Thread: Terry McAuliffe: 'Who better to take on Trump than me?'

Terry McAuliffe: 'Who better to take on Trump than me?'

By Brent Scher | Washington Free Beacon
1 hour ago

Democrat Terry McAuliffe said he would be the party's best choice to "take on" President Donald Trump in 2020.

"Who better to take on Trump than me?" McAuliffe said when asked by the Washington Free Beacon about a potential 2020 run for president, strongly indicating he will indeed throw his hat in the ring.

The former Virginia governor, Democratic National Committee chairman, and longtime party fundraiser's name is regularly included amongst the crowded field of Democrats thinking of running for president.

McAuliffe has been said to be "seriously considering" a presidential run but recently dodged a question from CNN's Jake Tapper on who would give Democrats the best chance to take back the White House, though he did indicate a belief that former governors with executive experience such as McAuliffe are better suited for a run.

McAuliffe said he knows he can stand up to Trump because he's known him for a long time, a relationship that led to Trump cutting a $25,000 check for McAuliffe's unsuccessful 2009 run for governor of Virginia.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018...p-than-me.html

Funny!

Perhaps he should talk about his green car company in Mississippi that he got all that EB-5 money for. The one that was never built and now doesn't exist...

Meet Barack Obama’s GreenTech connection

Tori Richards |
Wednesday Apr 24, 2013 12:05 PM

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Rick C. Wade is an exceptionally busy man.

The former Obama cabinet official helped run the president’s latest campaign while simultaneously serving as a Democratic Party executive and vice president of GreenTech Automotive, the “green car” company owned by Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe.Besides Wade, the venture has attracted other high-profile political insiders: Bill Clinton appeared at a company launch party. Hillary Clinton’s brother Anthony Rodham runs the firm’s foreign-investor outreach. Former Republican National Committee chair and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour used a mix of grants and tax holidays to persuade McAuliffe to build Greentech in Mississippi.

But Wade might be the insider who carries the most weight.

Following a senior adviser role in Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, Wade was named interim director of the Department of Commerce and later became the department’s chief of staff and spokesman. While there, he helped craft Obama’s $787 billion economic stimulus bill — the one that hyped such green-energy projects as the now-bankrupt Solyndra and even sent money overseas to aid production of green ventures in foreign countries. Wade got an education in cars via the president’s Auto Recovery Task Force, a $25 billion effort to prop up the failing U.S. auto industry.

The Commerce Department job also allowed Wade to hone a skill that might explain his value to GreenTech: he became a U.S. envoy on Chinese and Asian trade.

GreenTech’s majority owners have ties to China and the company seeks to raise capital from that country. It is mired in controversy over its use of a program here called EB-5, which allows foreign nationals to obtain U.S. visas in exchange for their investment in targeted U.S. companies. Each investment must produce at least 10 jobs.

In a retraction demand and lawsuit it filed against Watchdog, GreenTech, which has refused otherwise to respond to numerous requests for comment over several months, asserts, “Phase one of construction at (the Tunica, Miss., site) is complete and the project remains on schedule to be finished as projected.”

But so far the GreenTech assembly line has not produced enough cars to fill up dealerships around the U.S. At first, GreenTech tried to set up shop in McAuliffe’s home state of Virginia. But that venture disintegrated – ironically after Gov. Tim Kaine’s office questioned the company’s use of EB-5 funds. In a report, one Kaine official said she “still can’t get my head around this being anything other than a visa-for-sale scheme with potential national security implications that we have no way to confirm or discount.” Another said the state’s approval of the project despite apparent shortcomings could give the commonwealth “a black eye.”

McAuliffe then found a supporter in Mississippi’s Barbour.Wade came on board in 2011 while simultaneously joining Obama’s re-election campaign. He spent the next year cultivating votes for the president in North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida, states with no apparent connection to GreenTech.

At the same time, Wade founded a public relations firm, The Wade Group, which is a “global business development” company, according to LinkedIn.

A phone call and email seeking comment from Wade were not returned.

But you can hear something in Wade’s speeches while in the administration, something philosophical that also likely appealed to McAuliffe and the GreenTech executive team: faith in government regulation.


Speaking to a group of Michigan business leaders shortly after Obama’s first inauguration, Wade described the important role government would play in rebuilding the U.S. economy following the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

“We know very well that lawmakers don’t invent. But the government does create the conditions — the framework — in which businesses operate. And that matters,” he said. “This administration is trying to rebuild the physical and the regulatory infrastructure that private sector businesses need to thrive.”

Now, at GreenTech Automotive, Wade is helping build a business that depends primarily on the stimulus of Mississippi giveaways and a federal program that collects cash from desperate foreigners hoping for a green card.
http://humanevents.com/2013/04/24/me...ch-connection/

Chinese investors sue McAuliffe, Rodham over green-car investments

The suit is the latest headache for the Virginia governor as he mulls a presidential bid.

