Extortion (22 page)

His sons Rory, Key, and Joshua and son-in-law Steve Barringer have all worked as lobbyists or in the government relations field greasing the wheels for these sorts of deals. All four have worked at one point or another for Lionel Sawyer & Collins, the most powerful law firm in Nevada. The firm makes its money by representing developers, mining companies, and casinos. Key Reid helped establish the firm’s office in Washington back in 2002. All four have also assumed important positions of power locally. Rory served for a time as the commissioner and vice chairman of Clark County, the most populous county in the state, and as vice chairman of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, a powerful institution in the sun-soaked desert state. Joshua Reid was appointed by President Obama to the governing board of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, which oversees development in the Lake Tahoe Basin. Reid has not been shy about pushing legislation that benefits his sons’ clients. As the
Los Angeles Times
reported back in 2003, Reid pushed the innocuous-sounding Clark County Conservation of Public Land and Natural Resources Act of 2002, which provided a “cavalcade of benefits to real estate developers, corporations and local institutions that were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in lobbying fees to his son’s and son-in-law’s firms, federal lobbyist reports show.”
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Son-in-law Steve Barringer has earned millions representing large mining companies like Barrick Gold as a lobbyist.
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According to one estimate based on lobbying records, he collected as much as $3.7 million between 1999 and 2009. During that decade, Senator Reid pushed to cut capital gains tax on collectible precious metals and pushed the U.S. Mint to produce more gold coins; both of these measures would increase demand and boost gold prices.
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In return, Barrick Gold funneled money to the Reid family through a variety of fund-raising committees. Barrick Gold regularly pumps money into Reid’s Senate campaign committee, joint fund-raising committees, and leadership PAC.
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Reid doesn’t just pull the strings in Washington. When something is going on at the local level that he doesn’t approve of, he will call and shut it down. When Bruce Woodbury, a Clark County commissioner, wanted to set up a land swap to prevent a new residential development from going up in Boulder City, Reid called Woodbury to say he didn’t want the land swap to happen. “He was pretty blunt about it,” Woodbury says. The call ended with Reid abruptly hanging up. The deal died.
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When MGM was building a massive project called CityCenter, it ran into financial trouble. The project was under construction, but financing dried up. Harry Reid got on the phone and told banks to free up money so the project could be completed. They did.
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Nevada developer Chris Milam learned the perils of the Reid machine when he tried to develop an arena and bring an NBA team to Nevada. He hired Key Reid as a consultant in May 2011 and put him on a $5,000 retainer. But when it became clear that the Sacramento Kings of the NBA were not moving to Nevada, Milam tried to convert the project into a residential development. To make that happen he sued the City of Henderson, Nevada. The new city attorney was Harry Reid’s son Josh. Josh Reid told Milam’s legal team that “a longtime staffer of his father” was now in charge of the federal Bureau of Land Management, and even if they won the case in court, the feds would block him. Milam settled the case.
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How Josh Reid became the city attorney for Henderson was itself an expression of Reid family power in Nevada. After Josh Reid left law school, he became a shareholder and attorney in the powerful firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck in Las Vegas. With its large lobbying operation, the firm could boast of its connections and ability to help energy companies get government-backed loans and Department of Energy grants as part of the 2009 stimulus. The firm took out an ad in the
Wall Street Journal
that read, “Expertise in sustainable energy law is worth nothing without connections. Learn how we’ve helped clients obtain funding from the Department of Energy through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.”
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Josh Reid focused on environmental regulatory matters at the firm. His bio explains that he organized the sale and lease of significant wind and solar projects, advising clients “on federal and state renewable energy policy” and helping with “project development strategies” for clients that included large public utilities.
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When the opportunity to become city attorney of Henderson arose in 2011, Josh Reid was interested. The problem: the job called for ten years of experience. Josh had only eight. So the city council miraculously decided to change the rules and lower the requirement to eight years. Senator Harry Reid then called Henderson mayor Andy Hafen to discuss the merits of hiring his son.
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Reid was soon on the payroll for the $199,000-a-year job.
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Even large corporations from halfway around the world have learned that all things must go through the Reids. The Chinese energy company ENN must have been reminded of its own country, where family payoffs and relationships are a regular part of doing business. ENN wanted to develop a $5 billion solar energy facility in Nevada when Harry Reid traveled to China in 2011 to meet with company executives. Shortly thereafter, executives at the company kicked in donations to two of Reid’s separate fund-raising committees. Mu Meng, the vice president of ENN, contributed $10,000 on July 19, 2011, to Reid’s Searchlight Tahoe Victory Fund. So, too, did the chief operating officer of the ENN Group, DeLing Zhou, who gave another $10,000 in two separate contributions on July 18 and July 20 of that year.
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On August 10, 2011, Zhou also sent $5,000 to Reid’s Searchlight Leadership Fund (his leadership PAC).
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ENN also hired Rory Reid’s law firm to represent it. The firm helped to locate a 9,000-acre desert site for the project and managed to arrange for the Chinese firm to buy the Clark County land for well below its appraised value. (Rory Reid had been the former chairman of the Clark County Commission.) Meanwhile, in Washington, as
Reuters
put it, Harry Reid has been one of the project’s “most prominent advocates.”
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Back in Nevada, the senator tried to “pressure Nevada’s largest power company, NV Energy, to sign up as ENN’s first customer,” according to
Reuters
.
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Extracting money from wealthy interests and companies is a family affair. The growing number of Reid family finance committees and fund-raising operations led the Reids in 2003 to ask the Federal Election Commission to give son Rory flexible status when raising money. Reid was on the Clark County Commission at the time and had raised money for his father. But he also wanted to raise money for the Nevada state Democratic Party, which Harry Reid controlled as well. According to the family’s filings with the FEC, they were asking for the government body to not consider Rory Reid “an agent of Senator Reid,” even though he acted “and continues to act as the Senator’s fundraising agent in certain circumstances.” The distinction was important because there were different limits on how much money you could donate to a federal candidate or a state political party. The FEC declared that “Rory Reid’s fundraising activities will only be attributed to a federal candidate or officeholder if he is acting on the authority of that candidate or officeholder.” The beauty of this arrangement is that Nevada state law permitted the party to raise “unlimited amounts from individuals, corporations, and labor organizations.” The FEC concluded, “So long as [Rory Reid’s] fundraising for the state party is not done on the authority of the Senator, then it is permissible under federal law.”
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Just as the Las Vegas mob was able to move funds through a combination of front men and silent partners, the Reids have been able to shift money through a network of fund-raising operations that go well beyond a simple campaign fund-raising committee.

