Anonymous wrote:https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/obama-donor-pleads-guilty-in-foreign-donation-scheme-226147
Obama donor pleads guilty in foreign donation scheme
Illegal payments totaling $80,000 got an Albanian prime minister hopeful an audience with the president.
A Florida man pled guilty Monday to participating in and covering up a bizarre scheme that wound up getting a man hoping to to become prime minister of Albania into to one of President Barack Obama's fundraising events in October 2012, weeks before Obama's re-election.
Appearing in federal court in Newark, New Jersey, businessman William Argeros, 57, admitted to felony charges of aiding and abetting and illegal foreign political donation and making a false statement to a grand jury, court filings show.
Argeros gave $75,800 to the Obama Victory Fund in 2012 and subsequently donated $100,000 to the committee funding Obama's re-inauguration in 2013, federal records show.
In a plea deal with federal prosecutors, Argeros admitted to teaming up with New Jersey limousine driver Bilal Shehu to receive $80,000 "from a foreign source" and route it to the Obama Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee supporting Obama's reelection bid and other Democratic candidates.
The funds were used to get Albanian politician Edi Rama into an Obama fundraiser in San Francisco. Rama later used a photo with Obama to suggest Obama supported Rama's bid for prime minister, a post he won following a parliamentary election in June 2013.
Soon after the photo of Obama and Rama emerged, Rep, Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) called on U.S. authorities to investigate the donation that led to Rama's attendance at the event.
Albanian prosecutors are reportedly investigating Rama for illegal donations in the U.S., but no charges against him have been filed in Albania.
Anonymous wrote:https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/obama-donor-pleads-guilty-in-foreign-donation-scheme-226147
Obama donor pleads guilty in foreign donation scheme
Illegal payments totaling $80,000 got an Albanian prime minister hopeful an audience with the president.
A Florida man pled guilty Monday to participating in and covering up a bizarre scheme that wound up getting a man hoping to to become prime minister of Albania into to one of President Barack Obama's fundraising events in October 2012, weeks before Obama's re-election.
Appearing in federal court in Newark, New Jersey, businessman William Argeros, 57, admitted to felony charges of aiding and abetting and illegal foreign political donation and making a false statement to a grand jury, court filings show.
Argeros gave $75,800 to the Obama Victory Fund in 2012 and subsequently donated $100,000 to the committee funding Obama's re-inauguration in 2013, federal records show.
In a plea deal with federal prosecutors, Argeros admitted to teaming up with New Jersey limousine driver Bilal Shehu to receive $80,000 "from a foreign source" and route it to the Obama Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee supporting Obama's reelection bid and other Democratic candidates.
The funds were used to get Albanian politician Edi Rama into an Obama fundraiser in San Francisco. Rama later used a photo with Obama to suggest Obama supported Rama's bid for prime minister, a post he won following a parliamentary election in June 2013.
Soon after the photo of Obama and Rama emerged, Rep, Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) called on U.S. authorities to investigate the donation that led to Rama's attendance at the event.
Albanian prosecutors are reportedly investigating Rama for illegal donations in the U.S., but no charges against him have been filed in Albania.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Does this matter? Honest question.
does it matter that Trump broke the law? Does it matter that a poor brown person broke immigration law?
Does this matter in the context of a complicit senate, is what I meant.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Does this matter? Honest question.
does it matter that Trump broke the law? Does it matter that a poor brown person broke immigration law?
Anonymous wrote:Does this matter? Honest question.
Yet beyond just Russia, there have long been serious questions about the money behind Trump’s inauguration — and where, exactly, it went. Trump’s inaugural committee raised a truly astonishing $106.7 million, double the previous record set by Barack Obama’s 2009 inaugural. But what they did with it isn’t so clear.
In a report for ProPublica and WNYC by Ilya Marritz earlier this year, the chair of George W. Bush’s second inauguration, Greg Jenkins, said he was baffled. “They had a third of the staff and a quarter of the events and they raise at least twice as much as we did,” he said. “So there’s the obvious question: Where did it go? I don’t know.”
Anonymous wrote:Does this matter? Honest question.
Anonymous wrote:Just lock them up!
A former Paul Manafort associate who pleaded guilty to a lobbying crime admitted that he helped foreign donors give money to President Donald Trump’s Inaugural Committee.
In a plea agreement made public Friday, prosecutors outlined other crimes that the lobbyist, Sam Patten, admitted to but wouldn’t be charged with. Among them was “causing foreign money” to be paid to the Trump inaugural committee. Patten signed off on the allegation.
Patten pleaded guilty earlier Friday to failing to disclose his lobbying on behalf of Ukraine, and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.
According to a court filing, Patten’s Ukrainian client wanted to attend the Trump inauguration in January 2017, but the inauguration committee couldn’t accept money from foreign nationals. Foreign nationals can’t contribute to a presidential inauguration, according to Federal Election Commission rules.
To get around that restriction, Patten enlisted a U.S. citizen to serve as a “straw” buyer, according to the filing. That individual, who wasn’t named, bought four tickets for $50,000, after receiving a check for $50,000 from the consulting firm run by Patten and Konstantin Kilimnik, Manafort’s longtime fixer in Ukraine suspected of having ties to Russian intelligence. That firm, in turn, was reimbursed by a $50,000 wire from the Ukrainian oligarch’s Cypriot bank account, the filing says.