Read the full story: Watchdog.org
A government accountability group says “unanswered questions” warrant a criminal investigation into actions by Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe and others involved in the EB-5 visa program.
Cause of Action called for the investigation after the federal Office of Inspector General confirmed this week that McAuliffe repeatedly lobbied the director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for visa approvals.
Read the full story: Washington Free Beacon
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) and Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) of Virginia may have illegally facilitated that process at the expense of less politically connected applicants for the same program, according to Cause of Action, a conservative legal watchdog group.
In a letter to the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, Cause of Action alleges that Reid and McAuliffe used their considerable political clout to expedite consideration of visas for investors in the SLS Las Vegas Hotel and Casino and GreenTech Automotive.
McAuliffe founded GreenTech; he resigned from the company before running for governor. The former’s parent company hired Reid’s son Rory in 2012 to help it obtain government incentives. Its executives donated thousands to Sen. Reid after its Chinese investors obtained U.S. visas.
Cause of Action’s letter comes on the heels of, and relies in large part on, a report from the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general released on Tuesday.
Read the full story: Las Vegas Review-Journal
Dan Epstein, executive director of Cause of Action, charged Reid crossed the line between an elected official inquiring about agency actions on behalf of constituents to actively seeking to influence an adjudicative matter of determining who should be granted a U.S. visa.
Read the full story: Breitbart
“Cause of Action, a nonprofit, government oversight group, is calling on the Department of Justice to “immediately investigate” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Governor Terry McAuliffe (D-VA), and Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas “for their participation in unlawful political activity, possible coercion and fraud related to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program.”
Cause of Action Executive Director Dan Epstein will provide details in a media conference Thursday about a letter the group sent “calling on the Acting Chief Public Integrity Officer at the Department of Justice to investigate Department of Homeland Security Deputy Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas, Sen. Harry Reid, Gov. Terry McAuliffe and potentially others,” according to a statement released by the group. “The letter . . . comes on the heels of a report from the DHS Inspector General which revealed potential fraud in a well known visa-for-cash program administered by DHS. The IG’s investigation found that Mr. Mayorkas “exerted improper influence in the normal processing and adjudication of EB-5 immigration program benefits,” the statement read.”
WASHINGTON – Today, Cause of Action sent a letter calling on the Chief Public Integrity Officer at the Department of Justice to immediately investigate Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Sen. Harry Reid, Governor Terry McAuliffe and potentially others.
Cause of Action’s letter comes on the heels of a new DHS Inspector General report that revealed potential fraud in a well known visa-for-cash program administered by the DHS. The Inspector General’s investigation found that Mr. Mayorkas “exerted improper influence in the normal processing and adjudication of EB-5 immigration program benefits.”
Cause of Action’s Executive Director Dan Epstein issued the following statement:
“The DHS Inspector General’s report makes it clear that federal employees were pressured to make decisions that financially or politically benefited certain applicants and left many visa applicants felling deprived of a fair process from their government.
This practice of using undue influence to play favorites with government resources is a potential violation of the law and that is why we are calling for a full investigation into the program.”
Read the full letter here.
Read the full story: Washington Times
The government watchdog group Cause of Action is pushing for a federal investigation into the action by Mr. Mayorkas and all others involved.
“At a minimum, there needs to be a federal investigation,” said Daniel Epstein, executive director of the group. “Alejandro Mayorkas, Harry Reid, Terry McAuliffe and the others essentially conspired to defraud the United States.”
Read the full story: Politico
During Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, department officials pushed to limit the number of emails and other electronic records the agency was required to save under federal rules.
In a March 2012 memo responding to a call from President Barack Obama to improve federal record keeping, State’s top records manager urged streamlining the rules so that much of the routine back-and-forth of government would be beyond their reach.
“The vast majority of working files are of short-term value and should be disposed of quickly. In the modern era, most drafts and various other working products are circulated for comments and approvals through email or on other collaborative electronic sites,” State Records Officer Tasha Thian wrote. “Under [the National Archives and Records Administration’s] overly broad view of what constitutes a record, essentially all working materials would fall under the definition of a record, many of which are not of long-term value once the final product is completed. This results in added costs.”…
“She’s basically recommending that the State Department should have a lot more discretion in terms of how it preserves records. We now have really good evidence what that means is: ‘We don’t want to preserve records,’” said Cause of Action’s Dan Epstein. “That’s a recipe for violating the Federal Records Act and avoiding transparency statutes like the Freedom of Information Act.”
Epstein pointed to the department’s disclosure last week that it did not begin automatically archiving official email accounts of top agency leaders until recently — in most instances, just last month. The move came about six months after agency officials were advised that Clinton’s use of a private email account was likely to complicate responses to document requests from a House committee investigating the Benghazi attacks.