by as published on the gopthedailydose.com
Political Enemy of Wild Horses and Burros in Center of Scandal
A Utah businessman is rocking both state and national politics after claiming Utah Attorney General John Swallow helped him broker a deal with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to make a federal investigation into his company quietly disappear, the Salt Lake Tribune reports.
Jeremy Johnson was allegedly told that the price would be $600,000, and claims to have made an initial payment of $250,000 when he was slapped with a federal lawsuit. Now he says he wants his money back.
The Salt Lake Tribune points out that Johnson has no way of knowing whether the funds actually made it to Reid, even if he did make a massive payment to Reid’s alleged intermediary.
The Salt Lake Tribune continues, explaining how the bribe supposedly came to be in 2010:
At the time, Johnson was largely known in Utah as a wealthy philanthropist who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to ferry supplies into Haiti after the devastating 2010 earthquake.
Then, with the FTC investigation continuing, Johnson said Swallow suggested Reid could make problems with regulators go away — for a price.
“I said, ‘OK, what do I need to do?’ He’s like, ‘OK, it costs money,’ ” Johnson said, who claimed Swallow was adamant he make a deal.
“I think he told me, ‘Richard Rawle has a connection with Harry Reid,’ ” Johnson said.
He said Swallow at first wanted $2 million to enlist Reid’s help. But [his company] I Works was no longer profitable and he did not have the money, Johnson said, so they eventually agreed on $300,000 upfront and $300,000 later.
Swallow put Johnson in contact with Rawle, whose company has operations in Nevada…
Rawle, who died of cancer last month, had contributed to Reid’s 2010 re-election bid and
later bragged to Johnson that the Nevada Democrat helped him delay new federal payday-loan regulations, Johnson said.
“Richard [Rawle] is traveling to LV tomorrow and will be able to contact this person, who he has a very good relationship with. He needs a brief narrative of what is going on and what you want to happen. I don’t know the cost, but it probably won’t be cheap.”
On Oct. 7, Johnson emailed Rawle, insisting there was “rock solid proof” the FTC allegations against I Works were false. “We will do whatever it take[s] to get Senator Reid on our side and hopefully you can help make it happen. Let me know.”
Johnson spent 96 days in jail and has released a number of emails and statements seemingly corroborating parts of his story. However, Swallow insists that Johnson is making “false and defamatory accusations” and that any role he may have played was merely for lobbying purposes.
“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Swallow stated. “As long as I’m not interfering with a government agency as a government official, there’s nothing wrong with me being involved.”
But Johnson told a judge he’s felt guilty about the situation from the start: “The truth is the worst thing I think I’ve done was I paid money knowing it was going to influence Harry Reid…So I’ve felt all along that I’ve committed bribery of some sort there.”
Though the connection to Reid remains unverified, some are remembering how Reid claimed on the Senate floor that Mitt Romney hadn’t paid his taxes for ten years based on far less evidence.
A Las Vegas Review-Journal blog jokes about how Reid might address the situation, if looking in from the outside:
I have a “source” that says that Harry Reid takes bribes all the time. In fact, if you want anything done out of his office, you must come with a suitcase of cash just to get an audience. That’s how he’s gotten so rich on a senator’s salary. He stashes his money in an offshore bank account
Senator Harry Reid’s office has declined to comment.
Categories: Horse News, Wild Burros, Wild Horses/Mustangs
Straight from the Horse's Heart 
Its terrible that corruption runs so.deep. This is exactly why we need term limits. If they stay too long at the prom instead of doing good things they become greedy. Both parties are gulty of this. They develop the Pope or mafia attitude. And in the mean time everything else suffers. Numerous people get involved and they don’t want their gravy train to end either. If they spent this much time money and energy saving the Wild Horses and Burros we wouldn’t be in this situation.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Gail, while I understand (and agree with) your frustrations, Pope Francis seems to have broken the mold and is in fact someone we can all admire for his attitude. Would that we could get him to visit our wild horses and speak on their behalf! He probably would if made aware of their plight.
LikeLike
Harry Reid is the same “dirty harry” who reportedly was bought and sold by his dirty welfare rancher associates who had Harry slip in the Burns amendment to send wild horses to slaughter about a dozen years ago. So you can thank Harry for being a major cog in the wild horse and burro slaughter wheel.
“The BLM was filling holding pens with few prospective adopters until Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) convinced then Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) to push through an amendment to the WFRHBA in 2004. The Burns Amendment was buried in an appropriations bill that was thousands of pages long. It authorizes BLM to sell excess wild horses that are “more than 10 years of age; or … [which have] been offered unsuccessfully for adoption at least 3 times.” 16 U.S.C. §1333. Any horse sold under this provision is no longer subject to the protections of the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act. 16 U.S.C. §1333. Since this amendment became effective, BLM has sold thousands of wild horses for slaughter.”
https://animallawcoalition.com/can-the-wild-horses-and-burros-be-saved/
LikeLiked by 1 person
My prayer is that enough evidence comes forward on Reid that he is prosecuted. What he has done to the wild horses in unconscionable (well, at least to anyone with a conscience). Between Reid and the higher ups in DOI and Blm I don’t even think we have scratched the surface of their betrayal of our horses.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hurrah
LikeLike
it is about time!!! I hope that Harry Reid is done!! he needs to be.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Since this article is two years old, and Sen. Reid is still in office, he seems far from done. It would be interesting to learn if anything came of this article at all.
LikeLike
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO HARRY REID? PART 2 [UPDATED]
POSTED ON MARCH 28, 2015
Scott wrote here about Harry Reid’s announcement that he will not run for re-election, a decision which, Reid was quick to say, was not the result of his “elastic exercise band” accident. In January, I wrote OK, So What Really Happened to Harry Reid? I noted the injuries that Reid suffered on New Year’s Day, in Las Vegas: multiple broken bones around his right eye, damage to the right eye, severe facial bruising, broken ribs, and a concussion. Was all of this really the result of losing his balance because an elastic exercise band broke? That seems unlikely, to say the least.
Anyone who saw Reid would say that he looked like he had been beaten up by a guy with a hard left, maybe using brass knuckles:
When a guy shows up at a Las Vegas emergency room on New Year’s Day with severe facial injuries and broken ribs, and gives as an explanation the functional equivalent of “I walked into a doorknob,” it isn’t hard to guess that he ran afoul of mobsters. Yet the national press has studiously averted its eyes from Reid’s condition, and has refused to investigate the cause of his injuries. To my knowledge, every Washington reporter has at least pretended to believe Reid’s story, and none, as far as I can tell, has inquired further.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/03/what-really-happened-to-harry-reid-part-2.php
LikeLike