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Latest foreign influence in elections

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  • Latest foreign influence in elections

    You just can't make this stuff up.

    Source: The Head Of Joe Biden’s New Super PAC Is A Foreign Government Agent


    Biden's new PAC is being run by a registered foreign agent for Azerbaijan.



    Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has a brand new Super PAC in his corner, and it’s being run by a registered foreign agent for the government of Azerbaijan. Larry Rasky, a lobbyist who previously worked as a top campaign operative for Biden, is listed as the treasurer of the PAC, according to records filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

    “A former Joe Biden aide has filed paperwork to form a super PAC, called Unite the Country, that is set to boost the former vice president with millions of dollars in spending in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary,” Politico reported on Tuesday.

    Records filed with the Department of Justice show that Rasky is also a registered foreign agent lobbying on behalf of the government of Azerbaijan. The records, which were filed pursuant to the Foreign Agent Registration Act, show that Rasky was hired by the Azerbaijani government on April 23, 2019. Federal documents signed by Rasky show that he reports directly to Elin Suleymanov, Azerbaijan’s ambassador to the United States.

    “[The government of Azerbaijan] will pay RASKY a minimum monthly non-refundable fee (the ‘Monthly Fee’) for the Services provided of $15,000 per month, plus a 5% administrative fee as described below,” Rasky’s contract with the foreign government states. “The Monthly Fees totaling $94,500 shall be paid in two equal installments. The initial payment of $47,250 is due upon the signing of this agreement. The second payment of $47,250 is due on July 15, 2019.”

    Rasky changed the name of the PAC from “For The People” to “Unite the Country” on Monday, according to FEC filings. The filings do not state which country Rasky intends to unite on Biden’s behalf.

    Politico reported in August that Rasky also explored going into business with Hunter Biden and James Biden, the former vice president’s younger brother. At one point, Rasky planned to provide a million dollars towards the Bidens’ purchase of Paradigm Global Advisors, a hedge fund.

    “James and Hunter brought in Larry Rasky, a lobbyist and longtime Biden adviser, who at one point, according to court records, was going to provide $1 million in financing,” Politico reported. “Rasky did not respond to a request for comment.”

    Biden’s campaign has been dogged by allegations that he corruptly used his influence as vice president to steer lucrative foreign business contracts to his son Hunter. At a 2018 event organized by the Council on Foreign Relations, Joe Biden — who was tasked by then-President Barack Obama to lead the U.S. government’s efforts in Ukraine — bragged about threatening to withhold a billion-dollar loan guarantee if the Ukrainian government refused to fire a prosecutor who was reportedly investigating a gas company that paid Hunter Biden millions of dollars to sit on its board.

    “I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars,” Biden said. “I said, you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours.”

    “I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours,’” Biden recalled. “If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a b-tch. He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”

    After Shokin was fired, he was replaced by Yuri Lutsenko, who also has been dogged by allegations of corruption. The Obama administration never demanded Lutsenko’s ouster, despite worries that Lutsenko was similarly corrupt and untrustworthy.

    In recent congressional testimony, George Kent, a State Department official who works on the agency’s Ukraine portfolio, contradicted claims that the Obama administration was merely following the lead of the so-called international community in demanding the firing of Shokin. As The Federalist previously reported, Kent told lawmakers the Obama administration spearheaded the efforts to have Shokin removed from his position as the top federal prosecutor in Ukraine. Kent said the international community — namely the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Western nations within the European Union — were deferential to U.S. directives on the matter.

    The news that Biden’s Super PAC is run by the agent of a foreign government will likely complicate the former vice president’s efforts blunt the narrative that his government duties are for sale.

    Azerbaijan is not the only foreign entity that Rasky has recently represented. He and his firm also lobbied on behalf of a Bangladeshi political party through January of 2019.

    “Rasky Partners will engage in message development, outreach to influencers, media monitoring, media relations, strategic counsel and research,” the filing declared. Rasky’s firm received more than $86,000 from that contract, federal records show.

    A previous firm run by Rasky also represented foreign officials in Japan, Hungary, Congo, and Serbia.


    Source

    © Copyright Original Source



    Now just for a minute substitute Trump for Biden in this story and imagine the hair on fire reaction from the MSM.

    I'm always still in trouble again

    "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
    "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
    "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

  • #2
    Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
    You just can't make this stuff up.


