Free Republic

The disappearance of the CEO and president of a Shariah-compliant investment firm has left many in West Ridge's Indo-Pak community wary and in turmoil. Concerned when monthly profit checks from Sunrise Equities stopped arriving in August, no one has seen or heard from the firm's CEO, Salman Ibrahim. Ibrahim has not returned investors' phone calls. Phone calls to the firm's office at 6355 N. Claremont, and its downtown affiliates, Sunrise Development Inc., have also gone unanswered, leaving many of the firm's mostly Muslim investors wondering where Ibrahim and other corporate officers have gone. "[Ibrahim] stopped paying the monthly installments," said...

Newly released State Department emails help reveal how a major Clinton Foundation donor was placed on a sensitive government intelligence advisory board even though he had no obvious experience in the field, a decision that appeared to baffle the department’s professional staff. The emails further reveal how, after inquiries from ABC News, the Clinton staff sought to “protect the name” of the Secretary, “stall” the ABC News reporter and ultimately accept the resignation of the donor just two days later. Copies of dozens of internal emails were provided to ABC News by the conservative political group Citizens United, which obtained...

Wang Wenliang, a Chinese national briefly shook Clinton’s hand at a 2013 fund-raiser in her home;a separate Wang company pledged $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation, the first of several totaling $2 million. The Clinton fundraiser was one of at least three interactions between Wang and McAuliffe. McAuliffe initially said he could not remember ever meeting Wang, though he later clarified that his staff had informed him of several likely meetings. Among the donations of DOJ interestwere a total of $120,000 in contributions to McAuliffe from a company controlled by Wang. DOJ told McAuliffe's attorney there were questions over foreign sources...

The bipartisan Open Secrets blog reported that a small number of Americans, led by George Soros, donated $100 million to Presidential Super PACs in the second half of 2015. Federal Election Commission filings of 21 different Super PACs supporting the top 13 major party candidates show "29 individuals or organizations who gave $1 million or more" for a total of $99.4 million collected in a six-month period. Adding in the 13 campaign committees, to total raised in the second half of 2015 was $260 million. Democrat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pocketed the largest individual single Super PAC donation...

The Mullahs' Voice By Kenneth R. Timmerman FrontPageMagazine.com February 23, 2007 Iran’s ruling clerics have a new unofficial spokesman in Washington, who can talk circles around their official ambassadors. His name is Trita Parsi, and he is a protégé of Francis Fukayama, the policy heavy-weight who has now turned against the Bush agenda of promoting freedom in the Middle East as an antidote to terror. In a remarkable round-up of official Iranian government views, presented as “objective” analysis on C-SPAN this past Saturday, Feb. 17, Parsi urged the United States government to “open up diplomacy and dialogue” with Iran’s rulers...

Washington (AFP) - Jeb Bush appeared destined to waltz to the 2016 Republican nomination, but his presidential bid has been upended to the point that even his cherished family pedigree might not be enough to salvage his flagging campaign. Charles Foster, a prominent immigration lawyer who raises money for Bush, said the meeting was mischaracterized by some as an emergency session where the clan swooped in to reverse the slide. "It's a long race and Jeb's campaign is set up to go the distance," he told AFP.

After bemoaning the wealthy GOP donors who he says "actively despise" the party's conservative base, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz has turned his campaign fundraising efforts toward luring in small-dollar bundlers. In what his camp is calling "the world's first presidential social crowd-funding platform," the Texas senator's campaign on Thursday announced CruzCrowd, a website that hopes to draw in donors who can raise multiple small donations. "Traditionally, wealthy bundlers have been the financiers and driving force behind presidential politics. Ted Cruz has proven his appeal to wealthy donors and they are a vital part of his campaign," Chris Wilson, director...

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported President Obama spoke at a Nevada State Democratic Party fundraiser for Catherine Cortez Masto, who is running for Harry Reid’s Senate seat in 2016. “The event was held at the Henderson home of Las Vegas Sun editor and publisher Brian Greenspun. Contributions at the event hit a high of $33,400. The event, which drew more than 100 people, raised more than $300,000.” What kind of newspaper is the Las Vegas Sun that its editor and publisher hosts Democratic Party fundraisers with the president? A routinely partisan one. Jon Ralston, just hailed by Chuck Todd on...

Sen. John McCain is right. Code Pink protesters are low-life scum as he called them Thursday morning when the group disrupted a Senate hearing to protest former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Saddam Hussein, Ayatollah Khamenei, Fidel Castro, Raul Castro, al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Taliban. These are some of the terrorists and state sponsors of terrorism Code Pink has given political, financial and/or material aid to since the group’s founding in late 2002. All that time Code Pink has also worked with and funded the Democratic Party,...

Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton is making her second fundraising visit to Chicago on Tuesday, attending an event at the home of securities trader Rajiv Fernando. In 2011, Obama appointed Fernando to serve on the International Security Advisory Board, a panel that was charged with advising then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on sensitive security matters. After the appointment, ABC News raised questions about Fernando’s qualifications for the panel. Days after the report, which also noted Fernando’s contributions to the Clinton Foundation, the trader stepped down from the board, saying he did not have time to serve. Clinton is asking...

