The EB-5 Swamp, Con’t

Sep 19th, 2018

Congress gets another shot at killing that swampiest of swamp creatures, the EB-5 visa program, at the end of September. EB-5 is a cash-for-visas program beloved of Democrats and Republicans, real estate developers, and a not insignificant number of crooks and hustlers. Cause of Action has been documenting mounting EB-5 scams at a new website. It’s an eye-opener.

Under EB-5, foreigners—mainly Chinese citizens—get a green card and a path to citizenship by paying $500,000 into the program, the money designated for job creation in economically distressed “targeted unemployment areas” in the U.S. The payments are brokered by politically connected EB-5 Regional Centers, which often rake off hefty fees.

As for those targeted unemployment areas? Critics charge that they are often nothing more than elaborately gerrymandered maps drawn from census tracts to create fictional qualifying districts.

The program is a magnet for fraud. Estimates vary, but the best guess is that around $15 billion in EB-5 cash has come into the country in the last decade. Part of the problem is that EB-5 is so loosely regulated, it’s difficult to follow the money. Real estate developers love EB-5’s lax guidelines and easy financing opportunities.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is a huge fan of EB-5. Schumer’s longtime political ally, developer Bruce Ratner, built the Barclays Center sports arena and Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn with $500 million in EB-5 funds. Ratner has since walked away from the project with a hefty profit.

Former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe is a beneficiary of the EB-5 program. McAuliffe and Tony Rodham—Hillary Clinton’s brother—raised about $46 million from EB-5 investors for their GreenTech Automotive electric-car company. Greentech filed for bankruptcy in February.

Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid also appears to have crossed paths with EB-5. According to Cause of Action, Reid may have improperly intervened to assure EB-5 financing for the SLS Las Vegas Hotel and Casino project. Reid’s son and his law firm were legal counsel to SLS, a major Democratic Party donor. Reid denies any wrongdoing. The Los Angeles Times reports that sixty Chinese EB-5 investors are now suing SLS for failing to deliver on green card promises.

President Trump has benefited from EB-5 through a $40 million program investment in a Trump-branded luxury hotel in Austin. Senior adviser Jared Kushner’s family raised $50 million in EB-5 funds for a New Jersey project. Mr. Kushner’s sister recently got in trouble for hawking EB-5 visas in China. The White House responded with a statement saying it was “evaluating wholesale reform of the EB-5 program.”

Last year, I outlined some of the regulatory changes that might reform EB-5. Congress kicked the decision down the road, but a reform moment is upon us again. The EB-5 Regional Center Program expires September 30. The regional centers handle the vast majority of EB-5 visas, so killing the centers in effect kills the entire EB-5 program.

Some critics want to end EB-5, others want to mend it. Swamp critters fear both approaches. They want to see the status quo continue.

Doing nothing sends a signal, too.

***

Micah Morrison is chief investigative reporter for Judicial Watch. Follow him on Twitter @micah_morrison. Tips: mmorrison@judicialwatch.org

Investigative Bulletin is published by Judicial Watch. Reprints and media inquiries: jfarrell@judicialwatch.org

Guyana & the Resource Curse

Aug 18th, 2018

A hurricane is about to descend on the tiny nation of Guyana—a hurricane of money.

Guyana is a country of about 750,000 tucked between Suriname and Venezuela on the Atlantic Coast, with a vast interior and unspoiled rain forests. Another 500,000 Guyanese live abroad, many having fled the country’s endemic violence and corruption. The CIA says Guyana is a transshipment point for narcotics and a center of money laundering, sex trafficking and forced labor. Intelligence sources tell me that for decades, it was a clandestine battleground of the Cold War, and later, the War on Terror. A former British colony, it gained independence in 1966. But Britain did Guyana no favors on the way out by installing strongman Forbes Burnham to run the country. Burnham unleashed far-reaching waves of strife between his largely Afro-Guyanese followers and the other major demographic group, the Indo-Guyanese. Britain and the U.S. backed the authoritarian Burnham, fearing a communist-controlled government from his opponent, Indo-Guyanese leader Cheddi Jagan. Burnham and Jagan are long gone, but rivalry and tensions between Afro-Guyanese and Indo-Guyanese persist to this day, including in the National Assembly.

