Rick Davis

McCain Campaign Manager's Firm Worked for Ukranian Billionaire with Ties to Iran

Andrew Tilghman | May 30, 2008, 1:00PM

Before Rick Davis began serving as John McCain's campaign manager, his lobbying firm had a pretty cosmopolitan set of clients.

For example, Ukranian billionaire Rinat Akhmetov, who has several business links to Iran.

To be sure, there's a good crowd of lobbyists in Washington who work for international firms with ties to Iran.

But Davis isn't just any lobbyist. He's a lobbyist-turn-presidential campaign manager who just a couple weeks ago was drawing up rules on how to build a wall between lobbyists and McCain's political operatives. And McCain has been more hawkish than most of his colleagues about confronting Iran.

And, interestingly, Davis' lobbying shop, Davis Manafort, was doing work for the Ukranian oligarch about the same time that Davis was serving as the president of McCain's Reform Institute.

Davis Manafort was helping Akhmetov's conglomerate, System Capital Management Holdings, to develop a "corporate communications strategy" between the beginging of 2005 through the end of summer 2005, the company said.

The company's subsidiary, Metinvest, a steel company, has one of its 11 offices in Tehran. And another subsidiary, Khartsyzsk Pipe Plant, sells large pipes to Iran.

Those business ties go back to at least 2005, when Davis Manafort was working for the company, according to a handful of stories in business publications like the Russia & CIS Metals and Mining Weekly and the Mining and the Metals report, which we found on Nexis.

A McCain aide told us Davis did not work on that account while he was heading up the firm. And he was unaware of the company's ties to Iran.

John McCain

Today's Must Read

Andrew Tilghman | May 29, 2008, 10:17AM

John McCain's go-to economics adviser isn't holding up very well under close scrutiny.

Phil Gramm, the former Texas senator and economist, is taking a lot of heat after reports that up until April 18 he was a registered lobbyist for UBS, the Swiss bank that is the world's largest manager of private wealth.

A former economics professor at Texas A&M, Gramm has long advocated for tax cuts, supply-side economics and less government regulation. But as David Corn over at Mother Jones reports in "Foreclosure Phil?" Gramm also played an integral role in the financial scandal commonly known as the "subprime meltdown."

Read more »

Rick Renzi

McCain Staffers Questioned in Corruption Probe

Andrew Tilghman | May 28, 2008, 3:19PM

Federal prosecutors questioned staffers of Sen. John McCain as part of their corruption investigation of Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ).

U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona Diane J. Humetewa and fellow prosecutors disclosed the interviews with aides for McCain and fellow Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl in a written response to Renzi's attorneys, who asked for the contents of the interview to help prepare for Renzi's upcoming trial, which is scheduled for October.

The aides were interviewed about land exchanges, according to an April letter from Humetewa filed with the U.S. District Court of Arizona late last week. The letter did not indicate when the interviews occurred.

A federal land swap critical to developing a $3 billion copper mine southeast of Phoenix is at the heart of the case against Renzi, who is facing 35 public corruption charges, including conspiracy, money-laundering, extortion and insurance fraud. Renzi is retiring at the end of this session.

The feds have also requested some documents from McCain, which as of April 14 they had not received.

John McCain

McCain to Vet Aides "More Thoroughly" for Lobbying Ties

Paul Kiel | May 15, 2008, 11:24AM

McCain is rolling out a new way of doing things -- instead of reacting to news stories that point out the fact that his advisors are lobbying for clients in opposition to his stated policies, he's going to root such contradictions out himself:

Sen. John McCain said today that his campaign will do a better job scrutinizing the people who work for it, given the resignation of two officials who had ties to a firm representing Myanmar's military junta....

"People will be thoroughly, more thoroughly, vetted and we'll make sure that that is the case."

He specifically referred to the two people who were tied to Myanmar--Doug Davenport, a regional campaign director for Mid-Atlantic states, and Doug Goodyear, who was slated to run the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., this summer.

"We found out that these two individuals had represented that country and so they left. We will vet everyone very seriously to make sure there's not a repetition," McCain told reporters.