Reacting to the disclosure that Hillary Clinton exclusively used a private email account during her tenure as secretary of state, a federal judge agreed Friday to reopen a conservative group's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking details about the employment arrangements of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin. However, U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan declined — for now — to address claims from Judicial Watch that Clinton's use of the private account and server led State Department officials to commit a fraud on the court by certifying they had turned over all responsive records.

President Barack Obama’s choice to be the next attorney general, Loretta Lynch, has asked a federal judge to impose a prison term of four and a half years on one of Hillary Clinton’s biggest fundraisers for illegal contributions made to Clinton’s 2008 campaign, according to Yahoo!’s Michael Isikoff. Hotel magnate Sant Singh Chatwal had requested leniency from prosecutors on charges that he made more than $180,000 in illegal contributions to the Clinton campaign, but Lynch made clear this week that leniency would not be granted. “The evidence in this case reveals a man who believes that either the rules do...

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, her Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills, and Sen. Bob Menendez (D., N.J.) supported a visa waiver for the daughter of a fugitive Ecuadorian banker in exchange for significant campaign contributions to the Democratic Party. On Tuesday, NBC 4 New York reported that Menendez, with express written support from Clinton, intervened on behalf of Estefania Isaías, who was banned from traveling to the U.S. due to accusations of visa fraud. Isaías is the daughter of Roberto Isaias, who lives in Miami and is currently fighting extradition to Ecuador for banking crimes and under investigation for...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A phosphate export firm owned by the Moroccan government will give the Clinton Foundation a donation of at least $1 million in advance of a May meeting the charity is to host in Morocco, Politico reported Thursday. The gift adds to the Clinton family charity's reliance on contributions from foreign nations as Hillary Rodham Clinton prepares to enter the 2016 presidential race. Clinton Foundation spokesman Craig Minassian did not confirm the Politico report about the donation from OCP, but said Thursday that international participants in the Clinton Global Initiative meeting in Marrakech in early May would work...

Hassan Nemazee, an Iranian-American businessman who raised money for the political campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for defrauding Bank of America Corp, Citigroup Inc and HSBC Holdings Plc out of $292 million. U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein imposed the sentence on Thursday following Nemazee's March 18 guilty plea in Manhattan federal court to charges of bank fraud and wire fraud over loan transactions with the three major banks. Nemazee said he needed the money to pay debts arising from his dealings in hedge funds and properties.

President Barack Obama is nominating a major fundraiser for his presidential campaign to be the next U.S. ambassador to Sweden. The White House says Azita Raji is Obama’s pick for the job. She’s a former investment banker who served as national vice-chair of finance for Obama’s 2012 campaign. She helped raise more than $500,000 for Obama’s campaign as a “bundler” in 2012. …

U.S. Ambassador To Belgium Howard Gutman, who was a top Obama campaign bundler, reportedly “solicited prostitutes, including minors.” Gutman was also a Palin-basher who challenged her parenting skills. (VIDEO-AT-LINK) The New York Post reported, via Weasel Zippers: A State Department whistleblower has accused high-ranking staff of a massive coverup — including keeping a lid on findings that members of then-Secretary Hillary Clinton’s security detail and the Belgian ambassador solicited prostitutes. A chief investigator for the agency’s inspector general wrote a memo outlining eight cases that were derailed by senior officials, including one instance of interference by Clinton’s chief of staff,...

An undercover FBI agent gave campaign donations to an unnamed Bay Area politician during a yearslong undercover investigation into a Chinatown gang and alleged political corruption that culminated in the arrests of state Sen. Leland Yee and Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow earlier this year. This is according to the latest filing by the U.S. Attorney's Office in the federal case against the two men and about 20 others. Besides indicating that a politician other than Yee allegedly took money from undercover FBI agents in exchange for favors, the filing further lays out the relationship between former school board member and...

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - Suspended California state Sen. Leland Yee could face a jury as early as June for charges of political corruption and conspiracy to import guns. At a scheduling conference on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said Yee will be tried along with his political consultant Keith Jackson, who also faces drug and murder-for-hire charges. Breyer said those charges will be tried separately, but lawyers for the defendants, including Yee's lawyer James Lassart, were not satisfied. "The firearms charges are going to be extremely prejudicial. The government has acquired 50 to 70 different firearms that, undoubtedly to...

Whether the name of Richie Urso ever makes it into the corruption trial of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich next June is anybody's guess. You've probably never heard of Richie Urso. But the FBI sure has heard of him. His is a classic Chicago story, about a beefy yet charming guy born on Grand Avenue, who got in trouble with the law as a kid, only to make political friends and become extremely wealthy. He was arrested once for jewelry theft in the '60s by the Outfit's top Chicago police detective, William Hanhardt. Urso's alleged partner in the theft was the...