lost a step, and we’re off and running. At this stage, I’m fully intending to run,” he told the New York Times on January 22.
Reid’s response to the DHS report has been to double-down with impunity in defense of his potentially criminal conduct.
“If it had it to do over again, I’d try even harder,” he told a Nevada public radio station on Friday about his role in pressuring the DHS to expedite the E5-5 visas for the Las Vegas casino his son represented.
Reid went even further and besmirched the integrity of the Inspector General of the DHS, the author of the report.
“The Homeland Security report came from a bunch of whiners at the Department of Homeland Security,” he asserted brazenly.
With Barack Obama serving in the White House and Eric Holder as Attorney General, Harry Reid can get away with flaunting the law and attacking the integrity of the “whiner” Inspector General at DHS whose report documents how Reid abused his political power to benefit his political allies and family.
But if a Republican is elected President in 2016, there will be a new sheriff in town. Harry Reid knows the posse assembled by this newly appointed Attorney General is unlikely to consider Reid’s critics at DHS to be “whiners.” In fact, they are likely to be part of the posse.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...d-is-retiring/
