House Ethics Committee - Danny Davis Cleared but not so much the Gulenists

Azerbaijan is where the Gulenists started their first schools some 22 years ago
at the direction of the CIA to control natural resources.  today Gulenists control
SOCAR

From Tim Furman http://www.tbfurman.us/2015/08/danny-davis-cleared-gulenists-not-so.html

Danny Davis and others have been cleared of wrongdoing by the House Ethics Committee for the Gulen-arranged lobbying orgy that took place in Baku, Azerbaijan, in 2013.

WASHINGTON — The House Ethics Committee said Friday it found no evidence of wrongdoing by a bipartisan group of lawmakers who went on a 2013 trip to Azerbaijan paid for by that country’s government.

It seems like a legitimate ruling to me, at least on the superficial level. The lawmakers all cleared the trip through House ethics office; it wasn't until later that it became apparent that it was an illegal arrangement between the Azerbaijani government and the Gulen-linked individuals in Texas. The lawmakers probably should have known better, and they definitely broke some gift rules during the trip, but they aren't responsible for the trip's underlying illegality, which evidently got past the ethics office in the first place.

In fact, the only person in the entire 28-page report coming off as having something to hide is the former executive director of Chicago's Niagara Foundation, Kemal Oksuz, who set up a similar shop in Texas after leaving the Chicago-based organization.  He took his 5th Amendment right rather than testify:

Mr. Oksuz clammed up sometime after the the story leaked in the press, and the committee blasted the Post for it.

As such, the unauthorized disclosure of the material to The Washington Post impeded the Committee's ongoing investigation, and prevented itfrom gathering information critical to its investigation. 

I myself find that line of reasoning a bit suspicious; the Houston Chronicle broke the story almost a year earlier, and Mr. Oksuz surely reads the Texas papers. He was probably never going to comply with the subpoenas. Indeed, he had already started to clam up in 2014.

Via email, Oksuz answered a few basic questions, but then repeatedly delayed and canceled interviews requested by the Chronicle. He did not respond to requests to provide updated financial records that his nonprofit must disclose under state and federal laws.

The Committee's anger at The Post seems a little bit like an excuse to stop investigating, the more I think about it. Why?

Because the Ethics Committee also appears to have taken a dive on this question: what did Azerbaijan get for their efforts?

Here's what the committee says in the report:

But even as early as 2014, the Chronicle people were able to connect the dots between the illegal junket and an exemption for a huge Azerbaijani gas project from the Iran sanctions--- the sanctions currently in the news.

So, it's going to be a permanent mystery. The Azerbaijanis got their gas project exempted from the complex Iran sanctions; the Gulenists got some cash* and Azerbaijani street credfor setting the whole thing up, and Danny Davis got a rug. And everyone got to party in Baku, and many also in Turkey, and that's how American laws are written.

It's really sort of amazing that the Ethics Committee dodged the question of the sanctions exemption when it's so central to the story. It's as if nobody in Congress can actually say who wrote the exemption into the law; it just appeared one day! Very fishy. The black eye the Gulenists received in this report will eventually heal; the thing that matters (for them) is that the Azerbaijanis and the Gulenists were successful; they got what they wanted, and the Committee isn't even going to look at question of the Iran sanctions, the Azerbaijani exemption, and who's inserting whole clauses into US law.

Meanwhile, Azerbaijan is starting its show-trial of imprisoned journalist Khadija Ismayilova. It is a country where the government has no pretense of democratic values. And in the US, the Gulenists are the Azerbaijani's go-to guys for illegal lobbying, at least they were back in 2013. If it surprises you that an "interfaith" group could be involved with the illegal dealings of a corrupt and brutal dictatorship, then you haven't been paying attention.

Birds of a feather flock together, as they say.

The Gulenists, it seems to me, have dodged a bullet here. I don't see how a criminal prosecution moves forward after a report like this, although the door is open.

Despite these limitations, the Committee's investigation uncovered evidence of concerted, possibly criminal, efforts by various non-House individuals and entities to mislead the House travelers and the Committee about the Trips' true sponsors and the funding sources used to pay for Member and Houseemployee travel to Azerbaijan. 

 In Texas, Gulen-linked organizations run at least forty-five charter schools; they run four in Chicago. The schools are a huge part of the Gulen Movement's revenue stream. I point that out to remind people about the scale of the operation and that it's basically funded by U.S. taxpayers.