John McCain

When Lobbying for Dictators Is OK

Paul Kiel | May 14, 2008, 3:20PM

The McCain campaign has provided an ongoing tutorial in the subtle ethics of lobbying. For instance, you might think that a politician who professes to be abhorred by special interests would not surround himself with lobbyists. Not so. What a politician can be drowning in lobbyists -- what matters is his integrity. And for that, you'll just have to take his word.

Charlie Black, McCain's campaign chairman and a veteran lobbyist, provides another tutorial today. Some have criticized the McCain camp for keeping Black while other McCain campaign officials have had to resign for their lobbying on behalf of Myanmar's ruling junta. Black lobbied for plenty of shady characters, they say, including Ferdinand Marcos and Jonas Savimbi. But Black has an answer for that. He has a code:

Black said he never took on work for foreign figures "without first talking to the State Department and the White House and clearing with them that the work would be in the interest of U.S. foreign policy."

For instance, he said, the U.S. considered Marcos an ally when his firm took on work for his government, and "when the White House pulled the plug on Marcos, we resigned the account the same day," Black said. He said his firm was hired to help show [Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire] how to form political parties and conduct elections, and when Mobutu canceled the results of the parliamentary election, "we quit."

This rule would surely also cover Black's work for Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, which provided much of the dubious evidence that formed the administration's case for war with Iraq, and the Lincoln Group, the State Department contractor that was hired to plant stories in the Iraqi press. So I guess there's no problem with that.

John McCain

Judge: Dems Must Wait until June to File Suit against McCain

Paul Kiel | May 14, 2008, 3:10PM

Back in February, the Democratic National Committee filed a complaint against the McCain campaign for violating the spending limits for the primary public financing system (explanation of that mess here). Since the FEC is defunct, the DNC then had to go to court to get some action.

Today, the district court in D.C. came to its decision -- for now, at least. The court has ruled that the law is clear that the DNC must wait 120 days after filing their FEC complaint before going to court. So this suit was dismissed, and the DNC must wait until June before they can go back to court. The judge didn't even consider the merits of the case, which will have to wait until June. Meanwhile, McCain continues to spend far beyond the spending limits of the program.

Must Read

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | May 9, 2008, 10:09AM

Once again, Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) invulnerability to the charms of lobbyists and his campaign supporters is put to the test.

This time it's The Washington Post going front page with the tale of McCain's role in a major Arizona land swap in 2005.

The basic thrust is this: a rancher owning 250 acres that intermingled with federally owned forest started pushing for a land swap that provide him with federal land in exchange for his own -- land that he could develop. Such land swaps are fairly common, though obviously easily abused. He was able to get the support of ex-Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ), but without McCain's backing the bill died in 2002.

After that, he decided to get smart and retained a number of lobbyists with connections to McCain. That, after all, is the way Washington works:

[The rancher Fred Ruskin], who is a pediatrician by training, said he realized he needed to hire lobbyists "to open communications with McCain's office."

He turned to some of McCain's closest former advisers. In 2002, he sought out Mark Buse, McCain's former staff director at the Senate commerce committee, which the senator chaired.

"I had gone to him to see if he had any advice as to how to deal with McCain," Ruskin said. "We had a couple of meetings and I paid him a little bit." Buse's federal lobbying records do not list the ranch as a client.

That year, lobbying records show, Ruskin also paid $60,000 to Michael Jimenez, another former McCain aide. Wes Gullett, who had worked in McCain's Senate office, managed his 1992 reelection bid, and served as deputy campaign manager for his 2000 presidential run, also lobbied on the bill, documents show. The watchdog group Public Citizen lists Gullett and his wife, Deborah, as bundlers who have raised more than $100,000 for McCain's White House bid. Ruskin also hired Gullett's partner, Kurt R. Davis, another McCain bundler and member of the senator's Arizona leadership team, to work with local officials and "to help with McCain if we needed help." Buse, Jimenez and Gullett did not return calls seeking comment.

