And We Never Hear About These Kind of Associations From the MSM

W.H. team discloses TARP firm ties

By KENNETH P. VOGEL | 4/3/09 10:49 PM EDT

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Those are among the associations detailed in personal financial disclosure statements released Friday. Photo: AP

Lawrence Summers, a top economic adviser to President Barack Obama, pulled in more than $2.7 million in speaking fees paid by firms at the heart of the financial crisis, including Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America Corp. and the now-defunct Lehman Brothers.

He pulled in another $5.2 million last year from D.E. Shaw, a hedge fund for which he served as managing director from October 2006 until joining the administration.

Thomas E. Donilon, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, was paid $3.9 million last year by the power law firm O’Melveny & Myers to represent clients, including two firms that received federal bailout funds: Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. He also disclosed that he’s a member of the Trilateral Commission and sits on the steering committee of the supersecret Bilderberg group. Both groups are favorite targets of conspiracy theorists.

And White House Counsel Greg Craig last year earned $1.7 million in private practice representing an exiled Bolivian president, a Panamanian lawmaker wanted by the U.S. government for allegedly murdering a U.S. soldier and a tech billionaire accused of securities fraud and various sensational drug and sex crimes.

Those are among the associations detailed in personal financial disclosure statements released Friday night by the White House. The income reported on the forms mostly covers 2008 and in some cases the beginning of 2009.

Cont.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0409/20889.html

© Janet Crain

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What Kind of New Broom is This?

Craig's clients at times at odds with U.S.

KENNETH P. VOGEL | 11/22/08 7:05 AM EST

As a top Washington lawyer, newly named White House counsel Greg Craig has represented high-profile clients, from Bill Clinton to John Hinckley to Alexander Solzhenitsyn to Elian Gonzalez’s father.

But less well known is Craig’s work in the 1990s for at least four foreign governments or leaders facing a variety of tricky situations in Washington.

Craig represented Argentina, Bolivia, Panama and the prime minister of Haiti as a “foreign agent,” basically a lobbyist for foreign governments and businesses with issues before the federal government. But those governments, which paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to Craig’s power law firm Williams & Connolly, got more than just traditional lobbying from him.

When the U.S. government in 1990 unfroze bank accounts belonging to deposed Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega so he could pay to defend himself against drug charges, Craig went to federal court to try to seize Noriega’s cash for Panama.

Soon after Bolivia elected as its new president in 1989 a former revolutionary leftist who ran as a Social Democrat, Craig oversaw the planning of meetings between him and a cadre of influential members of Congress then, including Sens. George Mitchell (D-Maine); Bob Dole (R-Kan.); Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), a former Craig boss; Joe Biden (D-Del.), whose position as vice president-elect makes him a current Craig boss; and Reps. Porter Goss (R-Fla.) and Peter Kostmayer (D-Pa.).

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/15871.html

Now who is he, exactly? According to The Politico, he is a longtime aide to Teddy Kennedy. And here’s some more:

Craig, who had been friends with Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham at Yale Law School, was recruited for the impeachment job by John Podesta, then deputy White House chief of staff and now a leader of Obama’s transition. A Washington Post profile in 1998 by Lloyd Grove and John Harris reported: “Craig brought along his best bedside manner when Clinton summoned him to the White House residence on the night of Sept. 10 — the day after independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s lurid report to Congress was published on the World Wide Web. On a balcony overlooking the South Lawn, Clinton and Craig sat talking for two hours.”

OK, so his biggest claim to fame is that he helped our ethically challenged former president beat the impeachment rap. Is that the hallmark of a new broom in D.C.?

http://foxforum.blogs.foxnews.com/2008/11/17/jpinkerton_1117/comment-page-5/

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