Obama-Clinton Fundraiser Imaad Zuberi Cops a Plea
Obama-Clinton Fundraiser Imaad Zuberi Cops a Plea
Clinton foundation contributor was conduit for Saudi sugardaddy Mohammed Al Rahbani.
Since his election to the presidency in 2016, the Democrat-Deep State-Media axis has targeted Donald Trump for foreign entanglements they claim should remove him from office. Now comes news of foreign entanglements and foreign cash for the previous president.
“Middleman helped Saudi give to Obama inaugural,” proclaims the headline on the October 29 report by Alan Suderman and Jim Mustian, billed as an Associated Press exclusive. As the authors explain, U.S. election law prohibits foreign nationals from making contributions to the inaugural celebrations of American presidents. As it turns out, the law was violated.
A “Saudi tycoon,” Sheikh Mohammed Al Rahbani, routed hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Obama inaugural through an “intermediary,” Imaad Zuberi. He, in turn, is a “jet-setting fundraiser and venture capitalist,” who has “raised millions of dollars for Democrats and Republicans alike over the years.” Despite the appearance of bipartisanship, Zuberi is more narrowly tailored.
Imaad Zuberi “served as a top fundraiser for both Obama and Hillary Clinton during their presidential runs, including stints on both of their campaign finance committees.” One campaign, not identified, took donations “in the name of one of Zuberi’s dead relatives” and a political committee, also unidentified, “took donations from a person Zuberi invented.” As the DOJ charged, Zuberi pleaded guilty to “falsifying records to conceal his work as a foreign agent while lobbying high-level U.S. government officials,” and it was hardly his first brush with the law.
“Elite Fundraiser for Obama and Clinton Linked to Justice Department Probe,” read the headline on Bill Allison’s August 28, 2015 exclusive in Foreign Policy. The calling card of the elite political fundraiser are photographs, “bumping fists with President Barack Obama in front of a Christmas tree at a White House reception. Sharing a belly laugh with Vice President Joe Biden at a formal luncheon,” and posing “cheek to cheek with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.”
Not only is Zuberi a major fundraiser for her campaign, notes Allison, “he also donated between $250,000 and $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation, which has already come under fire for accepting money from donors — many of them foreign — with interests before the U.S. government while she was secretary of state.” And as Allison learned, Hillary’s 2008 campaign benefitted from “straw donors” set up by Sant Singh Chatwal and Norman Hsu, both convicted of election law violations.
Zuberi also used straw donors in more recent illegal activity. As to the affiliation of those mysterious campaigns and committees, the AP writers provide a hint.
Sheikh Mohammed Al Rahbani has “talked about his support of Obama. He posted pictures on his website of himself and his wife standing with Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden and their spouses at a 2013 inaugural event.” Alas, “the website was taken down shortly after Zuberi’s plea was made public.”
As Paul Delacourt of the FBI’s Los Angeles office explains, “American influence is not for sale.” Mr. Zuberi “lured individuals who were seeking political influence in violation of U.S. law, and in the process, enriched himself by defrauding those with whom he interacted.” According to the DOJ, that “could send him to prison for a lengthy period of time.”
According to Suderman and Mustian, “Zuberi’s case raises questions about the degree to which political committees vet donors.” And as FEC boss Ellen Weintraub told the writers, “I’m deeply concerned about foreigners trying to intervene in our elections, and I don’t think we’re doing enough to try to stop it.” They might start by looking in the right place.
Unconventional candidate Donald Trump, a man of considerable means, financed his own campaign. Trump had no need to consort with the likes of Zuberi or his dead relatives and those he invents. And because Trump financed his own campaign, he owes nothing to anybody, foreign or domestic.
Adam “sack of” Schiff, as Judge Jeanine Pirro respectfully calls him, claimed he had evidence in plain sight that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election from Hillary Clinton. Two years and a Mueller investigation later, such evidence is nowhere in sight. Schiff’s current inquisition, perhaps more bogus than the Mueller probe, is best seen a diversion from John Durham’s criminal investigation of those who launched the Russia hoax. That is where DOJ and election officials should be looking.
Did Clinton Foundation donor Imaad Zerubi turn up on any of those 30,000 subpoenaed emails Hillary Clinton deleted? Did Zerubi see any classified material? Were there any texts from Zerubi and his foreign clients on the cell phones Hillary’s squad smashed up with hammers? Was Clinton grossly negligent, or just extremely careless? And so on. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton also enjoyed other foreign intervention, right out in the open.
Mexican foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard, a former mayor of Mexico City, had worked with voter-registration and participation groups in California, Arizona, Florida, Chicago, and elsewhere. As Ebrard told Francisco Goldman of the New Yorker, in 2016 he “decided to get more involved” by working on get-out-the-vote campaigns on behalf of Hillary Clinton.
A powerful foreign national openly interferes in an American election, and nobody calls him on it. Now that Clinton Foundation lackey Imaad Zuberi has copped a plea, the FEC and DOJ should look into it.
Congress
overrides Obama veto of bill allowing 9/11 lawsuits
By
Tom Carter
On Wednesday, the US Congress overturned President Obama’s veto of
legislation that would permit victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks and
their families to sue Saudi Arabia. Declassified documents released this year
confirm the involvement of Saudi intelligence agents in the funding,
organization, and planning of the attacks—facts which were covered up for years
by the Bush and Obama administrations.
The vote, 97-1 in the Senate and 348-77 in the House of
Representatives, represents the first and only congressional override of
Obama’s presidency. Under the US Constitution, the president’s veto can be
overturned only by a two-thirds majority vote in both houses of Congress.
