Posted on 07/13/2008 10:48:22 AM PDT by Alter Kaker
A lobbyist with close ties to the White House is offering access to key figures in George W Bush’s administration in return for six-figure donations to the private library being set up to commemorate Bush’s presidency.
Stephen Payne, who claims to have raised more than $1m for the president’s Republican party in recent years, said he would arrange meetings with Dick Cheney, the vice-president, Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, and other senior officials in return for a payment of $250,000 (£126,000) towards the library in Texas.
Payne, who has accompanied Bush and Cheney on several foreign trips, also said he would try to secure a meeting with the president himself.
The revelation confirms long-held suspicions that favours are being offered in return for donations to the libraries which outgoing presidents set up to house their archives and safeguard their political legacies.
Unlike campaign donations, there is no requirement to disclose the donors to the libraries, no limit on the amount that can be pledged and no restrictions on foreigners contributing.
During an undercover investigation by The Sunday Times, Payne was asked to arrange meetings in Washington for an exiled former central Asian president. He outlined the cost of facilitating such access.
“The exact budget I will come up with, but it will be somewhere between $600,000 and $750,000, with about a third of it going directly to the Bush library,” said Payne, who sits on the US homeland security advisory council.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
Did the Sunday Times have a warrant for this secret undercover operation?
That stinks.
He implicates Biden. I wonder who the “politician” was?
Someone who knows more then I do please check the link at the site leading to photos of Payne with various leaders. many of them do not look right to me.
In this day and age, if you’re in politics you need to assume you are being recorded 24 hours a day, and everything you say is headed for you-tube.
For what its worth, the fact that someone is a "lobbyist" by definition means he has close ties to congressmen or administration officials or government bureaucrats of some kind. If he didn't, he won't be in the business. If you are hired to be a lobbyist, you are either going to develop those contacts or more likely you already have them.
No one is going to hire you unless you can make a call, and someone of importance will take your call.
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