Guyana is a poor country. Skilled workers and much of the educated class emigrated in the Burnham years and after. The country went into steep economic decline. Now, the average per capita income in Guyana is about $4,000, making it one of the poorest countries in the region. The unemployment rate is about 12%. Youth unemployment is around 25%. About 30% of the Guyanese population live below the poverty line. Infrastructure development, health care and education struggle for limited government funds.

All this may be about to change. In 2015, ExxonMobil discovered huge oil reserves off the Guyanese coast. The numbers are staggering. ExxonMobil estimatesat least four billion barrels of recoverable oil are at stake. The New York Times reported that the oil may generate “enough bounty to lift the lives of almost every Guyanese.” Energy analysts calculate Guyana could be taking in between $5 billion and $6 billion per year in oil revenues by the end of the next decade. For perspective, the current annual government budget is around $1.2 billion.

The big money is set to start flowing by 2020. For Guyana, it seems like a dream come true. What could go wrong?

Read More

Violent Crime Rises in New York: Blame the Bronx or de Blasio?

Aug 1st, 2018

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and the NYPD held a press conference July 10th to announce that crime in the city has gone down. “New York City achieved a reduction of 853 crime reports, or -1.8% year-to-date, compared to the same period in 2017,” the NYPD said, citing the latest figures from its CompStat crime-fighting program.

Crime in general in New York City is at historic lows. That’s the good news. The bad news? Violent crimes—murder and rape—are trending upward.

147 murders were committed in New York from January 1 to June 30, 2018, according to NYPD statistics. Last year in the same period, it was 136. That’s an 8% rise.

NYPD officials blamed the Bronx. “The Bronx is driving the murder year to-date,” said NYPD Chief of Department Terence Monahan. He said much of the bloodshed in the Bronx was “gang-related.” The borough had 51 murders to June 30, a 64% increase from last year.

Blame the Bronx? Wait a New York minute. Northern Queens saw a 33% rise in murders; in southern Queens, the increase was 23%.

Read More

Questions About FBI Surround Case of Murdered Police Chief

Jul 20th, 2018

Greg Adams

On a December day in a small Pennsylvania town in 1980, a fugitive jewel thief murdered the police chief and vanished. The thief was a New England career criminal named Donald Eugene Webb. The chief was Gregory Patrick Adams, a former Marine and city cop who took the Pennsylvania job in search of quieter times. Webb went on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” list and a thirty-seven-year manhunt of sorts ensued.

Last year, it ended. Webb’s remains were dug up in his wife’s back yard.

Her name is Lillian Webb. According to the FBI, her husband died around 1999 and Lillian buried him behind her home in North Dartmouth, Massachusetts, out by an old shed.

He remained there until 2017, when mysterious developments suddenly breathed new life into the case. But the biggest mystery of all is how Donald Webb eluded capture for nineteen years.

Documents reviewed by Judicial Watch suggest that most of the time—perhaps all of the time—he was living with Lillian. The documents raise new questions about Webb, the FBI, and the murder of Chief Adams. How did one of America’s most-wanted fugitives hide out for nearly two decades in his own home, right under the FBI’s nose?

FALL RIVER GANG

By the time of the Adams murder, Webb had a rap sheet going back twenty-five years. Law enforcement sources say he was an associate of the Fall River Gang, a loose confederation of criminals based in southeastern Massachusetts and specializing in burglaries of high-end homes and jewelry stores. The stolen goods allegedly were fenced through New England’s dominant Mafia group, the Patriarca crime family. But much remains murky about the true shape of the Fall River Gang and Webb’s Patriarca connection.

Investigators believe Webb was in tiny Saxonburg, Pennsylvania, casing a jewelry store when something caught Chief Adams’s attention. The chief, in his patrol car, pulled up to Webb’s rented white Mercury Cougar in an Agway parking lot. Webb had done prison time and was wanted in New York for burglary. He had told associates he wasn’t going back to jail.

