How a pro-Trump Black group became an off-the-books Turkish lobbying campaign

[marmar]

Exclusive: How a pro-Trump Black group became an off-the-books Turkish lobbying campaign
A Salon investigation reveals a strange tale of Black Trump surrogates who tried to leverage Turkish billions

ROGER SOLLENBERGER
SEPTEMBER 4, 2020 10:00AM (UTC)


(Salon) In 2018, officials with a controversial pro-Trump nonprofit called the Urban Revitalization Coalition (URC) — which recently lost its tax-exempt charity status and made headlines earlier this year with suspicious cash giveaways to Black voters — facilitated an off-the-books foreign influence campaign on behalf of powerful people in Turkey, according to social media posts and people familiar with the organization.

URC officials Darrell Scott and Kareem Lanier, both prominent Trump surrogates in the Black community, are said by multiple sources to have used the organization as a vehicle to "solicit donations," including from wealthy Turkish nationals. Some of these solicitations came by way of former MAGA-world star Rabia Kazan, whom they brought on strictly for that purpose, according to Kazan and people familiar with the arrangement.

Furthermore, an associate of Scott and Lanier named Bruce Levell, a Trump surrogate, former congressional candidate and Small Business Association advocate — who was reportedly at one time in the running to head that cabinet-level agency — allegedly shook down Kazan for cash, then asked her to destroy records after reports of government raids on former Trump attorney Michael Cohen's home and offices, according to Kazan and others familiar with the events.

This foreign influence campaign was aimed at shaping U.S. policy in anticipation of an overarching trade deal with Turkey. It also intersected with Turkey's release of Andrew Brunson, an American pastor whom the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had been holding as a political prisoner.

Text messages from an Erdogan aide obtained by Salon describe the exchange as a "gift" from Turkey — in other words, a quid pro quo intended to benefit each country. ..........(more)

https://www.salon.com/2020/09/04/exclusive-how-a-pro-trump-black-group-became-an-off-the-books-turkish-lobbying-campaign/

[brush]

1. As I've always said, most black repugs are opportunists on the make...

for what's in it for them. It's easy to stand out/sell out in the nearly all-white repug world v the larger Dem world of POCs of all stripes looking to help their communities.