Good ol' reliable blue VA flipped couple years ago... many blame it on Chinese "votes."
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Investigation into McAuliffe's foreign donation campaigns
Engineered by The Clinton Foundation
In 2016, former Gov. of Virginia Terry McAuliffe was under a joint investigation by the FBI and prosecutors from the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section. The investigation centered around Terry McAuliffe’s 2013 campaign and whether he accepted political contributions that were forbidden by federal law.
As part of the probe, investigators have scrutinized McAuliffe’s time as a board member of the charitable foundation set up by former President Bill Clinton: The Clinton Global Initiative.
McAuliffe is a Clinton insider.....former chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 2000 to 2005, and co-chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, speaking to reporters said he was “shocked” by the investigation and that it “has nothing to do with the Clinton Foundation.”
“This was an allegation of a gentleman who gave a check to my campaign,” McAuliffe said. “I didn’t bring the donor in. I didn’t bring him into the Clinton foundation. I’m not sure if I’ve even met the person, to be honest with you.” Among the McAuliffe donations that drew the interest of the investigators was $120,000 from Chinese businessman Wang Wenliang through his U.S. businesses. Wang was previously delegate to China’s National People’s Congress, the country’s ceremonial legislature.
Mr. Wenliang chairs the privately held China Rilin Construction Group, which holds a majority stake in Dadong Port Group, a strategic Chinese port near North Korea. He is also Chairman of the Board Zhongyu Gas Holdings Limited.
U.S. election law prohibits foreign nationals from donating to federal, state or local elections. Penalties for violations include fines and/or imprisonment. It appears that Mr Wang holds a permanent resident status, according to a spokeswoman, which would make him a U.S. person under election law and eligible to donate to McAuliffe’s campaign. The donation in question revolves around $70,000 for his campaign and $50,000 for his inaugural — from West Legend Corp., a New Jersey construction materials company controlled by Chinese billionaire Wang Wenliang. As The Intercept explains:
The sheer size seems improper. Yet Virginia permits unlimited, direct contributions by both individuals and corporations to candidates for state offices — e.g., governor, the state senate and general assembly. Virginia is one of six states that allow direct, unlimited contributions by anyone. (The others are Alabama, Missouri, Nebraska, Oregon, and Utah.) In other words, for Virginia state elections, the fact that Citizens United made it possible for corporations to spend an unlimited amount in ways uncoordinated with candidates was largely irrelevant. Corporations could already just cut checks directly to candidates for as much as they wanted.
Then there’s the issue of West Legend’s foreign ownership. According to U.S. law, it’s illegal for a “foreign national” — meaning a foreign individual, corporation, or government — to make any donation in connection with a federal, state, or local election. However, the legal definition of a foreign national specifically excludes any “corporation … organized under or created by the laws of the United States.”
So, since West Legend Corp. is incorporated in the U.S., it’s not a foreign national and can take part in U.S. elections like any other American company.
Where Wang’s permanent residency would be legally significant is under FEC regulations that forbid any foreign national from engaging in the “decision-making process of any person, such as a corporation,” regarding political expenditures. As long as everyone participating was a U.S. citizen or permanent resident, then Wang and McAuliffe are legally in the clear. FEC advisory opinions also suggest that to be legal, the $120,000 donation must have been generated by business activity in the U.S.
Mr Wang Wenliang also has been a donor to the Clinton foundation, pledging $2 million. He also has been a prolific donor to other causes, including to New York University, Harvard University and environmental issues in Florida.
While the way politicians harvest money from donors is appalling, as of yet, there is no evidence that McAuliffe broke any rules in this particular case.
In 2015, McAuliffe’s political action committee, Common Good Va., returned a $25,000 donation from a company with ties to Angola’s state-owned oil company after The Associated Press raised questions about its legality. Federal law prohibits campaigns at any level from receiving money from outside the U.S.
Clinton Foundation donors gave $13 million to Terry McAuliffe
Records show that there are 120 donors who have contributed to both Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe and the Clinton Foundation, giving a total of $13.4 million to the governor’s campaigns, inauguration, state party and political action committee. That increases to nearly $18 million if donors to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign are included.
In fact, West Legend Corp. was on the was only the 57th biggest donor to McAuliffe during his two campaigns for governor. Coming in first at $6.7 million was the Democratic Governors Association PAC. Next was Independence USA, a Super PAC funded by Michael Bloomberg to promote gun control, with $1.7 million. Among the other corporations that gave to McAuliffe are tobacco giant Altria ($243,667), Hospital Corporation of America($177,500), and Genentech ($150,000). Notable individual donors include long-time Clinton supporter Haim Saban ($572,636), Facebook’s first president Sean Parker ($500,000), BET founder Robert Johnson ($495,000), and Bill Clinton ($110,000)
The investigation from the Washington post shows a long symbiotic relationship between McAuliffe’s governorship and Hillary Clinton’s prospects for taking Virginia. This was briefly discuss in a previous article, and would be further expanded upon in subsequent ones. 57 small Clinton donors gave a total of $5,513,171 to McAuliffe
This bracket has the largest number of donors, who mostly gave moderate amounts to both campaigns. All but two gave less than $250,000 to McAuliffe. One of the exceptions is billionaire environmentalist Thomas S. Steyer, who gave McAuliffe a total of $1.6 million through his PAC.
The other is Rhode Island marketing executive Mark Weiner. He and his firm gave nearly $380,000 to McAuliffe, who helped Weiner win the right to sell official Bill Clinton inauguration merchandise. McAuliffe even pitched the items on QVC. Weiner later connected McAuliffe to an investment that allowed him to profit from a stranger’s death. McAuliffe later donated the profits to charity.
