Monday, April 18, 2016
"To conflate them is absolutely incorrect and inaccurate," Shumlin chief of staff Darren Springer told reporters in a conference room on the fifth floor of Montpelier's Pavilion State Office Building.
As Seven Days reported earlier Monday, the administration has been on the defensive since late last week, when VTDigger.org revealed that Shumlin legal counsel Sarah London had requested the deletion of email accounts belonging to five former staffers. Among them was former deputy chief of staff Alex MacLean, who subsequently worked as a contract project manager for Jay Peak Resort. The resort's owners, Ariel Quiros and Bill Stenger, were accused last Thursday by federal and state authorities of perpetrating a $200 million fraud in the Northeast Kingdom.
At Monday's briefing, Springer and his colleagues reiterated that any emails related to Quiros, Stenger and their various endeavors would have been protected from deletion had London's request been granted. That's because Attorney General Bill Sorrell ordered relevant agencies last October to protect all documents related to the state's investigation of the men.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Peter Galbraith launched a stinging attack against the leader of his own party Monday, questioning the role Gov. Peter Shumlin played in an economic development initiative that federal prosecutors say was riddled with fraud.
During a noon press conference in front of the Statehouse, the former state senator and ambassador called for the creation of an independent commission to investigate the state's oversight and promotion of the Northeast Kingdom projects. He questioned the veracity of Shumlin's public statements on the matter and said Vermonters wanted to know the extent of his involvement.
“In short, what did the governor know? When did he know it? And what did he do about it?” Galbraith said, paraphrasing the late U.S. senator Howard Baker at the height of the Watergate hearings.
The candidate's comments came four days after the Securities and Exchange Commission and Vermont Attorney General Bill Sorrell unveiled civil charges against Northeast Kingdom developers Ariel Quiros and Bill Stenger. Authorities say the pair misappropriated more than $200 million in foreign investment intended for construction projects at Jay Peak, in downtown Newport and elsewhere in the region.
Tags: Peter Galbraith , Peter Shumlin , Jay Peak , EB-5 , Bill Stenger , Ariel Quiros , Image , Web Only
VTDigger.org's Anne Galloway reported late Friday that Shumlin's legal counsel, Sarah London, asked an information technology employee on April 8 to purge the state's servers of emails belonging to five former staffers. One of the ex-employees was former deputy chief of staff Alex MacLean, who left the governor's office in January 2013 to work as a contract project manager for Jay Peak Resort.
Tags: Peter Shumlin , Jim Condos , Tanya Marshall , Bill Stenger , Ariel Quiros , EB-5 , Jay Peak , emails , records , Vermont state archives , Image , Web Only
Saturday, April 16, 2016
Ariel Quiros and Bill Stenger, who allegedly misappropriated $200 million worth of foreign investment, donated tens of thousands of dollars to political players in Vermont over the past five years, according to early and likely incomplete estimates. Several of those recipients appeared at investor-recruitment events staged by the developers outside the country and advocated for the EB-5 investor visa program, through which Quiros and Stenger funded their development projects.
Tags: Bill Stenger , Ariel Quiros , political donations , campaign finance , Peter Shumlin , Patrick Leahy , Peter Welch , Bruce Lisman , Peter Galbraith , Image , Web Only
Then came a little divine intervention.
Shortly before leaving for Greece Saturday morning, the pontiff met with Sanders in the foyer of the papal residence, according to the Associated Press. The meeting lasted around five minutes.
"It was a real honor for me, for my wife and I to spend some time with him. I think he is one of the extraordinary figures not only in the world today but in modern world history," Sanders told the AP before boarding a chartered jet to return to the campaign trail.
Tags: Senator , Bernie Sanders , Pope Francis , presidential campaign , Image , Recommended Reading , Web Only
Friday, April 15, 2016
Leahy's remarks came a day after federal and state authorities accused a pair of Northeast Kingdom developers of misappropriating more than $200 million raised through the EB-5 program, which provides permanent residency to foreign nationals who invest at least $500,000 in qualified projects.
Tags: Patrick Leahy , EB-5 , Jay Peak , Bill Stenger , Ariel Quiros , Jim Douglas , Peter Shumlin , Image , Web Only
A similar bill already passed the House, but that version included a ban on placing e-cigarettes on counters in retail stores. The Senate committee deleted that provision.
Tags: electronic cigarettes , Senate Health & Welfare Committee , Health Commissioner Harry Chen , Sen. Claire Ayer , Image , Web Only
An ethics rule would establish a five-member panel, with new members named every two years. The panel would investigate any allegations of ethical violations by senators.
The Senate Rules Committee would establish the procedures that the ethics panel would follow. In fact, the committee already has approved a two-page procedure manual, but it had yet to be shared with all senators.
Sen. Claire Ayer (D-Addison) jumped up to question why the ethics panel wouldn’t write its own procedures.
Tags: Senate ethics , Sen. Phil Baruth , Sen. Claire Ayer , Image , Web Only
Seated in a spare room at the Hotel Jay & Conference Center, Stenger slid a photograph across a table. Taken nearly three years earlier in nearby Newport, it featured Stenger, business partner Ariel Quiros and their lawyer, William Kelly, announcing their goal to bring 10,000 jobs to the rural region. Standing between the developers in the photo were the state's four most powerful politicians: Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Congressman Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and Gov. Peter Shumlin.
Tags: Senator , Jay Peak , Q Burke , Bill Stenger , Ariel Quiros , Peter Shumlin , Jim Douglas , Patrick Leahy , Bernie Sanders , presidential campaign , Recommended Reading , Image , Web Only
Did the Vermont senator “obliterate” the former secretary of state, as he pledged to do to Donald Trump in the November general election?
New York Democrats will make that call. But a critical mass of voters will likely agree that Sanders failed to sink Clinton in the battle waged in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
Rather than adopting the defensive strategy favored by many front-runners, Clinton regularly took the fight to Sanders and sought to retaliate when he challenged her record and questioned her judgment. Sanders likewise employed aggressive tactics, and the two often continued sparring despite moderators’ attempts to cut them off. Each of the candidates laughed derisively at the other’s comments at various points in the two-hour debate, hosted by CNN and NY1.
As she has throughout the primary, Clinton repeatedly associated herself with President Barack Obama, whose popularity ratings remain high among Democrats. She also cast herself as a realistic progressive, in contrast with Sanders, whom she depicted as an an idealist — strong on rhetoric but weak on policy details and lacking pragmatic political skills.
“When you make proposals, and you’re running for president, you should be held accountable for whether the numbers add up,” Clinton declared. “Describing the problem is a lot easier than trying to solve it,” she said at another point in the debate.
Tags: Senator , Bernie Sanders , Hillary Clinton , presidential campaign , New York primary , Brooklyn , debate , Image , Recommended Reading , Web Only