In this case, the budding transaction - never completed, the department now says - raised eyebrows because Ronald Chagoury is the brother and business partner, in the Chagoury Group, of Gilbert Chagoury, a Lebanese-born businessman whom federal records show has donated between $1 and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation.
Gilbert Chagoury's friendship with the Clintons can be traced back to the Clinton presidency.
In the mid-1990s, Chagoury donated nearly $500,000 to a voter-registration drive designed to help Democratic candidates, attended a White House dinner for premium donors, and met with high-ranking officials in the Clinton White House - including Susan Rice, now President Obama's national security adviser - who were shaping U.S. policy toward Nigeria.
Relatedly, two Chagoury associates - Joseph Arsan, 68, also of Paris, and Toufic Joseph Baaklini, 58, of Washington, D.C. - agreed to resolve allegations that they violated campaign contribution laws by assisting Chagoury in his illegal contributions.... In a separate and unrelated matter, Ray LaHood, 75, who served as U.S. Secretary of Transportation from 2009 to 2013, paid a $40,000 fine to resolve a federal criminal investigation into LaHood's conduct related to a $50,000 financial transaction between LaHood and Baaklini in June 2012.
Gilbert Chagoury, a Lebanese businessman and one-time adviser to the late dictator Sani Abacha, was set to touch down in his private jet.
The prosecutor says he indicted Chagoury and ordered his arrest for relatively minor violations related to Chagoury's businesses so that he could later bring additional charges for his activities in the Abacha era.... Chagoury, along with his wife and three of his children, were guests at a the Clinton's White House holiday dinner shortly after Chagoury gave nearly half a million dollars to a voter registration committee, Vote Now '96, according to a report in The Washington Post.
"Every one knows I'm friends with the Clintons," Chagoury says.... In 2000, Chagoury was convicted in Geneva, Switzerland, of laundering money and aiding a criminal organization in connection with the billions of dollars stolen from Nigeria during the Abacha years.... What's old is new again.
It's becoming increasingly difficult to discern fact from fiction, and unfortunately the media has a strong bias. They spin stories to make conservatives look bad and will go to great lengths to avoid reporting on the good that comes from conservative policies. There are a few shining lights in the media landscape-brave conservative outlets that report the truth and offer a different perspective. We must support conservative outlets like this one and ensure that our voices are heard.
Thursday, April 1, 2021
Obama Transportation Secretary Hid Loan From Lebanese Billionaire Who Backed Clinton Foundation
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