Read More

 “Agents” Emails, Inside the Mind of Bill de Blasio

Jun 28th, 2018

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio last month finally turned over more than 4200 pages of unredacted emails in the “agents of the city” case. De Blasio had resisted disclosure, arguing that five outside advisers were effectively “agents of the city” whose communications should be shielded from the New York Freedom of Information Law. NY1 television and the New York Post sued and won. The documents are out. What have we learned?

Most of the emails reflect the administration’s early priorities—education, budgets, transportation, personnel, press releases and meetings. But there are plenty of glimpses behind the façade and into the true mind of the mayor. It’s not an uplifting picture.

The mayor relies heavily on some of his “agents.”  In the lawsuit, the five named “agents” were powerful PR mavens Jonathan Rosen, John Del Cecato, Bill Heyers and Nicholas Baldick, and Democratic Party senior operative Patrick Gaspard, who at the time was U.S. ambassador to South Africa. Gaspard is now president of George Soros’s Open Society Foundations. De Blasio relies heavily on Rosen, a constant presence in the emails. Del Cecato is often in the loop as well. Heyer and Baldick less so. Gaspard appears to be almost totally absent from the emails.

“You were wise last night,” de Blasio wrote to Rosen in an email titled “Smart Man.” “I need to talk to you more about what the group discussed last night. Want to see you in person. If you have a little time, I’ll be in the Slope later. If not, whenever works for you in the next few days.” (P. 1,072 of the production.) It’s a refrain that echoes through the emails.

Rosen is head of BerlinRosen, a communications firm closely tied to New York’s unions, real estate interests and left-leaning groups. Judicial Watch looked at Rosen’s connection to real estate mogul Bruce Ratner—a major de Blasio supporter—in a 2016 investigation, The New Tammany Hall: New York in the Age of Corruption.

The mayor is a whiner. De Blasio complains. A lot. Union leaders opposing him are “bastards.” (P. 1,073). He wants to keep a “scorecard” of “who was a friend and who was cheap.” The New York Times is “idiotic and “disgusting” and “disappointing” (1,080, 1,329).

The mayor hates the media. Tremendous energy goes into managing the Times. “We need to figure out a new paradigm” for the paper, the mayor complains. “This level of bias can’t be ignored. Either starve them or reason with them or something else.” (1,329). Publications large and small draw his enmity. When the Gotham Gazette asks if it’s time for the mayor to do town hall meetings, de Blasio emails Rosen and other top communications aides, “I’m so sick of this meme that I’m thinking of just scheduling town hall meetings so these guys can’t write about it anymore.” (1,133) An Atlantic profile is “horrible,” de Blasio writes. “I strongly advise we avoid profiles from now on.” (1,630)

The mayor hates the governor. De Blasio’s rivalry with Governor Andrew Cuomo is not news to anyone following New York politics, but the emails show raw emotion. “Andrew Cuomo is defiling any sense of decent, normal, high-road government left in New York State,” de Blasio emails top aides as Cuomo maneuvers to cut transit spending. “We can’t take this lying down… We must fight back and have other voices fight back.” (1,410)

The mayor is grandiose and self-pitying. When questions are raised about the mayor’s whereabouts after a firefighter is shot while responding to a blaze on Staten Island, de Blasio emails aides that “the news media is pitiful and it’s sad for our city and our nation.” (1,074)

A lengthy analysis follows. “Here’s what we know: the media wants to focus on death in all its forms and wants me to be present wherever death or grievous injury is involved. Today’s controversy about when exactly I should be at the hospital or an active shooter situation and what I’m ‘allowed’ to do if I’m not there is a case in point. We can make a conscience decision to surrender to them and just go to fires, crime scenes and memorials all day every day — or we can govern.”

He tells his team: “They will never defeat us. Only we can do that.”