With that sort of help, McCain became much more engaged. But McCain spokesman Brian Rogers "said that McCain does not recall being lobbied by his former staff members on the land swap and that 'no lobbyist influenced Senator McCain on this issue.'"

Nevertheless, somehow, some way Ruskin eventually ended up with his swap. And the company that's been hired to develop his new property is run by Steven A. Betts, "a longtime McCain supporter" who's raised $100,000 for McCain this election. (McCain's camp says that Betts' involvement was never discussed prior to the bill's passage.)

Now, is this is a major scandal? No. But like The New York Times' story last month, it shows McCain delivering for a campaign contributor in a way that belies his claim that he underwent a Road to Damascus conversion after the Keating Five scandal.

Hans von Spakovsky

McConnell Spikes White House FEC Compromise

Paul Kiel | May 8, 2008, 11:35AM

Well, that was quick.

As I noted yesterday, the White House offered a "compromise" to the FEC deadlock -- except that they refused to withdraw the centerpiece of the conflict, Hans von Spakovsky. Oh, and the offer also included replacing the sitting Republican commissioner David Mason, who's been creating trouble for the McCain campaign. The only aspect of the offer that could be characterized as a compromise was the promise from White House officials that Senate Republicans would now agree to have a vote on Spakovsky separately from the other uncontroversial FEC nominees.

But now Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says they won't. It's either a vote on all the nominees together or nothing. So... no progress has been made. The FEC will remain shut down.

Must Read

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | May 7, 2008, 9:57AM

Nobody does compromise quite like the Bush administration.

If you're a regular reader of TPM, you're familiar with Hans von Spakovsky and in particular, Spakovsky's remarkable track record at the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. It is because of that record -- one of ignoring, marginalizing, and intimidating career lawyers in order to institute restrictive voting laws all over the country, a pattern amounting to "institutional sabotage" as one former career attorney there put it -- that Senate Democrats (Barack Obama and Russ Feingold in particular) opposed his nomination to the Federal Election Commission.

Spakovsky was one of four nominees -- two Dems and two GOPers -- to the commission. The other three were uncontroversial. Senate Republicans insisted that all nominees be voted on together, and the Democrats objected: Spakovsky would have to get his own vote. The Republicans refused, and there things have stood for more than four months. Without the necessary number of commissioners, the FEC has essentially shut down.

It is a problem that has a relatively simple solution: if the White House were to submit another nominee, that nominee would more than likely be quickly confirmed without much trouble.

Instead, the Bush administration proposed something different yesterday.

Spakovsky remains a nominee. Instead, the administration has submitted a new nominee to replace the current chairman, David Mason. Mason is one of the only two seated commissioners, and it just so happens that he's been creating a whole lot of trouble for John McCain lately.

In February, the McCain campaign notified the FEC that it was withdrawing from the public financing system for the primary. Although McCain had once opted in, his campaign said that it had never received public funds and so could opt out. The move meant that McCain would not be bound by the $54 million spending limit for the system.

But Mason balked. McCain couldn't just opt out -- the FEC had to approve his request before he could. And Mason also indicated that a tricky bank loan might mean that McCain had locked himself in to the system. That would be disastrous for the campaign, since the Dem nominee would have a tremendous spending advantage through August. So McCain's campaign has continued to spend away, far surpassing the limit already. The Democratic Party has filed a complaint with the FEC and has also taken the matter to court.

And now Mason is getting the boot.

So where's the compromise, exactly? A White House spokeswoman tells The New York Times that Republicans are now willing to have a separate vote for Spakovsky. Whether that actually is the case, we shall see. If so, that means Democrats will have the chance to actually vote down Spakovsky once and for all.

But there is no shortage of cynicism about the White House's move. As Fred Wertheimer of Democracy 21 put it: "The only apparent reason for President Bush to drop Commissioner David Mason at this stage, an FEC candidate he had twice proposed for the Commission, is to prevent him from casting an adverse vote against Senator McCain on important enforcement questions pending at the Commission. The questions deal with Senator McCain's request to withdraw from the presidential primary public financing system and the consequences of a loan the McCain campaign took out and the collateral provided for the loan."