The New York Times on Friday begrudgingly acknowledged that Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite, the latest blockbuster investigative work by Breitbart News senior contributor and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer, contains “building blocks for scandals involving a number of 2020 Democratic hopefuls.”
The Times featured a piece by Nicole Hemmer, who, throughout the piece, charges conservative media with minimizing “not just impeachment but the full array of President Trump’s misconduct.”
“But minimization is only half the strategy to protect Republican control of the White House. The other half is scandalization: an effort to create an air of nonstop scandal around previous Democratic presidents and presidential hopefuls,” she contends.
She directly cites Schweizer’s latest book Profiles in Corruption in an effort to build her case but appears to do the opposite, admitting that the investigative work — which contains a number of bombshells on top progressive leaders, candidates and non-candidates, like Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Kamala Harris (D-CA), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), and Mayor Eric Garcetti — provides “building blocks for scandals involving a number of 2020 Democratic hopefuls,” albeit with a dismissive tone.
Hemmer writes:
The Breitbart contributor Peter Schweizer followed “Clinton Cash,” a book that helped spread the Uranium One conspiracy, with “Secret Empires,” which targeted Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden. Mr. Schweizer’s most recent book, “Profiles in Corruption,” provides building blocks for scandals involving a number of 2020 Democratic hopefuls, like the daft tidbit that Senator Elizabeth Warren’s son-in-law produced a film with support from two Iranian organizations. The investors, Mr. Schweizer wrote, “might appear at first glance to be innocuous cultural organizations — but they are not. Both are funded and controlled by the Islamist Iranian government.” It may not seem like much, but as the birtherism conspiracy shows, scandals have been rooted in less.
However, Hemmer’s attempt to equate Schweizer’s book to wild conspiracy theories falls flat, as his work contains 1,126 endnotes with concrete evidence stemming from corporate and legal records, lobbyist disclosures, property records, White House visitor logs, tax liens, and federal bankruptcies, among other documents.
Breitbart News has detailed several of the bombshell revelations featured in Schweizer’s book, including Warren’s son-in-law’s ties to the Iranian regime via his production company, Tricolor Films.
In 2008, Warren’s son-in-law, Sushil Tyagi, produced a film called The Song of Sparrows, which was directed by Iranian filmmaker Majid Majidi. As Schweizer discovered, the movie’s chief investors were “funded and controlled by the Islamist Iranian government.”
As Profiles in Corruption details:
The full credits of the film, for some reason, seem to also have been scrubbed from the internet. We obtained a copy by using the Wayback machine and made a startling discovery: the movie’s chief investors included none other than the social deputy of the State Welfare Organization (SWO) of Iran (SWO-“معاونت اجتماعی سازمان بهزیستی کشور”) as well as the Cultural and Artistic Organization of Tehran. (“سازمان فرهنگی و هنری شهرداری تهران”)
These two investors in the film might appear at first glance to be innocuous cultural organizations—but they are not. Both are funded and controlled by the Islamist Iranian government.
The Cultural and Artistic Organization of Tehran states: “This organization was founded in 1996 and [does] its activities under the supervision of a board of trustees composed of various cultural institutions such as IRIB and Islamic propaganda organization.”
Breitbart News broke down the revelation further:
The Cultural and Artistic Organization of Tehran’s page promotes cultural events such as one for school children entitled “The Seal of Hostages,” attended by several top Iranian officials, according to the book.
Another event is the inherently antisemitic Quds Day on the last day of Ramadan. The organization also arranges marches, as well as organizes posters and other materials, for Quds Day. Its site says, “A new plan for the destruction of Israel will be launched, and the Quds Cultural Radio station will be located at the Radio Station. Also, the ‘I love the fight against Israel’ is distributed among the people.”
Schweizer notes, “Quds Day typically features massive crowds organized by the Iranian government chanting ‘death to America’ and burning effigies, with full media coverage.”
He writes Tyagi’s The Song of Sparrows has film credits that read like “who’s who of prominent Iranian government institutions.” For example, there is a thank-you to the “Iranian Revolutionary Guards Air Force.”
The revelation is just one of many on Warren, as well as the other prolific progressives featured in the book, as the Hemmer acknowledges in her op-ed for the Times.
“I think there’s a lot of things about Elizabeth Warren that are troubling, about how she was actually a government consultant in the 1990s rewriting bankruptcy laws, and in a typical Washington move, she took that position and cashed in,” Schweizer said during a recent appearance on Fox News’s Special Report.
“She basically went to corporations and said, I will consult for you and advise you in how to use the law that I wrote to your maximum advantage,” he added.
Profiles in Corruption also contains a number of detailed discoveries regarding “the Biden 5,” including how James Biden’s firm received $1.5 billion in government contracts, despite having no experience, as well as Frank Biden’s connection to projects receiving millions in taxpayer loans during the Obama administration. It also examines Hunter Biden’s firms scoring business deals with people and entities tied to the governments of Russia, China, and Kazakhstan, as well as revelations on the former vice president’s sister, Valerie Biden Owens, purportedly directing $2.5 million from “Citizens for Biden” and “Biden for President Inc.” to her own contracting firm during her brother’s last presidential bid in 2008.
Stay tuned to Breitbart News for forthcoming reports from Profiles in Corruption.
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