Questions surface about Tony Campos, one-time Bush family friend (Jeb steered state money his way)

[seafan]

Jeb Bush, Family Ties and a Museum That Never Materialized, September 6, 2015

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. — When Jeb Bush set out to build a political base of his own in South Florida three decades ago, he did not lack for new friends. He was a magnet for a long line of Republicans eager to be associated with him and his powerful family, including a Cuban immigrant and former corrections officer named Tony Campos.

Mr. Campos ended up working as an advance man for Mr. Bush’s father, George, when he ran for president in 1988 and on the inauguration after he won. Jeb Bush was impressed enough that he recommended Mr. Campos for a job in the new administration, describing him as someone who “has been a loyal, hard-working supporter of George Bush and has the skills to serve.” And for years afterward, he continued to cultivate a friendship with the Bush family, especially its matriarch, Dorothy Walker Bush, who spent winters in Florida.

But Mr. Campos’s interests in the family were not entirely innocent. Ultimately he would try to exploit those relationships, entangling Jeb Bush, by then the governor of Florida, in a case of misplaced trust and the theft of public funds. Mr. Bush was never connected to any wrongdoing, though now, as he seeks to become the third Bush to occupy the White House, his involvement in the little-known episode is a cautionary tale about the downside of the vast network of friends and supporters that has been an essential part of the family’s decades of political success.

Mr. Campos’s scheme began several years after Mrs. Bush died in 1992, when he told the Bushes that he had come up with a novel way of honoring her — with a small museum, in her name, within the train station here, where she had once arrived on the passenger train the Orange Blossom Special. For funding, he turned to the new Republican administration in Tallahassee, headed by Jeb Bush, Mrs. Bush’s grandson.

Over a seven-year period, under Governor Jeb Bush, $1.2 million in state grants were steered Campos' way. But the museum was never built. Campos was then investigated and charged with multiple felony counts and misuse of state money. He pleaded guilty to grand theft in 2013.

Mr. Bush, who had earned a reputation as a fierce opponent of wasteful government spending, had to explain to detectives who interviewed him that he had no role in the grants, while insisting that he only superficially knew Mr. Campos, according to a summary of the meeting contained in a voluminous batch of state records pertaining to the case.

Those records also suggest that while Mr. Bush never explicitly endorsed using state money for the project, he did not stop the funding, either. Instead, a grant manager for the state told investigators, the message from supervisors was: “Whatever Campos wants, make sure he gets it, because he could cause them a lot of problems and was politically connected to the right people.”

Of course.

Does it make anyone else angry that Jeb Bush spends taxpayer money to honor one of his relatives (???); taxpayers get swindled; Jeb Bush claims his innocence in his role in it; Jeb Bush moves on.

We are sick and tired of his lies.


Jeb Bush has VERY POOR judgment (and that is being too charitable), as we have observed since he took up in Florida in 1980.

In multiple examples of his business associates being indicted, imprisoned (Claudio Osorio) or remaining fugitives from justice (Miguel Ricarey), we are seeing this lightning striking in the same place repeatedly.


Jeb Bush also made VERY POOR hiring decisions while he was governor. Here's merely ONE:

Jeb Bush hiring decisions questioned after ex-prisons chief scandal, July 10, 2006

Whatever the circumstances, Jeb Bush has repeatedly claimed he had/has 'no knowledge' of the shady characters he continually partnered with in his business dealings or surrounded himself with in the governor's office. His favorite line for years has been that he was "a victim of circumstance".


He has skated away from scrutiny on all of these issues thus far. And don't get us started on the Nigerian water pump deal or the Broward Savings and Loan/taxpayer swindle.


Funny, how Bush calls himself a "victim", when he took a $4.565 million federal bailout in 1990 to prop up his real estate deal, while Broward Savings and Loan collapsed, sticking taxpayers with the bill.

Jeb Bush is a lot of things. "Victim" isn't one of them.


[font size=4][font color=red]Do we suppose that SOMEONE in the media will find the gumption to question him about these shady dealings?


