We have a national security scandal on our hands, folks, if McCain is tainted with scammer/money launderer money-influence in connection with Russian-casino peddlers.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-na-vaticanscam11-2008sep11,0,5421278.story
Raffaello Follieri agreed not to appeal any sentence of up to five years and three months in prison for his plea to wire fraud, money laundering and conspiracy. Sentencing was set for Oct. 3.
http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/21/mccains-cronies-rick-davis-uber-lobbyist-at-the-helm/
Here's my first question for all the media types who have been covering McCain: why is it that any negative story about his myriad lobbyist connections gets relegated to the back pages -- the A17 story death knell? Anyone know -- because I'd love to hear the scoop.
John McCain's current campaign chair is none other than uber-lobbyist Rick Davis. A bit of background on Mr. Davis provides some context for how the Straight Talk Express is, and always has been, a sham. To wit:
-- Rick Davis arranged a cocktail meet and greet with McCain and a Russian businessman, Oleg Deripaska, so controversial that the US has revoked his visa -- at an economic conference in Switzerland. Davis' lobbying firm was trying to secure business with the Russian at the time, while the firm was already representing a competing political interest in Ukraine.
Seven months later, in August 2006, Davis was present again at a social gathering that was also attended by McCain and Deripaska, this time in Montenegro, another Eastern European country in which Davis's firm was working. The three were among a few dozen people dining at a restaurant during an official Senate trip....
Afterward, a group from the dinner took boats out to a nearby yacht moored in the Adriatic Sea, where champagne and pastries were served, partly in honor of McCain's 70th birthday.
Salter said neither McCain nor Davis recalls Deripaska being on the yacht after dinner. (emphasis mine)
Cozy.
-- Mr. Davis, while working with the McCain 2008 campaign, also managed to procure a fat internet services contract from the campaign and kept lobbying for clients whose interests were opposed to McCain's own policy pronouncements.
...3eDC, a company he partly owns, had been retained by the campaign to provide Web services. Aides questioned whether Mr. Davis’s role in the company had been fully disclosed and said Mr. Weaver, having learned of the arrangement, had tried to end it.
All told, 3eDC billed the campaign more than $1 million for Web services during the first half of the year. (The amount still owed the company accounts for about a third of the campaign’s debt.) News reports also noted that Davis Manafort, the business development and consulting practice from which Mr. Davis is on leave, had been giving campaign advice to the Ukrainian prime minister, Viktor F. Yanukovich, a favorite of the Kremlin, whose power Mr. McCain often warns against.
Mr. Davis said in the interview that the 3eDC contract had been thoroughly vetted, with his role fully disclosed, and called any accusation that he had been trying to enrich himself “typical smear stuff.” He said he did not fight back against the accusation when it surfaced over the summer because he did not want the back-and-forth to distract from the campaign.
Gee, poor guy. It's all just a misunderstanding I'm sure.
--Or not. It seems that Davis has quite a few money-scandal skeletons in his closet:
Davis is a particularly easy target, having several money-related scandals in his background. A veteran of the Reagan administration, Davis ran McCain's presidential bid six years ago. He also founded a lobbying firm -- Davis, Manafort Inc. -- which has made at least $2.8 million lobbying Congress since 1998.
Over the past eight years, Davis' two roles often overlapped. In 1999, while he was McCain's campaign manager, his firm represented SBC Communications Inc. and Comsat Corp. At that time, both communications companies had controversial mergers pending at the Federal Communications Commission. The Senate Commerce Committee has legislative authority over the FCC, and McCain was chairman of that committee. Both mergers were eventually approved.... (emphasis mine)
But wait, there's more...much, much more to come.
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3364.shtml
june 12, 2008, 00:17
(WMR) -- John McCain's campaign is trying to make political hay out of the conviction of Chicago tycoon Tony Rezko, a one-time fundraiser for presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. However, the McCain campaign wants to bury the story of McCain's 70th birthday bash held on board the yacht of a Russian aluminum tycoon in the Adriatic Sea. The party was held on August 29, 2006, McCain's birthday and followed a congressional junket by McCain and five other GOP senators to the Republic of Georgia.
The host for McCain's yacht party off the coast of the Republic of Montenegro was, according to WMR sources with close links to the Republican Party, Oleg Deripaska, one of Russia's most powerful tycoons who made his billions in cornering Russia's aluminum market in the 1990s.
The 40-year old Deripaska is also politically-connected, having married the daughter of Russia's late President Boris Yeltsin. Unlike most other Russian tycoons, who now live in exile abroad and are protected by Israeli passports, Deripaska maintains close relations to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and another Russian tycoon, Roman Abramovich, who was also invested in Russia's aluminum industry. In 2000, Deripaska merged his firm, Basic Element, with Abramovich's firm, RusAl. Both tycoons maintain expensive homes in London.
Deripaska has attracted the attention of U.S. law enforcement and he has been the subject of several civil law suits filed against him because of his business practices. However, no federal criminal charges have been brought against Deripaska. That is because Yeltsin's son-in-law counts, in addition to McCain, former GOP Senator and 1996 GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole among his most ardent supporters. In 2005, Deripaska paid Dole $500,000 in lobbying fees and was granted a visa to enter the United States. However, in 2006, the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. government refused to grant Deripaska another visa because the FBI discovered he made "inaccurate statements" to the bureau.
In the past, the Canadian firm Magna International, in which Deripaska is a $1.5 billion investor, attempted to buy Daimler Chrysler. The deal ultimately fell through.
McCain and Deripaska first met at a dinner party held concurrently with the Davos World Economic Forum in January 2006 in Switzerland. The party was hosted by Canadian gold mining billionaire Peter Munk, owner of Barrick Gold, which has counted former President George H. W. Bush, former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, former Senator Howard Baker, major Democratic Party lawyer/lobbyist Vernon Jordan, and former German Central Bank President Karl Otto Pohl among the members of its International Advisory Board. The party was arranged by McCain's 2000 campaign manager Rick Davis of the Washington lobbying group Davis Manafort. Attending the meeting in Davos were McCain, Davis, Deripaska, and Senators Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) and John Sununu (R-NH), as well as the host, Munk.
more at links
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