The emails run from the opening of the de Blasio administration in January 2014 to December 2016. By late 2015, as pay-to-play controversies and other troubles engulf his administration, the mayor fades from the correspondence. But the agents of the city grind on. In the final email of the package, a senior de Blasio aide writes Rosen to thank him for the “partnerships” he fostered with “companies, foundations and individuals” in support of the mayor’s goals.

***

 Micah Morrison is chief investigative reporter for Judicial Watch. Follow him on Twitter @micah_morrison. Tips: mmorrison@judicialwatch.org

Investigative Bulletin is published by Judicial Watch. Reprints and media inquiries: jfarrell@judicialwatch.org

The Strange Case of McAuliffe & McCabe

Jun 21st, 2018

What happened when the swampiest of swamp cats met the man from the FBI?

 

Every student of American politics knows that Terry McAuliffe is that swampiest of swamp creatures, the cool cat with the big bucks. Al Gore called him “the greatest fundraiser in the history of the universe.” In 1996 alone, as national finance chairman of the Clinton-Gore re-election team, McAuliffe raised $50 million, but plunged the Democratic Party into a sweeping campaign-finance scandal involving the sale of sleepovers in the Lincoln Bedroom, coffee klatches at the White House, a vast cast of sketchy characters and rivers of money. The Clintons loved the ebullient money man and he loved them back. By 1999, McAuliffe claimed to have raised nearly $275 million for the Arkansas couple—and that’s before he joined forces with the Clinton’s 21st century money machine, the Clinton Foundation and Clinton Global Initiative. In 2000, he was named chairman of the Democratic National Committee. In 2008, he chaired Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. In 2013, with enthusiastic support from the Clintons, he ran for governor of Virginia and won.

By 2015, Governor McAuliffe already was “shaping a significant role for himself” in Mrs. Clinton’s second try at the presidency, Politico reported. A “consummate political animal, [McAuliffe] just can’t keep his fingers away from the flame. Despite the daily demands of running the state…he’s emerging as Hillary’s informal liaison to governors and the party’s biggest donors, while also keeping a finger on the pulse of the camp’s central operations in Brooklyn.”

By contrast, even today, in the wake of hundreds of media stories and last week’s Office of Inspector General report on alleged wrongdoing in the 2016 election, few people will recognize the name Andrew McCabe. He’s a swamp inhabitant too, though many would put him on the right side of the swamp, on dry land, chasing the bad guys. Except that’s not quite how it turned out.

Read More

Mysterious Mr. Ng: Rise & Fall of a Clinton-Era Conspirator

Jun 5th, 2018

“The leopard does not change his spots” is a favorite saying of prosecutors and the rise and fall of Clinton-era conspirator Ng Lap Seng proves the point. Ng cut a colorful swath through the 1996 Clinton campaign finance scandal. At the time, he was a mere millionaire with connections to the Chinese government and Asian organized crime. Now he is a billionaire. Last month, more than twenty years after he first appeared on the U.S. scene, federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York nailed him in a bribery scheme and put him away for four years.

In the bribery case, Ng showered two United Nations ambassadors—Francis Lorenzo of the Dominican Republic and John Ashe of Antigua and Barbuda—with cash. He needed their support for a multi-billion-dollar UN conference center he wanted to build in Macau. Ng envisioned the conference center as the cornerstone of a grandiose plan to turn the obscure gambling enclave into the “Geneva of Asia,” prosecutors said. Ng spent $1.5 million in the illegal effort. He set up a phony NGO and funneled $30,000 a month to Ambassador Lorenzo. More payments flowed to Lorenzo’s brother, to Ambassador Ashe, and to Ashe’s wife. In return, the ambassadors put a UN imprimatur on Ng’s construction plan. They drafted and circulated official UN documents in support of Ng and the Macau conference center.

Read More

Legal Update: “What is the NYPD hiding?”