He must NOT escape a thorough vetting!!!!!!![/font][/font]

[UTUSN]

1. R#4 & K for, so JEB Crow Shrub was interviewed by detectives. Also when his kid Pee Shrub

criminally harassed a girl.

[Octafish]

2. Just the other day Jeb was recommending a Tony Campos for a White House job.

What a coincidence. I mean, "Small world!" I mean, I never heard of the guy.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/09/07/us/politics/document-jeb-bush-letter.html

[seafan]

3. Jeb often uses his family's political connections to benefit friends who turn out to be swindlers.

He has been doing this for years. Whether it's trying to obtain pardons from his father from the Oval Office, for terrorists like Orlando Bosch:

He performed a similar service, with more success, on behalf of the Cuban militant Orlando Bosch, for whom he sought a presidential pardon from his father. The boastful murderer of dozens of innocent people — and a prosecution target of the U.S. Justice Department — Bosch deserved a pardon about as much as the worst jihadi in Gitmo. But his sponsors were the same Cuban-Americans in Miami who had fostered Jeb’s real estate business there, so he ignored the Republican attorney general’s denunciation of Bosch as an “unreformed terrorist.”

Or calling in special favors from his father, when he was vice-president, to benefit Jeb's pals like Medicare fraudster Miguel Recarey:

There are many equally fascinating chapters in the Jeb dossier, rooted in his declaration three decades ago that he intended to become “very wealthy” as a developer and, yes, a “consultant.” His partners back then included a certain Miguel Recarey, whose International Medical Centers allegedly perpetrated one of history’s biggest Medicare frauds. (Connection to Medicare fraud seems to be a prerequisite to becoming governor of Florida, at least among Republicans; see Rick Scott and the Columbia/HCA Healthcare scam.) Indicted by the feds, Recarey fled the country — but not before Jeb placed a call on his behalf to his presidential dad’s health and human services secretary, Margaret Heckler. For serving as the flunky of a crook, he received a generous tip of $75,000 from Recarey, a mob associate.

And so we don't forget the details of Jeb's work with Recarey's International Medical Centers (IMC):

The president's younger brother was also on the payroll in the 80s of the prominent Cuban exile Miguel Recarey, who had earlier assisted the CIA in attempts to assassinate President Castro.

Recarey, who ran International Medical Centres (IMC), employed Jeb Bush as a real estate consultant and paid him a $75,000 fee for finding the company a new location, although the move never took place, which raised questions at the time. Jeb Bush did, however, lobby the Reagan/Bush administration vigorously and successfully on behalf of Recarey and IMC. "I want to be very wealthy," Jeb Bush told the Miami News when questioned during that period.

In 1985, Jeb Bush acted as a conduit on behalf of supporters of the Nicaraguan contras with his father, then the vice-president, and helped arrange for IMC to provide free medical treatment for the contras.



Recarey was later charged with massive medicare fraud but fled the US before his trial and is now a fugitive.

Here is Jeb!'s letter to his father's administration, requesting special favors for yet another fraudster with whom Jeb! later tried to deny any involvement, Tony Campos. (Hat tip to Octafish)


Jeb! Bush's campaign for president is an unmitigated insult.



Octafish, you are a DU treasure. Glad to see you here, and hope you had a good Labor Day.

[Octafish]

4. How the Elite Talk in Code - Take Silverado Savings Neil Bush, please.

It's almost an ENIGMA, what the rich and powerful say. It's to hide what they do.



Case in point: Jeb!'s brother, Neil Mallon Pierce Bush, also son of then-president George Herbert Walker Bush and caught with his hand in a billion-dollar S&L cookie jar called Silverado Savings & Loan. Here's what Poppy did for his Number 3 Son, an excellent example of how to keep "things" out of the paper:

How the Elite Talk in Code

EXCERPT...

A perfect example of code talk comes from a true master insider, George H.W. Bush, when his son, Neil, was caught red handed in the middle of the S&L crisis as a director of Sliverado Bank.

