Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute and host of the Drill Down podcast, said on Thursday that former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) enriched himself and his family by leveraging his political power.
Reid “enriched himself and his household,” Schweizer stated on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow, “but you have actually got to give him credit. He had remaining power. He had opponents in Washington, DC, but he always seems to conquer them and win.”
Schweizer remembered a quote from Susan McCue, Harry Reid’s former chief of personnel, which he included in his 2013 book, Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Cash, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets. She saidReid was always assessing an individual’s vulnerabilities in order to “deactivate, to endear, to threaten, however many of all to instill worry.”
“The concern is … if you’re truly in private practice much at all over the course of 40 years and you’re serving in numerous government posts, how do you get this rich?” Schweizer asked, “and if you look at his profession– that sort of a mobster, sort of scare individuals, use the take advantage of– played in.
Schweizer recalled an instance of Reid pressing a facilities task that increased the value of some home he owned.
He remarked, “In 2005, he’s a senator, he puts in an allocate to build a bridge in Bullhead City in Nevada for $18 million dollars– that’s taking our taxpayer money– this was to sign up with Bullhead City with Arizona, to take it across the river joining Nevada and Arizona. The Arizona delegation said, ‘This is outrageous. It’s not worth it. There’s another bridge further down the roadway. It’s not required.’ However then, when you looked in fact at Harry Reid’s holdings, you discovered that he really had a parcel of land right next to– or near– the bridge that was ultimately built with taxpayer cash. And the land that was valued at $400,000 before the bridge was worth $1.6 million after the bridge was developed, and he profited.”
Schweizer explained how Reid’s kids’ lobbying professions take advantage of the late senator’s political powers.
He specified, “The other part of [Reid’s] device was his household– a huge household– his kids Rory, Key, and Joshua were all lobbyists while he was a senator. His son-in-law, a guy called Steve Barringer, was also a lobbyist, and if you desired anything performed in Nevada– anything honestly, performed in Washington, DC,– you were expected to work with one of his kids to efficiently lobby his workplace. This was an extremely aggressive enterprise that was very lucrative for the family.”
Reid evaded disclosure requirements for elected officials by improving his children, Schweizer stated. Reid “was really wise about setting up his kids,” he shared. “To put it simply, the circulation of money from the interest was not straight to him in all these cases. A lot of times it would go to his kids, and the factor [is] you do not have to reveal.”
U.S. Sen. Minority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) in addition to his wife Landra Gould, show up on stage during the third day of the Democratic National Convention at the Wells Fargo Center, July 27, 2016, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) Schweizer said after Reid was openly slammed for ending up being “really, really rich”through” land deals in Nevada,” Reid chose to set his kids up as lobbyists to escape public disclosure policies.
He continued. “Just to offer one example, in 2011, a Chinese company called ENN wished to construct a $5 billion renewable resource center in Nevada. Harry traveled to China to in fact consult with the executives there. When he returned, executives of their U.S. affiliates began contributing to his campaigns, to his PACs, [and] they hired his child Rory to a big cost to lobby and represent them.”
“Then there were reports that Harry Reid in fact went to NV energy– which is the largest energy in Nevada– and was pressing them to sign up this Chinese business as their first agreement. So it’s this kind of tactic. Why is the Senator calling the big energy in Nevada to get them to sign on a Chinese business to provide them energy? That’s the kind of– let’s state attention to detail, is one method to describe it– but likewise the type of extortive practices that he employed.
He concluded, “This is the sort of way that Harry Reid operated in politics. He’s more feared than liked. Certainly his family enjoys him, but he used these sort of techniques and was extremely effective at moving cash around.”
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