The Obama administration and the military and intelligence
agencies, backed by sections of the media, including the New York Times, have
vigorously denounced the legislation. Obama personally, together with Central
Intelligence Agency director John Brennan, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, and
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford among others, have all
publicly opposed the bill.
In a letter to Congress opposing the legislation, Obama warned
that the bill would “threaten to erode sovereign principles that protect the
United States, including our U.S. Armed Forces and other officials, overseas.”
In a lead editorial on Wednesday, the New York Times similarly
warned that “if the bill becomes law, other countries could adopt similar
legislation defining their own exemptions to sovereign immunity. Because no
country is more engaged in the world than the United States—with military
bases, drone operations, intelligence missions and training programs—the Obama
administration fears that Americans could be subject to legal actions abroad.”
In other words, the bill would set a precedent for families of
victims of American aggression abroad—such as the tens of thousands of victims
of “targeted killings” ordered by Obama personally—to file lawsuits against US
war criminal in their own countries’ courts.
Obama denounced the vote with unusual warmth on Wednesday. “It's
an example of why sometimes you have to do what's hard. And, frankly, I wish
Congress here had done what's hard,” Obama declared. “If you’re perceived as
voting against 9/11 families right before an election, not surprisingly, that's
a hard vote for people to take. But it would have been the right thing to do
... And it was, you know, basically a political vote.”
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave,” Sir Walter Scott famously
wrote, “When first we practice to deceive!” As the tangled web of lies
surrounding the September 11 attacks continue to unravel, one senses that the
American ruling class and its representatives do not see a clear way out of the
dilemma.
Openly torpedoing the legislation is tantamount to an admission of
guilt. Indeed, the Obama administration, the military and intelligence
agencies, and theNew York Times are publicly working to cover up a crime
perpetrated by Al Qaeda and its backers in Saudi Arabia, which in turn is an
ally of the United States. The mere fact that Obama vetoed this bill
constitutes an admission that the US government is hiding something with
respect to the September 11 attacks.
The alternative, from the standpoint of the American ruling class,
is also fraught with risks. Court proceedings initiated by the families of
September 11 victims will inevitably expose the role played by the Saudi
monarchy, an ally of both Al Qaeda and the United States, in the September 11
attacks. This, in turn, will highlight long and sordid history of American
support for Islamic fundamentalism in the
Middle East, which continues to the present day in Syria and
Libya.
Perhaps most dangerously of all, a full public accounting of
the roles of Saudi intelligence agents in the September 11 attacks
will once again raise questions about the role of the American state in the
attacks. Why did US intelligence
agencies ignore the activities of Saudi agents before the attacks,
based on Saudi Arabia’s supposed status as a US ally?
Why did the US government deliberately cover up the Saudi
connection after the fact, instead claiming that Afghanistan was a “state
sponsor of terrorism” and that Iraq was developing “weapons of mass
destruction?” Why was nobody
prosecuted?
The New York Times, for its part, simply lied about the evidence
of Saudi complicity. “The legislation is motivated by a belief among the 9/11
families that Saudi Arabia played a role in the attacks, because 15 of the 19
hijackers, who were members of Al Qaeda, were Saudis,” the editors wrote. “But
the independent American commission that investigated the attacks found no
evidence that the Saudi government or senior Saudi officials financed the
terrorists.”
In fact, at least two of the hijackers received aid from Omar
al-Bayoumi, who was identified by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a
Saudi intelligence agent with “ties to terrorist elements.” Some of the
hijackers were paid for work in fictitious jobs from companies affiliated with
the Saudi Defense Ministry, with which Al-Bayoumi was in close contact. The
night before the attacks, three of the hijackers stayed at the same hotel as
Saleh al-Hussayen, a prominent Saudi government official.
These and other facts were confirmed by the infamous 28-page
suppressed chapter of the 2002 report issued by the Joint Inquiry into
Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of
September 11, 2001. After 14 years of stalling, the document was finally
released to the public this summer.
Yet the New York Times continues to describe the Saudi monarchy,
the principal financier and sponsor of Islamic fundamentalist groups throughout
the world, as “a partner in combating terrorism.”
The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, passed Wednesday,
is a direct reaction to these revelations of Saudi complicity in the September
11 attacks, under pressure from organizations of survivors and families of
victims. The law amends the federal judicial code to allow US courts “to hear
cases involving claims against a foreign state for injuries, death, or damages
that occur inside the United States as a result of. .. an act of terrorism,
committed anywhere by a foreign state or official.”
Although the bill nowhere names Saudi Arabia, the Saudi government
has threatened massive retaliation, including by moving $750 billion in
assets out of the country before they can be seized in American legal
proceedings. This reaction alone confirms the monarchy’s guilt.
During Wednesday’s session, many of the statements on the floor of
the Senate were nervous and apprehensive. Casting his vote in favor of the
bill, Republican Senator Bob Corker declared, “I have tremendous concerns about
the sovereign immunity procedures that would be set in place by the countries
as a result of this vote.” More than one legislator noted that if the bill had
unintended consequences, it would be modified or repealed.
The anxious comments of legislators and the crisscrossing
denunciations within the ruling elite reflect the significance of this
controversy for the entire American political establishment. For 15 years, the
American population has been relentlessly told that the events of September 11,
2001 “changed everything,” warranting the elimination of democratic rights, the
militarization of the police, renditions, torture, assassinations, totalitarian
levels of spying, death and destruction across the Middle East, and trillions
of dollars of expenditures.
The collapse of the official version of that day’s events shows
that American politics for 15 years has been based on a lie.
No comments:
Post a Comment