WARNING: Do NOT READ this article if you do not want "his image as a scold of Wall Street" destroyed.
"Grayson is a blood-pouring-from-the-fangs Zionist who has been treated by the goddamn American 'left' as a progressive" -- xymphora
"Florida congressman investigated over management of hedge fund" by Eric Lipton New York Times February 11, 2016
WASHINGTON — The hedge fund manager boasted that he had traveled to “every country” in the world, studying overseas stock markets as he fine-tuned an investment strategy to capitalize on global companies’ suffering because of economic or political turmoil.
But the fund manager had an even more distinctive credential to showcase in his marketing material in June 2013: He was a “U.S. congressman,” Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Now he is also among the leading Democratic candidates for one of Florida’s U.S. Senate seats.
No.
His defenders will say this is to smear his campaign; however, they didn't make him manage a hedge fund.
This guy is self-smearing!
This highly unusual dual role — a sitting House lawmaker running a hedge fund, which until recently had operations in the Cayman Islands — has led to an investigation of Grayson by the House Committee on Ethics.
So he will get what, some slap on the wrist? The ability to holler it is politics?
The inquiry has become public, but emails and marketing documents obtained by The New York Times show the extent to which Grayson’s roles as a hedge fund manager and a member of Congress were intertwined, and how he promoted his international travels, some with congressional delegations, to solicit business.
I will be explaining that momentarily.
Interviews and the documents show that Grayson told potential investors in his hedge fund that they should contribute money to the fund to capitalize on the unrest he observed around the world, and to take particular advantage when there was “blood in the streets.”
OMG, the member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, with this inside knowledge, knew where the next area of conflict and strife would be -- and then decided to make some bucks!!
The emails also show how Grayson’s work for the hedge fund, which had $16.4 million in assets as of October, at times interfered with his other duties. In August 2015, after Grayson introduced legislation calling for larger annual increases in Social Security benefits, he signed off on a plan to highlight the proposal at an event in Tampa, Florida, emails obtained by The Times show. But the plan was scuttled, two former aides said, when economic turmoil in China sent stock markets tumbling globally and Grayson had to turn his attention to the fund.
He's got his priorities $traight.
Ken Scudder, a spokesman for Grayson, disputed that account. “There has never been any time when Rep. Grayson’s investment activities have disrupted any of his work, whether official or campaign-related,” he said.
Grayson says he has done nothing wrong. “Here is something that is not true: that I somehow traded on my membership as a U.S. congressman to get clients for this fund,” Grayson said in an interview. He added that in the last year he had refunded the full original investments put in by his two outside investors in a fund that had faced steep losses — leaving only Grayson and a family trust invested in the fund.
Grayson has closed the Cayman Islands branches of the hedge fund, and in September, after the ethics complaint was filed, he changed the name of the fund from the Grayson Fund to the Sibylline Fund, LP. He did so, he said, to try to assuage critics who said he was violating congressional ethics rules by naming a professional business after himself. Although Grayson said he did not agree that the name was a violation, “there was no point in arguing about it any longer.”
Yeah, giving money back, closing an office, and changing a name all that WASHES AWAY the STENCH of CORRUPTION and HYPOCRISY!
That is what all these members of the political cla$$ think!
But Grayson’s activities have long concerned his campaign aides. In private emails in June, Grayson’s aides pleaded with him to close the hedge fund, convinced that its focus on investing in nations hit by political or economic strife, and its ties to the Cayman Islands, a notorious tax haven, sharply conflicted with his image as a scold of Wall Street — even if he had not done anything wrong.
By wrong they mean illegal.
There is difference between right and wrong.
It may be legal, but that doesn't make it right -- or ethical!
“This is going to be the drip, drip, drip story that never goes away,” Doug Dodson, Grayson’s Senate campaign manager until the end of 2015, wrote in a June email to Grayson, saying his political opponents would “try to make you look like a hypocrite and a fraud and not the populist you claim to be.”
One would hope it would drip, drip, drip, until this wolf in $heep's clothing that is covered by tar and feathers is drowned in the Atlantic Ocean.
And if it looks like a $cum and $mells like a $cum, well, it's a $cum.
Grayson rejected the advice, the emails show.
“I still think that it would be taken, wrongly, as an admission of guilt,” he wrote back.
Sometimes Grayson deployed his aides to work for the fund and his political activity at the same time.
That looks ILLEGAL!
Todd Jurkowski, a former spokesman in Grayson’s House office, served as the vice president of investor relations when the fund was started while also serving as treasurer for Grayson’s campaign in 2012.
Grayson first won a seat in Congress representing the Orlando area in 2008 but failed to win re-election in 2010.
That was the Tea Party year, and
In 2011, he started the Grayson Fund, which he said would specialize in investments in developing countries in Asia and Latin America. Grayson was elected again to the House in 2012, but he kept the fund open.
In the interview, Grayson said that, since resuming public office in January 2013, he had not actively solicited new outside investors to the fund and that none had joined. But a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission in October said the fund had four investors, up from three in a filing from late 2014. Scudder, Grayson’s spokesman, called the discrepancy a typographical error.
So he is ALSO a LIAR!
A typo on a very important form from a person supposedly helping to run the country?
That makes me feel real secure.
As for the marketing materials that appeared to solicit outside business, in the interview Grayson questioned whether they had been publicly distributed.
House rules prohibit lawmakers from holding an outside job that generates more than $27,495, under the current limits. Grayson said he did not violate this rule because he had not reported any earned income from the fund, even though at least some of the investors, according to the fund rules, would have been paying management fees.
I'm wondering where he hid it.
That was where my print copy ended. All the rest are web additions.
Some prominent Washington ethics lawyers who examined hedge fund documents obtained by The Times said he might have violated House ethics rules.
“On its face, what he has done here seems to be problematic,” said Stanley M. Brand, a former House general counsel. “You can’t use your official position to advance your business interests or create a personal gain.”
That's all that place does down there now, so WTF?
--more--"
We shall see if this is a drip, drip, drip story or a one-day wonder.
And to think that I used to like this guy as one of the handful of "good" ones down there.
Whole barrel is now rotten.