Did Bush lay out his cards and call in his operatives and say pull some strings, get my son out of this investigation (Remember Bush was president at the time.) No. Bush is too smooth. In his published collection of letters, All The Best, George Bush, he shows us how the heat is delicately taken off Neil. On page 449, there is this letter to Thomas Ludlow Ashley.

Ashley is a Yale University grad, and member of the secret society Skull and Bones along with Bush. Here's the letter:

The Honorable Thomas Ludlow Ashley
Association of Bank Holding Companies
Washington, D.C. 20005

Dear Lud,

Thank you for your good memo December 8th.

I would appreciate any help you can give Neil. He tells me he never had any insider dealings. He got off the Board early--long before I was elected President. The Denver paper apparently ran a very nice editorial about him on that. He is an outside director, and thus I guess has liability, but I can't believe his name would appear in the paper if it was Jones not Bush. In any event, I know that the guy is totally honest. I saw him in Denver and I think he is worried about the publicity and the "shame". I tell him not to worry about that but any advice you can give as this matter unfolds would be greatly appreciated by me. If it turns out there has been some marginal call, or he has done something wrong, needless to say there will be no intervention from his dad. But, I'm quite confident this is not true...

Warm regards,

George

Notice how smooth. No talk about getting Ashley anything for taking care of the matter. The nice touch about if Neil "has done something wrong", but the clear finish, he didn't.

CONTINUED...

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2009/07/how-elite-talk-in-code.html

When it comes to money and power, it really is a small world. We'd hear it more often, if only we were privy to the conversation.

Thank you for shining light on the political class, seafan! And thank you for the kind words -- I feel exactly the same way toward you. You show exactly why DU matters: It's where people can learn the Truth.

[seafan]

6. Thanks for these great additions to the voluminous BFEE archive, Octafish.

It is my heartfelt hope that we will live to see brighter days for the inhabitants of this world.

And I know it in my soul that it will happen with the efforts of those such as you, Octafish, who exemplify the greatness of the human spirit and determination to follow the truth, and sharing it with your fellow travelers along this rugged trail.

Here's an extra canteen of water, my friend.

[Octafish]

5. Almost forgot Broward Federal Savings & Loan and Mr. Armando Codina

A Savings and Loan Bailout, and Bush's Son Jeb

By JEFF GERTH, Special to The New York Times
Published: October 14, 1990

After Jeb Bush, a son of the President, and a partner bought a Miami office building using money an associate had borrowed from a local savings and loan, the Federal Government wound up repaying most of the loan.

The savings institution became insolvent, and the Government paid more than $4 million to make good the loan as part of the bailout of the savings industry. Mr. Bush and his partner negotiated a settlement with regulators in which they repaid $505,000 and retained control of the building. While they still have a $7 million mortgage to pay on that property, the settlement with the Government lifted from their backs a $4.565 million second mortgage.

SNIP...

Making Good on Bad Loans

While the complex loan arrangement does not involve allegations of criminal behavior, it stands as an illustration of the poor lending practices of savings institutions that led the industry into desperate straits. The deal also illustrates how the Government has had to absorb a large portion of the thousands of bad loans that were made by savings institutions that failed in 1988. The rescue of these institutions will cost $70 billion.

The Government's repayment of the loan used by Mr. Bush and his partner was part of the bailout program approved by Congress, in which the Government guaranteed buyers of ailing institutions that it would make good on bad loans that had been made by those institutions. Had the Government not made such guarantees, it would have had trouble finding buyers for the institutions and would have had to pay off the depositors.

The loan was made by Broward Federal Savings and Loan in Sunrise, Fla., which became insolvent in 1988 because of what regulators said were poor lending practices on commercial loans in the mid-1980's. The cost of cleaning up Broward Federal has been estimated at $285 million.

SNIP...

According to the lawsuit, the loan transaction goes back to 1983, when Mr. Codina, a developer, obtained an option to buy a building at 1390 Brickell Avenue, the center of Miami's downtown financial district. Mr. Codina later assigned the option to a partnership, 1390 Brickell, of which he owned 80 percent and Mr. Bush the rest.

CONTINUED...

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE0D81E3BF937A25753C1A966958260