Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/hillary-clinton-brother-tony-rodham-terry-mcauliffe-116447#ixzz4LTw8pzqy
With his sister serving as secretary of state, Tony Rodham, the brother of likely Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton, became a kind of traveling salesman in China for a politically connected green car company that was building a factory in a distressed corner of Mississippi.
“When I first got involved, Tony was taking part in jaunts to China, and they would do presentations. Somebody in China did recruiting and found people who were interested and could qualify,” said former Gov. Kathleen Blanco (D-La.), who until December sat on the board of Rodham’s Gulf Coast Funds Management, a company criticized this week for using political pressure to try to speed up a federal agency’s approval of visas.
Blanco told POLITICO that while Rodham was listed as president and CEO, he appeared to have little day-to-day involvement in the firm. His principal role was recruiting investors for Gulf Coast’s main client, GreenTech Automotive, a start-up automotive company linked to Terry McAuliffe, now Virginia’s governor. Both Gulf Coast and GreenTech are owned by Virginia businessman Xiaolin Charles Wang, who brought on partners with deep Democratic Party political connections as he tried to get the business going. Blanco said both she and former IRS Commissioner Margaret Richardson left Gulf Coast’s board in December. The ex-governor also said she believed the firm was no longer actively recruiting investors.
Rodham, who did not respond to messages and emails sent to the firms, has said nothing publicly about an inspector general report issued this week that offers a detailed account of pressure exerted on a Department of Homeland Security official to try to speed up review of visa requests. The report says that both Rodham and McAuliffe contacted U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Alejandro Mayorkas for help and that agency employees believed the men were getting preferential treatment because of their political ties.
The investigation also involves the Clinton Foundation, according to CNN. CBS reported last year that Wang’s company, Rilin Enterprises, pledged in 2013 to give the organization $2 million.
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/05/23/chinese-donor-linked-to-terry-mcauliffe-probe-also-caused-trouble-for-hillary.html
McAuliffe’s problems often rope in the Clintons, as in the case of Tony Rodham and GreenTech, because of his longtime status as a close confidant of Bill and Hillary. He co-chaired Bill Clinton’s 1996 presidential re-election bid and Hillary’s 2008 presidential campaign. Bill Clinton has praised McAuliffe as a smooth-talking operator, once saying he “could talk an owl out of a tree,” according to The New York Times.
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Terry McAuliffe's latest scandal just the tip of the iceberg
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/terry-mcauliffes-latest-scandal-just-the-tip-of-the-iceberg/article/2592889
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, the top Clinton operative who holds elected office, is under investigation yet again. This time, it involves $120,000 given to McAuliffe's gubernatorial campaign by a billionaire who served in China's communist legislature.
McAuliffe's business and political dealings have raised questions repeatedly. For example, in the 1990s, as McAuliffe set records raising money for the Clintons, congressional investigators uncovered a Chinese government scheme to funnel money to the Clinton operation through a number of businesspeople, including a man named "Charlie" Trie. In that case, 94 people either refused questioning, pled the Fifth Amendment, or left the country.
Kaine was attempting to classify certain areas of Virginia as “targeted employment areas,” which reduces the threshold for EB-5 capital needed to grant visas to investors.
“This letter is to identify the agency in Virginia which has been named to determine and designate areas of high unemployment as targeted employment areas with respect to the application of Gulf Coast Funds Management, LLC for approval of expansion in the Commonwealth of Virginia,” Kaine wrote.
Kaine’s letter came three days after officials from the Virginia Employment Commission sent a letter to the same USCIS official detailing areas in the state that it had classified as targeted employment areas.
The EB-5 investment threshold is reduced from $1 million to $500,000 for companies that operate in those areas. That reduced threshold can attract more investors seeking U.S. visas.
The EB-5 program has come under fire from critics who say it is prone to fraud and, even when it operates as designed, amounts to a “cash-for-visa” scheme.
Officials at the Virginia Economic Development Partnership expressed similar concerns.
8. Kaine, is Terry McAuliffe your Master Puppeteer?