New scandal about to percolate up through the news system. Mostly because they thought they could blame Trump no knowing it leads to the Clintons.
Democratic donor John Picerne who runs Corvias a housing company responsible for providing & maintaining military housing on bases.
Democratic donor John Picerne who runs Corvias a housing company responsible for providing & maintaining military housing on bases.
CNBC broke the story yesterday at a national level, but this has been building for a long time but being ignored by the MSM. cnbc.com/2018/12/27/reu…
CNBC notes the irony of #JohnPicerne getting super rich providing substandard housing to our troops. While funneling money to his favorite Swamp candidates in DC!
John Picerne has a long history of lining the pockets of the Swamp. This is just the FEC regulated donations, he certainly gave a lot more in soft money & PAC donations. His donations start in 1993 & continue until today. Almost 100% has gone to Democrats fec.gov/data/receipts/…
The stories about the problems have made news for years, but now it is being recognized as a systematic issue. With politically connected developers getting rich while troops & their families get sick. Looks like military housing is as corrupt as #FatLeonard Navy supplies.
Major connections to Democratic Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, & he has spent millions on lobbying. Must get quite the return on his investment. Start talking in hundreds of millions and long term over a billion, on just 6 of his contracts.
Congress & the Pentagon even set up the contracts where he could borrow the money for all of the investments needed, with the loans repaid out of the soldiers housing stipends so he didn't have to pay a penny!
So where did Picerne get his first taste of this cash cow? At Fort Meade, Maryland, home of the National Security Agency. His contract called for him to build 2,799 homes, but he only built 856!
How is it so profitable? Well, just ignore the deplorable conditions of the soldier's homes & keep cashing the checks.
Checks that pay for Picerne to have multiple multi-million dollar homes that are well maintained.
The contract conditions are clearly set up by the Swamp. Collecting $43 million in fees for 10 years then having to invest $6 million in money to the project. He's even borrowing on the future payments due from his contracts to use the cash now for other things!
CNBC ties his windfall to his sales trip to Fort Bragg in 2001. He took along Senator Reed to the sales pitch to show that he had the clout. Reed sat on the Senate Armed Services Committee which appropriates funds for the military. He is now ranking member of that committee.
Seems like the return on investment for $2.8 Million in lobbying & $0.5 million to candidates buys you a lot of profits.
Picerne has lots of other issues related to Democratic corruption too. He was a frequent donor to Florida Rep Corine Brown & even testified at her 2017 corruption trial. newspunch.com/superdelegate-…
The program ties back to the Clinton efforts to privatize military housing in 1995-96. rci.army.mil/programinforma…
Like many other programs birthed in the Swamp, this looks like it was a feature, not a failure, that it allowed politically connected individuals to buy access to profitable contracts by donating to the Swamp. academia.edu/2519603/Privat…
I'm sure we will see more stories begin to dismiss the rationalizations used to pretend this was not graft & corruption on a grand scale. All empowered by the Swamp.
Picerne & Corvias relied upon Etherton & Associates to do their lobbying for them. He spends a little over $100k a year on lobbying (likely 2018 is low because the 4th Quarter isn't reported yet.)
Etherington & Associates has a distinctive focus on military lobbying. Likely most of their efforts going to members of the defense committees.
Etherton used to work for the Armed Services Committee, then the Aerospace Industries Association of America, before becoming a lobbyist for the same clients & Senators.
I'm going to guess the Corvais lobbying would be under the Misc. Defense lobbying that he is conducts.
Though Etherton seems to be a lot more selective in his official FEC donations. Only giving a few thousand an election cycle out of his significant lobbying expenses. fec.gov/data/receipts/…
Jonathan Etherton certainly has the employment history typical of the revolving door in DC between Congress, industry donation & lobbying organizations & lobbying firms.