    Now just for a minute substitute Trump for Biden in this story and imagine the hair on fire reaction from the MSM.
    I expect all our leftist friends to roundly condemn Biden - any minute now....
    Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

    Comment


    • #3
      DC is crawling with foreign agents, politicians take millions per year from dozens of countries. This isn't a secret, it's the norm.
      Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by seer View Post
        I expect all our leftist friends to roundly condemn Biden - any minute now....
        Biden is all kinds of bad. Vote Sanders.
        "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
        "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
        "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by Starlight View Post
          Biden is all kinds of bad. Vote Sanders.
          I prefer having money to spend.
          "The man from the yacht thought he was the first to find England; I thought I was the first to find Europe. I did try to found a heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy."
          GK Chesterton; Orthodoxy

          Comment


          • #6








            I'm always still in trouble again

            "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
            "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
            "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by Starlight View Post
              Biden is all kinds of bad.
              Biden really needs this kind of ringing endorsement. Call his campaign headquarters at once!
              The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
                You just can't make this stuff up.

                Now just for a minute substitute Trump for Biden in this story and imagine the hair on fire reaction from the MSM.
                Politico is saying Rasky filed the papers for Biden's new SuperPAC, but it isn't being run by Rasky.
                The group, Unite the Country, will be "committed to fighting back against Trump, his allies, the Russians, and the Republican Party — all of whom are engaged in unprecedented attacks against Vice President Biden in order to deny him the Democratic nomination,” Mark Doyle, chairman of the super PAC's board, said in a statement.

                They do mention Rasky, though.
                Along with Doyle, a former Biden aide who led the veterans-focused nonprofit Rags of Honor, the super PAC’s other board members are ex-Biden aide John MacNeil, who will work as its secretary; strategist Larry Rasky, a Biden spokesman during his previous presidential bids, who will be the group’s treasurer; Democratic strategist Mark Riddle, who also operates the group Future Majority; and Michčle Taylor, former vice chair of the Democratic National Committee.

                Additionally, Unite the Country is employing a three Democratic strategists: Amanda Loveday, Steve Schale and Julianna Smoot.

                Now just for a minute imagine substituting balanced coverage for this right wing agitprop:
                Biden's new PAC is being run by a registered foreign agent for Azerbaijan.

                The Federalist is a scavenger feed, plucking stories off google alerts and pruning them to appeal to, well, folks like you. The entire story was ripped off of Politico, with a quick pass by the FARA filings, because what else are you going to do with all that extra time you save letting real reporters do the work for you. There are multiple links, including this one:

                Ex-Biden aide forms Unite the Country super PAC
                Larry Rasky, who worked on Biden's two previous presidential campaigns, is listed as the super PAC's treasurer.

                By THEODORIC MEYER and MAGGIE SEVERNS
                10/29/2019 12:52 PM EDT
                Updated: 10/29/2019 06:55 PM EDT
                A former Joe Biden aide has filed paperwork to form a super PAC, called Unite the Country, that is set to boost the former vice president with millions of dollars in spending in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.
                Rasky isn’t a registered lobbyist, although others at his firm lobby for a handful of federal clients, including Raytheon, the Massachusetts-based defense contractor. Rasky owns an 87.2 percent stake in the firm, according to a Justice Department disclosure filing.

                ...

                Rasky registered as a foreign agent earlier this year to advise Azerbaijan’s government on strategic communications on a contract worth $15,000 a month. But he stopped working for Azerbaijan in August, he wrote in an email to POLITICO, supplying a copy of a letter his lawyer sent to the Justice Department on Aug. 27. The firm no longer represents foreign clients, he said.

                Having seen way too much of this before, I'm not surprised to find they only brought over the top half of that paragraph, and said that was good enough, leaving out a list of other foreign clients likely figuring that wouldn't add to the hair-burning.
                Rasky’s firm also represented a Bangladeshi political party last year, reaching out to reporters at The New York Times, The Washington Post, POLITICO and other outlets on the party’s behalf, according to a disclosure filing. The firm worked for the party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, as a subcontractor to Blue Star Strategies, a Washington lobbying shop run by two veterans of the Clinton administration.

                Blue Star has another connection to the Bidens: The firm advised the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings while Hunter Biden served on its board, according to The Times.

                Karen Tramontano, Blue Star’s chief executive, said in an interview that she didn’t know Rasky. She hired his firm because Anne Tyrrell, a senior vice president in Rasky Partners’ Washington office, had come recommended to her. Tyrrell has since left Rasky Partners. Tramontano declined to comment on her firm’s work for Burisma.

                Now about this ...

                Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
                You just can't make this stuff up.
                The evidence says otherwise, even before you look at Rasky Partners' client list, it's obvious from the Politico link in the Federalist story that Rasky Partners serves a lot of clients, and after looking at the list, it's clear nearly all of them are US-based.


                Biden is in serious trouble, though, and the SuperPAC is emblematic. It was formed, as has been reported elsewhere, out of necessity, after loud and proud proclamations that they wouldn't, sending a spokesman out to extinguish Rasky's earlier attempt to form a PAC. That's why the name needed changing. The donations aren't coming in, the enthusiasm isn't there, and his lead is whittling away.


                The next time you go bashing on the MSM, try not to cite a source openly sucking off of them to make your point.

                It's not a good look.

                Comment

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