"BIG MONEY INFLUENCE"
NOW ACCEPTABLE FOR BIDEN
BIDEN'S NEW SUPER PAC IS FRONTED BY A REGISTERED FOREIGN AGENT LOBBYING FOR AZERBAIJAN
BY JAMES MURPHY
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
A registered foreign agent for the government of Azerbaijan is in charge of the money for a new Super PAC which looks to assist Democrat candidate Joe Biden in his bid for the presidency in 2020. In its Statement of Organization, the new committee, called Unite the Country, lists Larry Rasky as the treasurer.The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) of 1938 requires that any agent representing the interests of a foreign government disclose that relationship, along with pertinent information about their activities and finances. Records on file at the Department of Justice show that Rasky, along with his company Rasky Partners, is a foreign agent lobbying on behalf of Azerbaijan.According to the employment agreement, which is included in the Justice Department documents, Rasky was employed by the Embassy of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Services provided by Rasky to Azerbaijan included, “strategic communication counsel and services.” Also included in the scope of Rasky’s duties were “public relations services and support.” The initial contract was set to run from April 29 of this year until October 28, with both parties having the option to extend it by mutual agreement.In his contract with Azerbaijan, Rasky and his company received $94,500 per month for his work for the country.Rasky has worked on Biden’s two previous presidential runs as an aide. Unite the Country will purportedly infuse Biden’s 2020 campaign with millions of dollars in spending.Politico reports that Rasky has previously assisted the current Biden campaign by asking donors to send checks made out to “Biden for President” to the offices of Rasky Partners located in Boston.The new Super PAC represents a reversal for Biden, who has previously stated that he opposed accepting that type of support, a fact that Rasky himself pointed out in a fundraising e-mail sent to donors.“Because Joe will not work with a Super PAC or take PAC money for his campaign, everyone is limited to $2,800 as a maximum gift,” Rasky wrote in April. “That will require a lot of work and a lot of checks to finance a presidential campaign effort.”Back in August, Politico also reported that Rasky may have been involved in the nebulous purchase of hedge fund Paradigm Global Advisors by Biden’s son Hunter and his younger brother James in 2006.According to Politico: “James and Hunter brought in Larry Rasky, a lobbyist and longtime Biden adviser, who at one point, according to court records, was going to provide $1 million in financing.” Rasky has neither confirmed nor denied his involvement with that purchase.Azerbaijan is not the only country that Rasky has lobbied on behalf of. His firm has previously worked for a political party in Bangladesh until January of this year. A previous company fronted by Rasky, Rasky Baerlein Strategic Communications, represented foreign interests in Japan, Hungary, Congo, and Serbia.It’s important to note that Rasky’s involvement with those foreign entities is not illegal. It is, however, very interesting when you consider the accusations that Joe Biden used his influence as vice president in the Obama administration to interfere with the internal politics of foreign nations — a fact that Biden himself admitted at a Council on Foreign Relations event in 2018. Biden threatened Ukrainian officials with withholding a billion dollars in aid if a prosecutor, who was reportedly investigating his son Hunter’s involvement with a Ukrainian energy company, wasn't fired.“I looked at them and said, “I’m leaving in six hours,” the former vice-president remembered. “If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son-of-a- b**ch. He got fired.”While Democrats in the House of Representatives look to impeach President Donald Trump based on a phone call with the president of Ukraine — in which they imagine Trump was threatening to withhold aid from the country unless an investigation was opened into Hunter Biden’s dealings with a Ukrainian energy company — Joe Biden is on record actually admitting to such activity.Joe Biden portrays himself as a “man of the people.” But his associations and actions show him to be something else entirely. Biden has shown his proclivity to use his position of influence to enrich his family, if not himself. He is the embodiment of the corruption that the Democrats are accusing Trump of.As for Rasky, with his history of working for foreign governments, the question must be asked, Considering that his super PAC is called Unite the Country, which country is he looking to unite?"___________________________________________________________Super PAC to Fund Biden’s Campaign Following Another Biden Flip-flop
BY BOB ADELMANNrepublished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:Just when big Democrat donors were about to write off the 2020 presidential campaign, along comes Biden’s pal, Larry Rasky, to pull Joe Biden’s languishing campaign from the brink. On Tuesday Rasky filed the paperwork creating a new Super PAC called “Unite the Country” and brought in some heavy hitters to join him in the rescue effort.Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden (shown) had denounced (along with Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and others) “big money influence” in politics but, no doubt out of desperation, changed his mind last week. In explaining the flip-flop, Biden’s campaign spokeswoman Kate Bedingfield put on the best spin she could:Donald Trump has decided that the general election has already begun. In this time of political crisis, it is not surprising that those who are dedicated to defeating Donald Trump are organizing in every way permitted by current law to bring an end to his disastrous presidency.Biden himself tried to put some distance between Rasky’s filing and his previous campaign promises to eliminate “big money” influence in politics if he were elected president. In an interview with MSNBC, Biden called Rasky’s move a “grassroots response” to his campaign’s financial difficulties, as though he knew nothing about the move until Rasky’s filing. Said Biden, “This is an understandable response from Democrats who desperately do not want to see [Trump] re-elected president. My guess is they [those guys over there with whom I have nothing to do and who are doing this entirely on their own without any support from me] would have done the same thing for anybody who was attacked in the Democratic primary if they were leading.”This is a canard of the first order. Rasky, currently the CEO of lobbying firm Rasky Partners, served in Biden’s two previous presidential quests in 1997 and in 2008. In 1988, he served as Biden’s press secretary while in 2007 in joined Biden’s campaign as its communications director.Joining Rasky are other Democrat operatives with links to previous Biden efforts to gain the White House. Steve Schale, a political strategist in Florida, was hired by the “Obama for America” campaign in 2008. In 2015, Schale helped Draft Biden, a Super PAC supporting a potential presidential bid by Biden.Julianna Smoot has also joined Rasky’s rescue team. She served as deputy manager of Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, raising more money for that campaign than any other such campaign in U.S. history. In the past she held similar positions for Democrat Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, Chris Dodd of Connecticut, and Harry Reid of Nevada.To imply that Biden knew nothing about the movement to save his foundering presidential campaign from a third ignominious disaster is typical Biden strategy, using “plausible deniability” to explain his flip-flop.That reversal has outraged Biden’s rivals. Bernie Sanders’ campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, declared that since “the former vice president has been unable to generate grassroots support … his campaign is endorsing an effort to buy the primary through a super PAC that can rake in unlimited cash from billionaires and corporations.”Those billionaires and corporations are going to have to get busy writing big checks to catch up to the Trump campaign. Biden’s campaign cupboard is bare while the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee are sitting on $156 million in the bank and that’s after already paying for several million dollars’ worth of ads criticizing Biden in the early voting states.Elizabeth Warren’s brief lead at the head of the pack in recent polling was short-lived. In the last 10 days, she has bested Biden in just one of the six polls taken, leaving her an average, according to Real Clear Politics, of nearly six percentage points behind Biden, with Sanders a distant third at 10 points behind Biden.With the likely insertion of millions of dollars of desperately needed funds into the nearly moribund Biden campaign, it is likely that his lead will at least be maintained if not widened going into the first of the Democrat primaries early next year.Related article:
