On Wednesday, Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large and Government Accountability President Peter Schweizer shocked conservative talk radio host Mark Levin with revelations from his New York Times best-selling book, Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets, prompting Levin to say Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department was reminiscent of the old Soviet Union and worse than the mafia.
Schweizer noted that Levin served at senior levels in the Reagan administration as the chief of staff for Attorney General Ed Meese. During that time, Reagan was defeating the Soviet Union. Schweizer described how President Barack Obama’s Justice Department is staffed with top bundlers at the very highest levels in an unprecedented way, which is allowing it to be used as “a tool for intimidation to go after companies and individuals who were not in support of the president” by “enforcing vague laws” and threatening them with consequences.
Schweizer emphasized that the “bigger problem” in Washington “is not bribery but extortion,” and the information he discovered about Obama’s Justice Department validates that.
“They can literally identify laws and pressure points and intimidate very, very powerful corporations and individuals into basically paying protection money or getting them to lay off their political activities for fear they can have the book thrown at them or bad things will happen to their company,” Schweizer said. Schweizer has also detailed how there was statistical proof that the chances of being prosecuted get lessened if companies and individuals under investigation make donations. He has also detailed in the book how the Obama administration’s Justice Department targeted industries and individuals that supported the Tea Party movement after the historic 2010 midterm elections.
That prompted Levin so say the Justice Department’s actions were like “old Soviet stuff” and was “worse than a damn mob.” Schweizer has previously said Holder was like the “squeegee man with the brick” for the Obama administration.
After Levin noted that the revelations in Schweizer’s book are more proof that there are just “so many laws and regulations” that can be abused, Schweizer mentioned a study he cited that found an average professional commits three felonies a day. He mentioned that the Justice Department can “find a person and figure out what kind of crime to pin on them.” He called it “regulatory extortion” and said it was all “by design.” Schweizer pointed to the Dodd-Frank bill that regulated Wall Street after the financial crisis and said after the 2,000-page bill was passed, staffers for the lawmakers who wrote the bill quit their jobs and charged companies hundreds of thousands of dollars to interpret the bill they wrote.
“That’s extortion, and it goes on all the time,” Schweizer said before mentioning how the Obama administration used a “double milker bill” to pit Hollywood and Silicon Valley against each other to extract donations from both sides with the Stop Online Privacy Act, which ultimately did not pass even after Hollywood executives ponied up millions to Obama’s re-election campaign.
Schweizer also blasted House Speaker John Boehner, whose “tollbooths” he has already exposed, by saying though ethics rules prevent members of Congress from negotiating or getting campaign donations in their congressional offices and campaign donations cannot be linked to legislation, there is, of course, an exception: “other members of Congress.”
Schweizer said on important votes, Boehner has used his leadership PAC, which is as a slush fund to subsidize the lavish lifestyles of those in Congress, to dole out cash on the day of the vote to Republicans who are in safe seats.
“The way he gets loyalty is he is literally buying their votes,” Schweizer said, saying Boehner was not appealing “to them on principle” but “to their pocketbook and basically paying them off.” He noted Democrats in Washington’s permanent political class ecosystem do that too.
“You’ve done an enormous public service with this book Extortion,” Levin, the author of the best-selling Liberty Amendments, said.
As Breitbart News has reported, Extortion’s “numerous revelations have touched off several firestorms in Washington. Schweizer has revealed”:
- How Democratic Congresswoman Grace Napolitano (D-CA) funneled at least $294,245 in campaign cash to herself by loaning her campaign money in 1998 at a staggering 18% interest rate and then letting the loan linger unpaid for 20 years
- Has republished top secret “price lists,” known officially as “party dues,” that include the donation totals members of Congress must raise to land top committee spots and chairmanships
- How leadership PAC loopholes allow members of Congress to convert campaign cash into lavish lifestyle upgrades for themselves and their family members
- Alleged that Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) bagged over $200,000 in donations from executives and companies prior to holding votes on three bills of critical importance to their industries
- How President Barack Obama used a political extortion tactic known as a “double milker bill” to “milk” millions in donations by pitting Obama’s friends in Hollywood against his supporters in Silicon Valley to extract cash from both.
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