Politics

Hillary’s Brother Saw The Clintons As His Road To Riches

Chuck Ross Investigative Reporter
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Hillary Clinton’s black sheep younger brother, Tony Rodham, saw the Clintons as cash cows, he testified in 2012.

According to a new report from The New York Times, the 60-year-old Rodham testified in a case related to his financial dealings that he used his connections to the Clintons and to their charity, the Clinton Foundation, to help open doors to various business projects.

Rodham testified that he hoped to use his connection to Bill Clinton, who then served as co-chairman of Interim Haiti Recovery Commission, to secure a $22 million contract to rebuild homes in the earthquake-ravaged country.

According to The Times, Rodham said that a man Haiti had donated a large parcel of land — 10,000 acres — and that he sought help from Clinton to help cut through red tape to gain approval for a housing project.

“I deal through the Clinton Foundation,” Rodham testified. “That gets me in touch with the Haitian officials.”

“I hound my brother-in-law, because it’s his fund that we’re going to get our money from. And he can’t do it until the Haitian government does it.”

Rodham said that he hoped to earn $1 million from the project, which had come to him through a friend named Sheldon Drobny. Drobny served as the middleman to a Chicago-area contractor who claimed to want to build the houses as part of a humanitarian effort.

“And he keeps telling me, ‘Oh, it’s going to happen tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.’ Well, tomorrow hasn’t come yet,” Rodham said of Clinton, according to The Times.

The project never got off the ground, and the Clinton Foundation told The Times that neither Bill Clinton nor the foundation was aware of the project or dealt with housing projects.

The Clintons have come under intense scrutiny amid revelations that foreign nations and wealthy businessmen have donated millions to the charity. Some of the money has not been undisclosed, though Hillary Clinton agreed to disclose all donations to the foundation when she became secretary of state in the Obama administration. Numerous billionaire donors have also profited off of their relationship with the foundation.

Rodham’s housing project idea is not the first time he has tried to parlay his Clinton connections to make money in Haiti. In Oct. 2013, he became involved in a Haitian gold mining project with Angelo Viard, the CEO of North Carolina-based VCS Mining.

Rodham and Viard had met the year before at a Clinton Global Initiative function. Viard told The Washington Post that he paid the $20,000 membership fee to the initiative in order to develop his business network. (RELATED: Haiti Gold Mine Owner Invited Hillary’s Brother To Sit On Board After Meeting Him At Clinton Global Initiative Meeting)

In Dec. 2012, VCS was awarded one of two “exploitation permits” to mine for gold in Haiti — the first time in 50 years that Western companies had been granted such rights. But amid heavy political backlash, the projects were suspended in spring 2013.

Several months later, Viard hired Rodham, though claimed that it was not because of the Clinton connections but because of his fundraising experience.

If Bill Clinton did not intervene in the Haiti housing and mining projects, as he and the foundation have claimed, he has helped his brother-in-law obtain gainful employment in another scandalous business dealing.

According to The Times, Clinton hooked Rodham up with Terry McAuliffe, a longtime Clinton insider and current governor of Virginia. After Rodham told Clinton he was running low on money, Clinton set him up with a $72,000 a year job with McAuliffe’s GreenTech Automotive.

GreenTech became embroiled in a scandal involving what’s known as the EB-5 visa program. The program allows foreigners to invest $500,000 in U.S. companies that claim they will create at least 10 new jobs. In exchange, the investors receive a green card. Officials within U.S. Customs and Immigration Services, which handles EB-5 applications, believed that GreenTech’s project did not warrant approval. But McAuliffe leaned on Alejandro Mayorkas, then the director of USCIS, to help with the process.

A recent DHS inspector general’s report showed that McAuliffe was in regular contact with Mayorkas about the EB-5 application and that Mayorkas intervened in an “unprecedented” way to help further EB-5 applications for GreenTech and other companies with ties to Democrats.

Bringing the scandals full circle, Mayorkas, a former Clinton White House official, was involved in another shady dealing with Hillary Clinton’s other shady brother, Hugh Rodham.

In 1999, Mayorkas began inquiring about the case against Carlos Vignali, who had been convicted of federal drug trafficking charges. Vignali’s father had also paid Hugh Rodham $200,000 to help secure a commutation of Vignali’s prison sentence. He had served six years of a 15 year sentence when Clinton freed him from prison before leaving the White House.

Mayorkas apologized for his involvement in the matter. The Clintons have also publicly admonished Hugh Rodham for his role in helping free Vignali.

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