Powerful companies or interests that have a stake in legislation in front of the Senate or that need help in Nevada can get tapped not only for a regular campaign donation but also by Reid’s leadership PAC, a joint fund-raising committee, and even a Nevada state party committee. And like the manager of any good operation, Senator Reid is able to move the funds around. His campaign committee Friends for Harry Reid has received cash infusions from the Reid Majority Fund, the Reid Nevada Fund, and the Reid Victory Fund.
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The Reid Majority Fund is a joint fund-raising operation that allows him to take in large donations. During the 2012 election cycle, for example, the largest contribution was $30,400 from a lobbyist at Elmendorf Strategies.
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Another entity, the Reid Victory Fund, is also a joint fund-raising committee, which enables the senator to receive large contributions from lobbyists or hedge fund managers like Roger Altman, who kicked in $10,000 in June of 2010.
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Many of the same corporate and labor PACs who give to Reid’s Leadership Fund also send money to his Victory Fund.
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Harry Reid’s Searchlight Leadership Fund is almost completely funded by corporate and labor PACs and lobbyists. During the two-year election cycle from 2011 to 2012, the fund collected donations from more than 250 PACs, from the American Dental Association to the National Association of Home Builders, to the United Auto Workers. Reid was not up for reelection—he had just been reelected in 2010—but the fund took in $1.6 million in PAC contributions and another $817,000 in individual contributions. The majority of the individual donations were from executives at companies that had given PAC donations or were lobbyists.
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Like the lobbyists who gathered at that D.C. steak house after the 2004 election to pay tribute to Reid, these lobbyists and corporations gave to Reid because they had to. Failure to do so would mean possibly getting screwed when an important bill came up for a vote.

When Rory Reid decided to run for governor of Nevada in 2010, it quickly became clear that the apple had not fallen far from the tree. Rory’s campaign set up an elaborate network of no less than
ninety-one
separate political action committees that could serve as conduits for money to his campaign. These were shell PACs formed in the fall of 2010 and then dissolved on December 31, 2010.
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Veteran Nevada reporter Jon Ralston of the
Las Vegas Sun
broke the story. Ralston also discovered that all the PACs had the same Las Vegas residential address, which happened to be the home of Joanna Paul, a member of the Reid campaign’s finance staff. (Ironically, she was in charge of compliance.)
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Harry Reid solicited high-dollar donors for the Economic Leadership PAC, which subsequently brought in more than $800,000 over a five-month period. A PAC can give only a maximum of $10,000 to a candidate, but with the ninety-one PACs set up, the donations were disbursed in $10,000 increments to these other PACs, which then in turn quickly funneled the money to Rory Reid’s campaign account. This arrangement allowed people like California film producer Steve Bing to funnel $200,000 to Reid’s campaign.
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In April 2013, Harry Reid set up two new fund-raising organizations which he could use to extract donations and move money around.
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The Reid Searchlight Fund was organized on April 5, 2013, according to FEC records.
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Five days later, Senator Reid set up the Searchlight Lake Tahoe Victory Fund.
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Both list Chris Anderson, the finance chair of his campaign committee, as the treasurer.
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Apparently, one can never have too many fundraising committees.

While “Mr. Cleanface” runs the Democratic Party’s toughest family extortion syndicate, on the other side of the aisle few Republican families can compete with the Blunts.

Roy Blunt grew up and spent much of his young adult life in southwestern Missouri, a decidedly less exciting place than Las Vegas. There’s no evidence that he had to fight battles with the mob. His father sold milking equipment to dairy farmers, work that perhaps was prophetically symbolic. Like the Reid family in Nevada, the Blunts set up a “milking” operation in Missouri that would produce a strong brew of government power and profit-making potential.
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Roy Blunt was a schoolteacher who ran for county clerk as a young man. When he decided to run for Congress in 1996, he made a pilgrimage to Washington, where he met and consulted with a brash and powerful congressman named Tom DeLay. The Texas Republican was a fund-raising machine, which meant he was rising rapidly in the GOP ranks. Blunt took notice, and when he won his House seat race, he became an instant protégé to DeLay. Blunt and DeLay were equally impressed with each other. After only one term in Congress, Blunt was selected by DeLay to be chief deputy whip, the highest appointed position for House Republicans. His job was to be the chief vote-counter. But he also became a liaison between House Republicans and lobbyists. He followed DeLay’s lead in setting up numerous political action committees, which allowed him to extract donations and establish a power base in Congress.
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