May 22nd, 2018

This is a story of a cop and the case that haunts him. Forty-six years ago, NYPD Patrolman Phillip Cardillo was gunned down inside Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam Mosque #7 in Harlem. After a lengthy investigation strewn with roadblocks (detailed by Judicial Watch here and here) Detective Randy Jurgensen made an arrest. But evidence had disappeared, the crime scene had been erased, and a special prosecutor later determined there was “a concerted and orchestrated effort” by senior members of the NYPD to impede the murder investigation.

Jurgensen—a legendary NYPD detective who helped put away five cop-killers—believes he got the right man. Much of the law-enforcement community in New York agrees with him. But the trial of Lewis 17X Dupree resulted in a hung jury. At a second trial, he was acquitted. Jurgensen did not quit seeking answers. Years later, after his retirement from the NYPD, he wrote a book, Circle of Six, raising important questions about the case.

Following publication of Circle of Six, a prosecutor in the Dupree case, James Harmon, wrote a letter to then-Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. The letter was included in a paperback edition of the book. Harmon wrote: “Was there a conspiracy to lure police officers into the Mosque as part of a planned ambush, the purpose of which was to kill them?”

Cardillo and his partner had been lured to the mosque by a fake 10-13 “officer-in-distress call.” At the mosque, the front doors, usually manned by a Nation of Islam security detail, were open and unguarded. The officers rushed in.

Harmon also raised important questions about the role of the FBI in the incident. Police officers had “reported contact with unidentified FBI agents in the hours immediately following” the Cardillo shooting, Harmon wrote. He added, “In my long experience in law enforcement, this FBI presence was highly unusual and remains unexplained.”

Jurgensen’s book and Harmon’s letter led Kelly to re-open the Cardillo case in 2006, instructing the NYPD Major Case Squad to take a fresh look.

This was a high-level move. A cop was dead and no one had served a day in jail for the crime. The police commissioner himself was ordering a new look at the crime. Jurgensen and Harmon had several meetings with senior NYPD officials about the case, including Kelly.

Jurgensen assisted the Major Case investigation. He turned over his extensive personal files. He provided his copy of the 10-13 tape. He unearthed a secret NYPD report on the case, the so-called “Blue Book.”

NYPD officials told Jurgensen that the case material he provided, including the 10-13 tape, would be returned to him. They told him a final report on the murder was being prepared. They told him that copies of the report would be provided to him, the Cardillo family, and the Manhattan District Attorney.

None of that happened.

In 2011, Judicial Watch opened its own investigation. By then, according to several police sources, the Major Case Squad investigation had been closed.

Read More

The Silver Standard

May 15th, 2018

Sheldon Silver, the powerful former speaker of the New York State Assembly, went down last week—again—on corruption charges. Silver was convicted in 2015 of pocketing nearly $4 million in kickbacks and bribes, but the verdict was overturned in 2016 after the Supreme Court’s McDonnell decision narrowed the legal definition of public corruption. Prosecutors, said McDonnell, must show a quid-pro-quo “official action” to prove honest services fraud. Actions such as “setting up a meeting, talking to another official, or organizing an event” would not cut it, the court ruled. “To qualify as an ‘official act,’ the public official must make a decision or take an action on that question or matter, or agree to do so.” Much handwringing followed the decision, including from these quarters, saying that the Court had set the bar too high. Those concerns seemed justified last year when Senator Robert Menendez beat a corruption rap in part due to McDonnell.

But in the Silver case, prosecutors got it right. And in doing so, they set a new standard for prosecuting public corruption. Not only were they able to demonstrate clear quid-pro-quos, satisfying McDonnell, but they appeared to draw two other valuable lessons from mistakes in the Menendez case: keep it short, and keep it simple. Menendez rambled on for more than two months and featured a globe-trotting cast of colorful characters, some of whom had little relation to the matters at hand. The first Silver case ran for a month. The second was over in two weeks. Key witnesses quickly made their points and were gone.

The Silver case revolved around two corrupt schemes. In one, Silver steered cancer research funds to a prominent doctor, who in turn referred lucrative mesothelioma cases to a Silver-aligned law firm, which kicked back more than $3 million to the assembly speaker. In the second scheme, Silver promoted favorable tax legislation for real-estate developers. The developers paid a lawyer handsomely for the tax relief, and the lawyer funneled a cut to his old friend, Silver.

