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Indicted businessman: Utah A.G. tied to alleged scheme
BY TOM HARVEY AND ROBERT GEHRKE THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
PUBLISHED JANUARY 12, 2013 10:10 PM
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home3/55598812-200/johnson-swallow-rawle-attorney.html.csp
Indicted Businessman Names Harry Reid as Alleged Recipient of Massive Bribe
Jan. 12, 2013 8:02pm Erica Ritz
Reid's office declined to comment, spokeswoman Kristen Orthman said Friday. To back his allegations, Johnson provided an email from Swallow that Johnson identified as key in supporting his claims. Johnson also granted access to at least several dozen other emails, two financial records, several photos and a transcript of about 60 pages of a secretly recorded April 2012 meeting Johnson had with Swallow, who was then Utah's chief deputy attorney general. The documents appear to support Johnson's story that in 2010 Swallow brokered a deal between Johnson and Richard M. Rawle, owner of the Provo-based payday-loan company Check City, to enlist Rawle to use his influence to get Reid involved on behalf of Johnson and I Works, Johnson's Internet marketing company that was under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission.
A Utah businessman is rocking both state and national politics after claiming Utah Attorney General John Swallow helped him broker a deal with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to make a federal investigation into his company quietly disappear, the Salt Lake Tribune reports. Jeremy Johnson was allegedly told that the price would be $600,000, and claims to have made an initial payment of $250,000 when he was slapped with a federal lawsuit. Now he says he wants his money back. The Salt Lake Tribune points out that Johnson has no way of knowing whether the funds actually made it to Reid, even if he did make a massive payment to Reid’s alleged intermediary. The Salt Lake Tribune continues, explaining how the bribe supposedly came to be in 2010: At the time, Johnson was largely known in Utah as a wealthy philanthropist who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to ferry supplies into Haiti after the devastating 2010 earthquake. [...] Then, with the FTC investigation continuing, Johnson said Swallow suggested Reid could make problems with regulators go away — for a price. “I said, ‘OK, what do I need to do?’ He’s like, ‘OK, it costs money,’ ” Johnson said, who claimed Swallow was adamant he make a deal. “I think he told me, ‘Richard Rawle has a connection with Harry Reid,’ ” Johnson said. He said Swallow at first wanted $2 million to enlist Reid’s help. But [his company] I Works was no longer profitable and he did not have the money, Johnson said, so they eventually agreed on $300,000 upfront and $300,000 later.