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If House Republicans are truly
concerned about influence peddling for profit then investigate Jared, Ivanka
and Donald
The Trump corruption
is obvious!
22 hr ago
Is GOP House Oversight Chair Rep. James Comer
using his taxpayer funded committee to simply hurt President Biden and help
Republicans or is he sincere about revealing people cashing in on their
government connections?! In reality, we know the answer to
this question. But for Comer the hypocrisy is about to become so
glaring that it will savagely undermine his new so-called “investigation” into
President Biden and his family.
Comer kicked off his committee’s investigation on
Thursday into whether President Biden’s son, Hunter, his brother James and
others in Biden world somehow finically profited off their connection to the
President. Comer alleged—without any proof--in a letter to Hunter Biden that he
and his associates “peddled influence to generate millions of dollars for the
Biden family.” The House Oversight Committee’s press
release touting the investigation declares, “The American people
deserve transparency and accountability about the Biden family’s influence
peddling.”
If Comer and the GOP are being straight with
us about “transparency and accountability” when it comes to people or family
members “peddling influence” to profit off political connections, then Comer
must be readying similar letters to Jared Kushner, Ivanka
Trump and Donald Trump. All three have in the past--or are
currently—personally profiting from their time in the White House.
When it comes to Jared and Trump himself, we
need to look no further for evidence demanding an investigation then Sunday’s
blockbuster front page Washington
Post article titled, “After helping prince’s rise, Trump
and Kushner benefit from Saudi funds.” All Comer needs to do is
simply read this article to see the parade of red flags that detail how Jared and
Trump are pocketing big money from the Saudi government as payback for how both
helped Saudi and their leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), while in
the White House.
As the Post details, when Kushner and Trump
left the White House, both were facing “unprecedented
business challenges.” Trump had seen revenue from his properties
plummeting plus his role in the Jan 6 attack made him even more toxic. Kushner
was facing his own challenges, with his family business needing a $1.2 billion
bailout.
Then came Saudi Arabia and MBS to the
rescue! In the case of Kushner, just six months out of the White House, a
fund controlled by MBS invested $2
billion in Kushner’s newly formed private equity firm, Affinity
Partners. A panel that screens investment’s for the Saudi’s had raised concerns
over this investment on a range of issues including, “the inexperience of the
Affinity Fund management.” But the board headed by MBS overruled the panel and
awarded the massive investment that will result a pay day to Kushner’s company
of $25
million a year—not including profits earned from investments.
MBS coming to Kushner’s aid raises grave
concerns that it is repayment for Kushner’s repeated lobbying in favor of MBS
and Saudi while working in the Trump White House. The NY Times in a 2018
article detailed how
Kushner and MBS had grown close early in Trump’s term. That relationship
yielded benefits for MBS after US intelligence agencies determined that MBS had
ordered the October 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi for his public
criticism of Saudi and the Crown Prince. As the Times reported,
“Kushner became the prince’s most important defender inside the White House.”
Beyond that incident, as The Washington Post
noted in Sunday’s article, Kushner used his influence in
“persuading Trump to prioritize Saudi Arabia over the objections of top
advisers.”
The Washington Post also laid out how Trump is
profiting from his defense of MBS and Saudi while in the White House.
After the US intelligence community released a report concluding that MBS had
ordered the killing of Khashoggi, Trump publicly
undermined the report’s conclusions and opposed releasing
the report. He even vetoed a
congressional bill to block arms sales to Saudi while authorizing billions
of dollars in weapons sales to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Trump wasn’t shy about what he did for
MBS, stating in
a recorded interview with The Post’s associate editor Bob Woodward about the
Saudi Prince: “I saved his ass.”
Now we see Trump being repaid by Saudi’s LIV
Golf tour—which is bankrolled
by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund—holding a series of tournaments at
his golf courses. Typically, for PGA events the course owner receives $2
to 3 million per event, as the Post reported. However, Trump
has refused to
reveal how much he’s pocketing from the Saudis--which is especially alarming
given Trump is running for President in 2024.
Beyond that, the Trump Organization has
recently secured an agreement with
a Saudi real estate company that plans to build a Trump hotel in neighboring
country of Oman as part of a $4 billion golf resort. As Robert Weissman, the
president of Public Citizen, a government watchdog group stated about
Trump’s 2022 deal with the Saudi real estate company: “The Trump
corruption complex is back in business.”
The message is clear: Trump and Kushner
defended MBS and now MBS is paying them back in cold hard cash!
Then there’s Trump’s daughter, Ivanka,
who—as a I noted in a 2019
CNN article—should’ve been investigated then by Congress for her obvious
conflicts of interest that had been flagged by the Citizens for Responsibility
and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a nonpartisan ethics watchdog. For
example, CREW had raised concerns
over Ivanka’s business receiving approval for three trademarks
from the Chinese government in June 2018 on the very
same date that sanctions were lifted by her father on Chinese
telecommunications company ZTE—whose controlling shareholder is a Chinese
state-owned corporation.
In later 2018, Ivanka received approval
for 16 new trademarks from the government of China on a range of goods – from
shoes and jewelry to voting machines. These approvals occurred
while her father was negotiating a trade deal with China.
On Sunday morning, GOP Rep. Comer appeared on
ABC where he was asked by
host George Stephanopoulos if he would investigate Kushner and Trump given the
new reporting about their profiting off of a Saudi. (Why the corporate media
gives Ivanka a pass for her obvious conflicts is beyond me?!) At first Comer
responded by stating, “I think everything is on the table." Then he
immediately pivoted into partisan hack mode, claiming that since Kushner spoke
to the Jan 6 committee he had already been questioned about his potential
conflicts. Obviously, the focus of the Jan 6 committee was Trump’s coup, not
Kushner’s Saudi deal. Then Comer backtracked even more saying IF Trump
gets back in the White House, we will look at those possible conflicts.
Rep. Comer is correct that the “American
people deserve transparency and accountability” when it comes to anyone
profiting off political connections—especially when the people officially
served in our government as with Ivanka, Kushner and the former President. If
Comer is being honest, we should be seeing letters demanding the same info from
these three as he sent to Hunter Biden.
But we know he won’t. Comer is
doing nothing more than using our tax dollars in an effort to hurt President
Biden and help the GOP. And that is as bad as any influence peddling out there!
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