It’s hard to shake the notion that in New York, all this is viewed as business as usual. Where’s the outrage? Silver is one rodent in a long line of rats. The former assembly speaker was one of the infamous “three men in a room” who control New York State government in Albany. The other two are the majority leader of the state Senate, and the governor. The former majority leader, Dean Skelos, also got a McDonnell pass after his 2015 corruption conviction and will be retried in June. A former aide to Governor Andrew Cuomo was convicted in March of pocketing more than $300,000 in bribe schemes. Other allies of the governor will go on trial in June in a bid-rigging case involving billions in state funds. The governor, lest we forget, shut down his own corruption commission. In July, the former leader of the New York City corrections officers’ union faces retrial on bribery charges. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is beset by corruption allegations. A sweeping graft case has rocked the NYPD. And the attorney general of the state has been forced to resign and is under investigation for assaulting four women.

McDonnell and Silver remind us that the law is a living thing, shape-shifting through the courts to chase humankind’s ageless propensity to evil. Who is winning the race these days? On that, in New York, the jury is out.

***

Micah Morrison is chief investigative reporter for Judicial Watch. Follow him on Twitter @micah_morrison. Tips: mmorrison@judicialwatch.org

Investigative Bulletin is published by Judicial Watch. Reprints and media inquiries: jfarrell@judicialwatch.org

The Zombie Afterlife of the Clinton Global Initiative

May 3rd, 2018

The summons from Chelsea Clinton came via email, an invitation to “be the change.”

“I am so excited about the Clinton Global Initiative University,” Chelsea wrote. In October, student leaders from “CGI U” will converge on Chicago, working on “projects big and small to address climate change, poverty, gender inequality, and other pressing issues facing their generation — and all of us.” The email provided four opportunities to donate to the Clinton Foundation. “None of this great work would be possible without you and your continued support.”

In January 2017, the New York State Labor Department issued a statutory notice that the Clinton Global Initiative—the annual glitterati schmooze fest that brought hundreds of millions of dollars into Clinton coffers—would be laying off twenty-two employees. The news went out: CGI was dead. Hillary would not be president; the gravy train had run out of steam. The Clintons closed up shop.

But in fact, reports of the death of the Clinton Global Initiative were greatly exaggerated. It continues in a kind of zombie afterlife, along with other Clinton Foundation efforts, including CGI U. “Building on the successful model of the Clinton Global Initiative,” the Clinton Foundation website says, “President Clinton launched the Clinton Global Initiative University in 2007 to engage the next generation of leaders on college campuses around the world.”

Mr. Clinton made a fortune from CGI U. His early partner in the project was the for-profit university system, Laureate Education. Laureate donated between $1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation and signed Mr. Clinton up as “honorary chancellor” in 2010. Over the next five years, Laureate paid Mr. Clinton more than $17 million. That’s when Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state and gearing up her presidential run. Laureate was controlled Doug Becker, a big Democratic donor. Becker stepped aside as CEO in 2017 with a $23 million package after taking the company public.

What does an honorary chancellor do to earn $17 million? Laureate told CNN that Mr. Clinton “inspired” people. The State Department stonewalled Judicial Watch’s attempt to uncover more details, eventually producing a heavily redacted contract that blacked out descriptions of the former president’s role. Laureate lately seems to have been shoved down the memory hole—it does not appear in current CGI U promotional material and both the Clinton Foundation and Laureate did not respond to requests for clarification. But Chelsea Clinton is carrying on the work. “We’re here with one of the most remarkable world leaders,” a Laureate student said in a video interview at a CGI U event reported by the Washington Post. “We’re here with Chelsea Clinton.”

***

Micah Morrison is chief investigative reporter for Judicial Watch. Follow him on Twitter @micah_morrison. Tips: mmorrison@judicialwatch.org

Investigative Bulletin is published by Judicial Watch. Reprints and media inquiries: jfarrell@judicialwatch.org