CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Homeland Security exec used ‘improper influence’ to favor Reid, McAuliffe:
Department of Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas exerted “improper influence” on behalf of three applicants for a federal program that grants residency to foreign investors in U.S. projects, including one with links to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and another to Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe.
Mayorkas was then director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency with Homeland Security and made multiple changes in the Employment-Based Fifth Preference program even though it represented a tiny slice of his overall responsibilities in the position, according to the Homeland Security inspector general in a report made public Tuesday. . . .
Mayorkas created a hand-picked “deference review board” that reversed a series of decisions by the LA Films center to reject applications linked to film projects of Sony and Time Warner. “This board did not previously exist and was never used again after it voted to reverse the adjudicators’ proposed denials. Remarkably, there is no record of the proceedings of this board,” the inspector general said.
In the Las Vegas example, Mayorkas intervened at the request of Reid seeking “expedited review of investor petitions involved in funding a Las Vegas hotel and casino, notwithstanding the career staff’s original decision not to do so.” The inspector general said “Mayorkas pressured staff to expedite the review. He also took the extraordinary step of requiring staff to brief Senator Reid’s staff on a weekly basis for several months.”
In the Gulf Coast example, the inspector general said Mayorkas mounted an “unprecedented” intervention in the denial of an EB-5 application for funding of a firm “to manufacture electric cars through investments in a company in which Terry McAuliffe was the board chairman.” The inspector general said that “because of the political prominence of the individuals involved, as well as USCIS’ traditional deference to its administrative appeals process, staff perceived it as politically motivated.”
They’re crooks who belong in jail, not in office.