Liz Warren, Goldman Sachs, a Malaysian Scandal

Pity the poor satirist. Real life is getting too ridiculous to keep up with, especially where Senator Elizabeth Warren is involved. Warren was supposed to be the darling of the progressive left, a feminist, a minority, a real financial reformer who is willing to take on President Donald Trump’s powerful financial interests.

Now just imagine that you were trying to satirize her. Would you propose that your exaggerated, lightly fictionalized version of Warren was working at the behest of a shady Malaysian gaming company to install several rooms full of craps tables and one-armed-bandits to fleece her problem gambling constituents?

Would you throw in the wrinkle that the gaming concern, which had paid hundreds of millions of dollars to set this deal up and to lobby Congress, was under the mother of all ethical clouds, involving a barely disguised payoff to Malaysia’s former ruler to the tune of $10 million?

No? Well how about a $170 million payoff, then? I mean, why not really go for broke?

And would you add in that US megabank Goldman Sachs – the sort of financial institution Warren likes to rail against – was up to its eyeballs in associated corruption, having taken Malaysian bondholders for about $600 million of $6.5 BILLION in development money that seems to have developed legs and found its way into foreign bank accounts with very little development to show for it?

To make even more spell binding would you add a Russian “collusion” angle like involving the Perkins Coie law firm — the same firm that hired Fusion GPS on behalf of Hillary and the DNC?

All of the above is true, by the way.

The gaming concern is called Genting. They were able to pump up the value of one of their ventures, a power plant, and offload it to the Malaysian state-owned development firm 1MDB, at a $400 million loss to the buyer.

This was probably facilitated by a payment by Genting to a charity controlled by former Maylasian prime minister Najib Razak. Investigations are still underway, so please insert all the mental “allegedly”s, but Razak appears to have gotten the money into his own accounts by way of a five-finger discount.

The amount had been thought to be $10 million. Here’s a video from the Wall Street Journal explaining the scandal:

But last week the Journal reported that the “charitable” donation was a whole lot more than $10 million. “[T]he owner of the plants” – Genting – “donated $170 million to 1MDB’s charity arm, which Prime Minister Najib Razak used as a political slush fund, a person familiar with the matter said.”

The Russian angle is also real. As we reported here, the Town of Mashpee, Mass. hired Perkins Coie to serve as their lobbyists in favor of the Mashpee casino. Perkins Coie also represents Rush Street Gaming, which is actively opposing the Mashpee casino (Rush Street wants a different casino in Brockton, Mass.). Perkins Coie claims they are not working for Rush Street, but they show up on lobbying reports, according to the Cape Cod Times.

Perkins Coie is the same firm that hired Fusion GPS on behalf of Hillary and the DNC to create the infamous and unverifiable so-called “Trump Dossier.”

Perkins Coie lawyer Marc Elias hired the company that compiled a dossier with allegations about Donald Trump’s Russia connections, the law firm confirmed on Tuesday.

Elias hired the company, Fusion GPS, to assist in the law firm’s representation of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, report the New York Times and the Washington Post, which was first with the story. The Clinton campaign and the DNC helped pay for the opposition research, the stories report.

Warren has so far thrown several public fits over the fact that the Mashpee Wampanoag Indian casino project is not being greenlit by the federal government. She can charge this is a matter of native rights until she is between 1/64th and 1/1024th pink in the face. But the people she’s really serving are not natives and not residents of her own state but rather some very powerful and corrupt foreign financial interests. The kind that she denounces every other day of the week.

You can’t make this stuff up.

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