By JOSH GERSTEIN
11/28/2017 01:22 PM EST
Updated 11/28/2017 03:01 PM EST


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Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe and former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's brother Anthony Rodham are facing a $17 million fraud lawsuit from Chinese investors in Greentech Automotive, an electric car company that appears to be struggling to survive.

A group of 32 Chinese citizens filed the suit last week in Fairfax County, Virginia court, claiming that they were swindled out of about $560,000 apiece as a result of misrepresentations made by McAuliffe and Rodham—two of the most prominent and politically connected proponents of the venture aimed at manufacturing electric cars in the U.S.

The suit is yet another headache for McAuliffe as he mulls a potential presidential bid in 2020, buoyed in part by Democrats' strong showing in the state in the election earlier this month. McAuliffe confirmed last year that his business dealings with foreign nationals were under investigation by the FBI and federal prosecutors. It's unclear whether that probe involved Greentech or whether the inquiry is still ongoing.

The Chinese investors plowed their money into Greentech with the promise of winning permanent residency in the U.S. under a program that awards green cards to foreign-funded ventures that generate U.S. jobs. However, the suit contends that the investors now face the threat of deportation from the U.S. because the Department of Homeland Security has determined that Greentech did not generate the number of jobs required to sustain the number of visas issued through the so-called EB-5 program.

"Plaintiffs now face the prospect of having to uproot their families once again, with the expense and stress of deportation to China looming before them," the suit says, accusing McAuliffe, Rodham, Greentech founder Charles Xiaolin Wang and others of running a "scam."

McAuliffe and Rodham did several tours through China to seek investments in the electric car startup, the suit says. As brother-in-law of President Bill Clinton and as brother of the then-secretary of state—Rodham appeared to serve as a means of attracting Chinese interest in the project. The suit contends that Rodham's involvement conveyed that the electric-car firm was politically-connected and likely to prosper.

"Defendants milked these connections in marketing materials," the suit says. "Defendants exploited those relationships to assure investors of both the success of the company and their ability to obtain U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services ("USCIS") approval of the visa applications."

A spokeswoman for McAuliffe, Crystal Carson, disputed the claims and noted that the governor gave up his role in the firm years ago.

"We strongly reject this baseless suit which has no merit whatsoever. The claims, which regurgitate old political attacks regarding a company that Governor McAuliffe left five years ago, were brought by a lawyer with conservative ties," Carson said. "We are confident it will be dismissed."

One of the attorneys who drafted the suit, Scott Abeles of Los Angeles-based Gerard Fox law, disputed any political motivation.

"I represented the Chamber of Commerce once or twice...I'm not a conservative dude," he said in an interview Tuesday.

As McAuliffe prepared to run for Virginia governor, Greentech was a bright spot on his resume, combining entrepreneurial spirit with environmentalism and an effort to bring jobs to an impoverished area of Mississippi. A 2012 ribbon-cutting for the Mississippi factory drew former President Bill Clinton and Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour generated glowing press coverage.

However, the firm soon ran into trouble finding its footing. Production was repeatedly delayed. Hiring for the assembly line fell well short of the 350 jobs promised.

McAuliffe was once the largest individual investor in the company but stepped down as chairman in 2012 and sold his shares as he prepared to be sworn in as governor in 2014.

Once McAuliffe took office, bad publicity for the firm kept coming. It emerged that the Securities and Exchange Commission had an investigation into the company, although no charges were ever brought.

A Department of Homeland Security inspector general report issued in 2015 said USCIS Director Alejandro Mayorkas created "an appearance of favoritism and special access” by responding to entreaties from McAuliffe and Rodham to speed up action on applications related to the project. The report did not accuse McAuliffe or Rodham of wrongdoing.

The Mississippi factory apparently closed in January. In July, the state's auditor said Greentech's employment in the state peaked at 143 and the firm now owes the state $6.4 million for failing to live up to promises it made to get a $5 million financing package from the government there.

Earlier this month Attorney General Jim Hood (D-Miss.) filed a lawsuit against the firm seeking about $3 million in damages, plus forfeiture of land used for the factory in Tunica.

Abeles said the Chinese involved in his suit approached his firm as a group, although the group grew somewhat before the case was filed.

"We had done one or two of these EB-5 cases out there in California," he said. "This group came to us."

A key challenge for the investors' suit will be proving that McAuliffe, Rodham or Wang should be individually liable for any losses. Typically, use of a corporation to solicit investments makes it difficult to recover against the people involved, but Abeles said the companies are little more than paper structures.

"As we see it, these people invested in Terry McAuliffe. They invested in Anthony Rodham. They invested in Charlie Wang," Abeles said. "More than the typical case, the individuals drove the bus here."
Greentech did not respond to messages seeking comment for this story. Wang and Rodham could not be reached for comment.

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/...auliffe-262771