Foreign money and murder in Republican politics

Federal investigators have learned that illegal cash from Chinese, Saudi, and Nigerian sources were laundered through the Florida Department of Transportation. The funds went to the political campaigns of Bush-Cheney in both 2000 and 2004 and also to Jeb Bush (Florida Governor) and Bob Taft of Ohio.

Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) investigator Ray Lemme was investigating the use of the Florida turnpike system to launder the cash. Jeb Bush ordered that his investigation be shut down.

Lemme did not stop investigating. Instead in July 2003 his body was found in room 132 of the Knights Inn, a remote motel in Valdosta Georgia. Lemme's death was declared a suicide.

This resulted in what the New Criminologist described as

"A two-state police cover up of Lemme's death, threats directed at Florida and Georgia investigators, and a virtual media blackout [which] indicates that the GOP administrations of Jeb Bush and Georgia's Sonny Perdue wanted the Lemme story to go away -- and fast."

Valdosta was a logical place for Lemme to be conducting his investigation. It is "...a key center for international organized criminal activity, including illegal foreign worker smuggling, involving close political allies of George W. and Jeb Bush."

There are also connections to George W. Bush and to the Ohio "Coingate" scandal.

"After Lemme's death, Valdosta criminal activities and bribes paid to Florida politicians became the subject of a grand jury investigation run by the US Attorney for Northwest Florida Greg Miller. Miller's investigation reportedly dovetailed with Lemme's probe of money laundering involving FDOT and Florida turnpike receipts. The Chairman of the Florida Transportation Commission who has control of FDOT and the turnpike system is Earl Durden, a major GOP player in Florida who is close to both Jeb and George W. Bush. Durden was appointed to the Transportation Commission post by Jeb Bush. When Miller's investigation of money laundering was leaked, it was George W. Bush who personally flew to Florida from Washington to close down the entire probe.

The six Florida Panhandle counties west of Tallahassee and the border counties of Georgia and Alabama have long been centers of illicit Bush activities dating back to the Iran-contra and savings and loan failures. Lowndes County, where Valdosta is located, is a major center for Bush-connected criminal activity.

Now comes word that "Coin Gate" in Ohio is tied to the same criminal elements in the GOP that were responsible for turnpike toll money laundering in Florida. Durden's counterpart in Ohio, Tommy Noe, a Bush "Pioneer" contributor who Gov. Taft appointed to the Ohio Turnpike Commission, is in the center of a major scandal involving missing state funds invested in rare coins and baseball cards. Shortly after the Toledo Blade began reporting on the Ohio coin scandal, Noe resigned from the turnpike commission.

An additional investigation of missing Ohio state revenue is focused on millions of state dollars invested in a hedge fund. Federal investigators are investigating charges that Noe laundered some of the missing $12 million from the state's coin fund into the Bush 2004 campaign. Mr. Bush has returned a mere $4000 from Noe's contributions. Ohio and Florida were the scenes of major election fraud in 2004. It now appears that both states laundered hundreds of millions of dollars to engage in massive fraud involving all sectors of state government, from election officials and Secretaries of State to state auditors and attorneys general.

Ohio and Florida have the highest turnpike toll rates in the nation coupled with the least oversight. Both states, rife with political corruption fostered by the patrician Republican Taft and Bush families, are now the center of coin gate scandals tied to political chicanery and money laundering.

Manhattan's veteran District Attorney Robert Morgenthau is on the verge of penetrating a major conduit for foreign money into the Bush family network and the American political system that parallels the campaign finance scandals in Ohio and Florida. Morgenthau's investigation of the notorious Sam and Charlie Wyly brothers of Texas, the billionaires who spearheaded the Swift Boat disinformation campaign against John Kerry and a similar distortion effort against John McCain in 2000, is focused on a Wyly-controlled Isle of Man offshore account tied to the Bank of America. In 1989, George H. W. Bush dispatched a Houston attorney to the Isle of Man to take charge of the secret Bush accounts. One of the accounts was Five Star Trust, a multi-billion dollar account used by the Bushes as a covert off-shore money tranche for their political and business purposes."

This is clearly long-term illegal campaign fund activity as well as a number of other criminal activities, and the Bush Family of Texas and Florida and the Taft family of Ohio are in it up to their necks. Surely you didn't think the Bush family made their money in Oil, did you? That's just where they placed their money after it could no longer be traced to its' criminal and political roots.