“I’m going to do everything that I can to make sure that Donald Trump is not in office in 2020,” says former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe.
As the man behind the infamous “Terry Tolls” ramps up his rhetoric 22 months from the 2020 General Election, McAuliffe has all but officially announced his intentions to run for the Democratic nomination for president.
In a report from The Washington Examiner, McAuliffe, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) with very close ties to the Clinton family, attacked Trump in saying, “I don’t think our president has a moral core.”
Although he has yet to declare his candidacy, McAuliffe added, “I will make a decision by March 31.”
It’s been over a decade since McAuliffe appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program while wearing a bright, flowery shirt and waving a bottle of rum on national television. Nevertheless, the Democratic presidential hopeful may have to contend with a few mishaps in his career, from federal investigations involving the Clinton Foundation, to fake deals over “green” cars with Chinese investors as his professional political career comes under great scrutiny.
As a former hyper-aggressive fundraiser for the Clinton Global Initiative, McAuliffe said in 1988 at an event, “I will stop at nothing to try and get get a check from you.” While that is fairly good news from any political operative, it is not good news when those checks come from those with ties to China’s communist government.
An investigation was launched by the FBI and the Justice Department into McAuliffe and the Clinton’s fundraising scheme.
Among the McAuliffe donations that drew the interest of federal investigators was $120,000 from Chinese businessman Wang Wenliang, also a former member of the country’s National People’s Congress.
Oddly enough, the federal probe went nowhere.
In February 2018, GreenTech Automotive, the electric car company founded by McAuliffe and pumped full of money from Chinese investors, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, with the former governor pushing the cause of the failure on negative news coverage by conservative websites. Although McAuliffe took the issue to court in 2013, the $85 million judgement was dismissed one year later by U.S. District Court Judge Michael Mills, who explained that negative coverage did not damage GreenTech, but only McAuliffe himself.
According to a Watchdog article, becoming an investor with GreenTech had benefits that were hidden from the public. “The program allows foreign nationals seeking residency in the U.S. to obtain an EB-5 visa by investing at least $500,000 in a U.S. company that employs at least 10 American workers,” the article read.
Interestingly, if McAuliffe does declare his candidacy for president, he may have to answer a question surrounding the ordered assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
When asked what he thought President Trump should have done in the incident by radio host John Fredericks, McAuliffe said, “I’ve actually seen some video which I won’t even mention on the radio of what they did to this man, it is unbelievable.”
Wait, what? *The exchange is between 24:26-26:52 in the audio recording*
Even though there is evidence that U.S. intelligence officials used in finding out the details of the assassination, which led to over a dozen people being identified via Treasury Department sanctions, how in the world would Terry McAuliffe have access to it? Wouldn’t a video or audio recordings be classified?
Regardless, as the 2020 election draws closer every day, lawmakers in the Virginia General Assembly are pushing legislation to provide for a solution to the massive backlog of gubernatorial records. In fact, the Library of Virginia is still in the process of cataloging the records of Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), who was governor from 2006 to 2010, who was also the vice presidential nominee for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 General Election.
A timely release of the unseen record catalog of Terry McAuliffe could mean that other measures, like his attempt to restore the voting rights of hundreds of thousands of felons in Virginia, which he calls his “greatest accomplishment,” could show voters that McAuliffe should go back to peddling booze on television.