Dubai's A. Huda Farouki, a longtime Clinton supporter who spent New Year’s Eve in 1999 with the Clintons, gave McAuliffe $100,000 in campaign cash and at least that much to the Clinton Foundation. He is chairman of Dubai-based defense contractor Anham, which a government audit found to have over-billed the Pentagon by $4.4 million, Bloomberg Business reported.
May 24, 2016
Who is Wang Wenliang, Chinese businessman who donated to McAuliffe?
And mega donor to The Clinton Foundation
In China, it’s called “guanxi,” translated as “connections” or “relationships.” “There is a long-standing tradition in Chinese culture and history of building relationships. And money can come into that as well,” said James Mann, a former foreign correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and author of four books on U.S.-China relations who is currently an author-in-residence at Johns Hopkins University. “It can be as benign as cultivating someone who can help get your kid into college to buying them off.”
Wang Wenliang, the Chinese billionaire whose $120,000 in donations in 2013 to Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s campaign and inaugural committee have been identified in news reports as a part of a federal investigation into McAuliffe, has spent much time and money on guanxi in the United States over the past six years.
Wang is the founder and head of Rilin Enterprises, a privately held company with interests in construction, ports, agriculture and electric power. It’s based in Liaoning Province, China.
He made headlines last year when news reports revealed a $2 million donation in 2013 to the Clinton Foundation, the nonprofit run by the political family with deep ties to McAuliffe. The governor is a former Democratic Party chairman, major party fundraiser and board member of the Clinton Global Initiative, part of the foundation.
In 2010, a grant from Rilin launched the Center on U.S.-China Relations at New York University. Two years later, Wang pledged $25 million to support and expand NYU’s Global Network University. He is a member of NYU’s board of trustees and is also a donor and advisory committee member at Harvard University’s Asia Center.
Representatives for NYU and Harvard did not respond to requests for additional details on Wang’s relationship with the universities.
The businessman, whose firm and its subsidiaries also control the Dandong Port Group, which manages a deepwater facility on the border with North Korea, also contributed a grant to launch the Zbigniew Brzezinski Institute on Geostrategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonprofit Washington policy research organization with a focus on defense and security, among other issues.
And in Virginia, in a 2011 news release, Gov. Bob McDonnell boasted of a trade deal between Dandong Port Group Co. and Perdue AgriBusiness, which operates grain storage facilities in Virginia and an oilseed crush plant in Chesapeake, that shipped Perdue’s soybeans to the Dandong Pasite Grain and Oilseed Co., another Rilin affiliate.
A 2013 memorandum of understanding increased the export of soybeans to Dandong to 29 million bushels, though a Perdue spokeswoman said Tuesday that the agreement was not renewed.
“Perdue AgriBusiness is not currently shipping to and does not have any orders with Dandong Port Group or its affiliates,” the spokeswoman, Julie DeYoung, wrote in an email.
Federal lobbying disclosure forms also reveal that the Dandong Port Group hired McGuireWoods Consulting, part of the Richmond-headquartered legal and lobbying firm, in 2012 to take up “trade and business development issues” on its behalf.
On the roster of lobbyists was Frank Donatelli; a former deputy chairman of the Republican National Committee and onetime assistant to President Ronald Reagan; former Democratic South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges; former Democratic Virginia Congressman L.F. Payne Jr.; and Mona Mahib, a former U.S. Labor Department and White House official and former director of communications for the Democratic Governors Association who worked on four presidential campaigns.
In a statement Tuesday night, Hodges said McGuireWoods Consulting has represented Dandong Port Co. on “a variety of business and government relations matters” for more than seven years.
“Although we no longer provide government-relations services to the company, we do continue to assist it in business-related matters when called upon,” said Hodges, a senior adviser for McGuireWoods Consulting.
“Mr. Wang, a principal in Dandong Port, is a Chinese-American business leader with interests in ports, real estate, agribusiness and other areas of business. We helped Mr. Wang’s business in 2013 to make the largest purchase of Virginia soybeans in the commonwealth’s history. Mr. Wang has continued to explore other opportunities to invest in the United States over the years and has also supported philanthropic causes here.”
McGuireWoods introduced Wang “to then-private citizen Terry McAuliffe” during the McDonnell administration, Hodges said.
“To the best of my recollection, this occurred shortly after the soybean agreement was announced,” he said.
McAuliffe said Tuesday that he was “not sure he ever met” Wang.
“I know the folks who worked on his company,” he said, insisting the donation is legal in any event because Wang has held a green card since 2007.
McAuliffe added that he and the Clintons “travel in the same circles” and that donors to the Clinton Foundation have been “friends of mine for years and years.”
He said that every check that came into his campaign was fully vetted, including the check he received from one of Wang’s companies, West Legend Corp. of Jersey City, N.J.
That’s where, in a 2011 raid, Jersey City police and inspectors found about 30 Rilin workers living in two cramped houses, according to the Jersey Journal. The New York Times, reporting last year on the purchase of expensive New York real estate by shell companies, including one created by Wang, said the inspectors found a similar situation in 2013 and that the Rilin workers were working for the Chinese Embassy.
What all the connections amount to, Mann said, is building influence, but to what purpose?
“Is this simply personal, or is there some purpose related to Chinese intelligence,” he said. “It certainly raises that question.”
He noted that Wang’s work on embassies and in ports require close ties to China’s ruling Communist Party and its security apparatus. Wang has also been a delegate to China’s National People’s Congress, the nation’s “rubber stamp” legislature, Mann said, though he considered that of lesser importance.
“In the last 10 or 15 years, as China’s businesses have developed, the party has shown greater tolerance of people rising in business who aren’t party members. But even if you’re not a party member, you have to be on good terms with the party,” he said.
Attempts to reach Wang for comment were unsuccessful.