ICYMI: McConnell Has “Benefited” From Family’s Ties to Special Interests
NYT: “The family’s wealth has also benefited Mr. McConnell
personally”
MSNBC: “…the Chao family…give very generously to McConnell and his
related political action committees, to the tune of about $1.1 million over the
last thirty years”
A third report in as many weeks again reveals Senator Mitch McConnell’s personal ties to special interests and how that has “benefited” his political career. The New York Times details how McConnell has “prospered” as his wife’s family used their “political ties” to boost their company — and also has given more than “$1 million to Mr. McConnell’s campaigns and to political action committees tied to him.”
This investigation follows another investigation
that found McConnell received millions
in campaign contributions, and then personally
intervened to help lift U.S.
sanctions on a Russian company that then announced a $200 million investment in
a Kentucky aluminum plant.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
New York Times: A
‘Bridge’ to China, and Her Family’s Business, in the Trump Cabinet
By Michael Forsythe, Eric Lipton, Keith Bradsher
and Sui-Lee Wee
Key Points:
- …she and her husband, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, have received millions of dollars in gifts from her father, James, who ran the company until last year. And Mr. McConnell’s re-election campaigns have received more than $1 million in contributions from Ms. Chao’s extended family, including from her father and her sister Angela, now Foremost’s chief executive, who were both subjects of the State Department’s ethics question.
- A gift to Ms. Chao and Mr. McConnell from her father in 2008 helped make Mr. McConnell, the Republican majority leader, one of the richest members of the Senate. And three decades worth of political donations have made the extended family a top contributor to the Republican Party of Kentucky, a wellspring of Mr. McConnell’s power.
- “The delegation was thrilled to get the VIP treatment by your office and were particularly excited to hear that the leader’s office was normally off limits to normal guests,” an aide to Ms. Chao later wrote to Mr. McConnell’s staff.
- In 1989, shortly after their first date (at the Saudi ambassador’s home near Washington), Mr. McConnell was preparing for a re-election campaign. Greetings from Ms. Chao came in classic Washington fashion: a string of campaign donations, totaling $10,000, from Ms. Chao, her father, her mother, her sister May and May’s husband, Jeffrey Hwang, according to Federal Election Commission records.
- Over the next 30 years, the extended Chao family would be an important source of political cash for Mr. McConnell, himself one of the most formidable Republican fund-raisers in American politics.
- One of Ms. Chao’s sisters, Christine, the general counsel at Foremost, was the second-biggest contributor to the super PAC Kentuckians for Strong Leadership in 2014. She gave $400,000 to the organization, which identified Mr. McConnell’s re-election as its highest priority that year.
- The family’s wealth has also benefited Mr. McConnell personally. In 2008, Ms. Chao’s father gave the couple a gift valued between $5 million and $25 million, according to federal disclosures.
Read the full story here.
WATCH:
MSNBC Anchor Craig Melvin: Has Secretary Chao and her husband,
have they benefited directly from the family’s shipping company in China?
New York Times Reporter Michael Forsythe: “Mitch McConnell himself
over the years, the Chao family – and when I say the Chao family, I mean the
extended Chao family… many of them give very generously to McConnell and his
various political action committees to the tune of about $1.1 million over the
last 30 years.”
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