It isn't clear to me about Mr. Oksuz's current dealings in Illinois; he seems to have been focused in Texas and Louisiana** lately, after leaving Niagara. When you study the Movement, you see a lot of transferring around from one node to another. That they keep getting guests in the door at Niagara is in my mind a huge testament to the basic incuriousness of people; you don't have to dig very deep to see that what's going on underneath the interfaith veneer is part of a complex and sometimes ruthless influence agenda. People like to look the other way.

*Even the cash part is murky. If you read the report (p. 21), there's some highly strange discrepancies in the invoices. The only thing clear is that whatever ballet is going on with the numbers, Mr. Oksuz was the one doing the choreography.

Kemal Oksuz Gulenist leader of Assembly of Friends of Azerbaijan not mentioned in latest lavish "gifts" to lawmakers

A simple search would have revealed to 'THE HILL the connection of AFAZ (Assembly of Friends of Azerbaijan) with Kemal Oksuz and the Gulen Movement.  Why did "The Hill" leave out the names "Gulen" and "Kemal Oksuz"

Lawmakers who took a trip secretly funded by the government of Azerbaijan turned over jade earrings, tea sets, silk scarves, woven rugs and other gifts to the government after a watchdog report called the trip improper.

The list of gifts returned to the General Services Administration (GSA), which was obtained by The Hill through a Freedom of Information Act request, fills in more details about the trip to a 2013 conference in the Azerbaijan capital of Baku.

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In all, nine current member of Congress and 32 staff members attended the conference, each receiving thousands of dollars’ worth of gifts, according to the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE). Some of the lawmakers also went to Turkey after the conference in Baku and received additional gifts on that stop.

The OCE report on the trip was submitted to the House Ethics Committee on May 8, 2015, but was leaked to The Washington Post, which revealed the details of the report days later. 

The watchdog said Texas-based nonprofits filed false statements saying they were paying for the trip, when, in reality, the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic, known as Socar, helped fund the conference and trips by funneling $750,000 to the nonprofit corporations.

Socar has denied all wrongdoing and said the nonprofit involved in helping lawmakers make arrangements, the Assembly of the Friends of Azerbaijan, failed to follow disclosure rules.

Both the OCE and House Ethics Committee found lawmakers and aides had no way of knowing the trip was being funded improperly.

Roughly a week before the House Ethics Committee released its report detailing its findings in July 2015, members of Congress who had taken the trip began returning the gifts they had received.

Reps. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.), Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.), Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-N.M.) and Rubén Hinojosa (D-Texas) all turned over gifts to the House clerk, who then handed them over to the GSA in October 2015, according to records obtained by The Hill.

Other gifts from the Azerbaijan trip that were returned include paperweights, pens, leather diaries, a DVD box set about the president of Azerbaijan and two rugs, one large and one small. Multiple lawmakers reported that the small rug appeared in their hotel rooms during the conference. 

In most cases, when a House member accepts a gift not allowed by ethics rules, they must either pay “fair market value” for it or return it to the person or entity that gave it to them. A member can also give gifts to the House clerk, who then transfers it to the GSA for disposal or sale.

Ethics rules for members of Congress say members may, in some cases, accept gifts valued at less than $50. Gifts from foreign governments and international organizations are allowed if they are valued at less than $350. 

Several members told the OCE that they believed the gifts had fallen below those reporting thresholds. 

The GSA spreadsheet of the gifts provided to The Hill lists Oct. 13 and Oct. 20 as the dates the gifts were received by the agency, though the House clerk apparently received them from members’ offices months earlier. 

Lujan Grisham, whose fiancé had  gone on the trip to Azerbaijan and Turkey with her, told the OCE during the investigations that many of the gifts she received were kept in her office. The earrings, a crystal tea set and a large rug were at her home in Washington, the report said, and another tea set was kept at her home in New Mexico.

The congresswoman ultimately surrendered 34 items to the House clerk, by far the most of any member, GSA records show. While her office said the gifts were given to the clerk on July 23, 2015, they did not arrive at the GSA until Oct. 13 and Oct. 20.

Those items included three briefcases, two decorative plates, paperweights, multiple sets of teacups, a DVD box set about the president of Azerbaijan, earrings, a map of Azerbaijan, a scarf, leather notebooks and two bottles of cologne.

According to the OCE report, Bridenstine had the two rugs he was given appraised and was told they had a value of $3,500 and $2,500. His chief of staff then found the source of the rugs and returned them to the donor in 2013.

Bridenstine gave his six-cup tea set to the House clerk for disposal on July 17 last year, his office told The Hill. The OCE report says he looked up the cups online, finding them to be worth $84.99. The GSA did not receive them from the House Clerk until Oct. 13, records show. 

The GSA received a large rug from Hinojosa and, from Clarke, a small rug and a purple silk scarf.

Two additional members — Reps. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) and Danny Davis (D-Ill.) — donated rugs they had received on the trip to a charity and a local school in his district, respectively, their offices told The Hill. The House Ethics Committee approved the donations because of the  entities’ tax statuses. Davis also gave a leather briefcase from the trip to a volunteer in his office.

Reps. Ted Poe (R-Texas), Leonard Lance (R-N.J.) and Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Fla.) also went on the trip but did not talk to the OCE during the investigation, so it is not known what gifts they received. Lance’s office told The Hill that the congressman did not take any gifts.

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Ethics probe halts congressional travel to Turkey and Azerbaijan, Gulen Lobbying chasing politicians away

Gulen Lobbying is over, there is no power in Tiurkey that is controlled by Gulenists. The trips are a waste of time for politicians and lawmakers.

Ethics probe halts congressional travel to Turkey; free trips overall have slowed

 by Will Tucker on June 9, 2016

 
 
 

Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa., is chairman of the House Ethics Committee. He took a free trip to Turkey in 2011. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

House lawmakers and their staffers used to make about 150 stops there a year on their privately sponsored jaunts around the world. Then came a massive ethics investigation, and they all stopped taking those free trips to Turkey — cold.

Not a single House member or staffer has disclosed a privately sponsored trip to Turkey since the Office of Congressional Ethics in October 2015 released documents connected to the largest ethics investigation since the days of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. OpenSecrets Blog collected the data from the Clerk of the House, which keeps records on privately sponsored trips filed to the House Ethics Committee.

Last year, the OCE found that a network of Turkic-American nonprofit groups based in the U.S. lied about the true source of funding for a junket to Baku, Azerbaijan in 2013; the trip took 10 members of Congress to the small Eurasian city with money from Azerbaijan’s state oil company, where they attended a conference put on by the company to tout its natural gas interests. The lawmakers said they had no idea their trip to the ostentatious energy conference was paid for by a foreign government that employed lobbyists in Washington, D.C.

After investigating the Turkic non-profits further, the OCE called into question the true source of funding not just for the Azerbaijan junket but for more than 109 trips to Turkey in previous years. It appeared the groups, in some instances, simply didn’t have the money necessary to pay for the expensive trips they organized for members and staffers.

But when the probe was kicked over to the Ethics Committee — the panel of lawmakers who investigate their peers, and sometimes takes referrals from the OCE, which is a quasi-independent outfit — the committee dropped the matter, clearing the members involved of wrongdoing. While the panel sent some documents relating to the sponsoring organizations over to the Justice Department for possible further action, Justice has been silent about whether it is pursuing an investigation.

The chairman of the Ethics Committee, Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), had traveled on the Turkic groups’ dime himself, as had another member of the panel, Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.).

Before OCE’s investigation into the case of the Turkic non-profits, lawmakers were taking more and more trips paid for not by the U.S. or foreign governments, but by private organizations and nonprofits. Many of these trips were domestic — policy conferences are often cited as reasons for the travel — but many were international voyages during which members and staff stayed in luxurious hotels, saw famous sites and got cozy with nonprofits funded by special interests.

This year, privately sponsored travel for members of Congress has slowed down slightly overall, dropping almost to 2011 levels after having increased from that year through 2015.

The slowdown comes after a coalition of ethics watchdog groups in Washington, spurred by the OCE’s report, called for House Speaker Paul Ryan to place a moratorium on the practice.

“These trips have become a tool for special interests, foreign governments, and foreign business interests to try to gain access and influence to our elected leaders while obfuscating the source of funding for the trips,” a letter to Ryan signed by four groups in November reads.

Ryan didn’t respond, but some lawmakers and sponsors may have gotten the message.

“These trips to Turkey got terrible press and deservedly so,” said Meredith McGehee, policy director at the Campaign Legal Center, one of the groups that signed the letter. “Because the press coverage of the Turkey trips and the legitimate questions raised about the way they were funded, members are appropriately gun shy.”

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2016/06/ethics-probe-halts-congressional-travel-to-turkey-free-trips-overall-have-slowed/

Congressman Mike Honda (Representing California) Remarks at IFLC Washington DC

Mike Honda has gotten several thousand in campaign contributions from "Hizmet" (Gulen Movement)

many free trips to Turkey and Azerbaijan.

Mike Honda has it bad, a disease addiction to the Gulen Movement.

Turkey has prohibited IFLC formerlly called Turkish Olympiads because

The Gulen Movement are criminals.

Soon they will be banned in the USA as well.



and Mike Honda?

He will be out of office very soon.

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