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Peter Schweizer: Bernie Sanders rails about common good but public service has made him (and his family) rich
hen Bernie was first elected mayor of Burlington, Vermont, he appointed his then-girlfriend, Jane Driscoll, to head his administration’s Youth Office. Though the position was originally unpaid, Bernie eventually put Jane on the payroll over objections of the city council. The job was never advertised so that others could apply. A local paper noted that Sanders never bothered to provide evidence as to Jane’s “qualifications” for the position.
The appointment would remain a source of controversy for Sanders. After Bernie and Jane got married in 1988, his new wife received a big pay increase. As one local newspaper reported, “Political sparks flew at Burlington’s annual city meeting Monday night as Democratic aldermen raised a series of questions concerning a hefty pay raise for Mayor Bernie Sanders’ new wife and whether she should continue to hold her job as director of the Mayor’s Youth Office.”
In Washington, Jane became one of her husband’s top aides, serving at various times as his chief of staff, press secretary and political analyst. After a decade in Congress, Jane and family went about setting up a company that operated under three different names to provide income tied to Bernie’s political career.
On Sept. 27, 2000, the family formed Sanders & Driscoll LLC, a for-profit consulting company run by Jane, her daughter Carina, and son David. The business also operated under two trade names: Leadership Strategies and Progressive Media Strategies
The fact that this entity and its aliases were formed just weeks before the 2000 election is significant. The Sanderses ran these out of their home on Killarney Drive in Burlington. These entities served as financial conduits to run cash to the Sanders family.
It is impossible to know precisely how much because Sanders' financial disclosure forms, which he is required to release as a member of Congress, only listed “more than $1,000” as the amount of income they earned from these consulting firms. We do know that some of Bernie’s campaign dollars flowed through the LLCs. While running for House reelection in the early 2000s, critics claimed, “Sanders doled out more than $150,000 to his wife and stepdaughter for campaign-related work between 2000 and 2004.”
Some of the campaign money flowing to the family from Bernie’s campaign came as Jane served as a “media buyer” for his reelection. Media buying is a murky but potentially highly lucrative stream of income for those involved in political campaigns. Modern American political campaigns spend large sums of money on television and other forms of media. A media buyer handles the purchase of airtime and secures the contracts with media outlets.
Typically, a media buyer receives a commission of about 15 percent of the cost for a media campaign. So if a campaign were to spend, say, $1,000,000 on television ads, the media buyer would pocket a $150,000 commission. But here’s the kicker: the media buyer commission is not actually disclosed anywhere. Filings with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) only require disclosure of the bulk amount of the media buy. In this example, the FEC report will only disclose the $1,000,000 media buy. And as for the fact that Jane Sanders is the spouse of a politician, she is only required to disclose that she earns “more than $1,000” from her businesses.
What is interesting about the Sanders family foray into media buying, in particular, is that Jane Sanders had no apparent background in media buying. But in her husband’s 2006 campaign, she worked with two media buyers named Barbara Abar Bougie and Shelli Hutton-Hartig – two names that would become significant when Bernie’s political ambitions went national.
Bernie Sanders’s insurgent 2016 presidential campaign brought in a huge sum of money. A large chunk of it — nearly $83 million — flowed to a mysterious limited liability company with no website, no phone number, and no office space. Indeed, the LLC was registered to a private home on a cul-de-sac in suburban Virginia.
The mysterious company is called Old Towne Media LLC. Two names connected to the company are Barbara Abar Bougie and Shelli Hutton-Hartig, Jane’s associates from the 2006 campaign.
The Sanders campaign purchased a whopping $82.77 million in political ads through Old Towne Media, which could have earned the company a media fee of more than $12 million, based on the industry standard for ad-buy commissions. Was Jane Sanders somehow involved in this financial arrangement? FEC disclosures make it easy to hide where media buying fees actually go. Jane listed her income from her professional work at the time as simply “more than $1,000.”
When a highly respected Vermont reporter named Jasper Craven, working for the nonprofit VTDigger.com, asked Jane about Old Towne Media during a phone interview, she replied, “I have no idea what Old Towne Media is.” Then she hung up the phone.
Not surprised. This is what socialists are known for. That and mass murder.
What a lying POS
hen Bernie was first elected mayor of Burlington, Vermont, he appointed his then-girlfriend, Jane Driscoll, to head his administration’s Youth Office. Though the position was originally unpaid, Bernie eventually put Jane on the payroll over objections of the city council. The job was never advertised so that others could apply. A local paper noted that Sanders never bothered to provide evidence as to Jane’s “qualifications” for the position.
The appointment would remain a source of controversy for Sanders. After Bernie and Jane got married in 1988, his new wife received a big pay increase. As one local newspaper reported, “Political sparks flew at Burlington’s annual city meeting Monday night as Democratic aldermen raised a series of questions concerning a hefty pay raise for Mayor Bernie Sanders’ new wife and whether she should continue to hold her job as director of the Mayor’s Youth Office.”
In Washington, Jane became one of her husband’s top aides, serving at various times as his chief of staff, press secretary and political analyst. After a decade in Congress, Jane and family went about setting up a company that operated under three different names to provide income tied to Bernie’s political career.
On Sept. 27, 2000, the family formed Sanders & Driscoll LLC, a for-profit consulting company run by Jane, her daughter Carina, and son David. The business also operated under two trade names: Leadership Strategies and Progressive Media Strategies
The fact that this entity and its aliases were formed just weeks before the 2000 election is significant. The Sanderses ran these out of their home on Killarney Drive in Burlington. These entities served as financial conduits to run cash to the Sanders family.
It is impossible to know precisely how much because Sanders' financial disclosure forms, which he is required to release as a member of Congress, only listed “more than $1,000” as the amount of income they earned from these consulting firms. We do know that some of Bernie’s campaign dollars flowed through the LLCs. While running for House reelection in the early 2000s, critics claimed, “Sanders doled out more than $150,000 to his wife and stepdaughter for campaign-related work between 2000 and 2004.”
Some of the campaign money flowing to the family from Bernie’s campaign came as Jane served as a “media buyer” for his reelection. Media buying is a murky but potentially highly lucrative stream of income for those involved in political campaigns. Modern American political campaigns spend large sums of money on television and other forms of media. A media buyer handles the purchase of airtime and secures the contracts with media outlets.
Typically, a media buyer receives a commission of about 15 percent of the cost for a media campaign. So if a campaign were to spend, say, $1,000,000 on television ads, the media buyer would pocket a $150,000 commission. But here’s the kicker: the media buyer commission is not actually disclosed anywhere. Filings with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) only require disclosure of the bulk amount of the media buy. In this example, the FEC report will only disclose the $1,000,000 media buy. And as for the fact that Jane Sanders is the spouse of a politician, she is only required to disclose that she earns “more than $1,000” from her businesses.
What is interesting about the Sanders family foray into media buying, in particular, is that Jane Sanders had no apparent background in media buying. But in her husband’s 2006 campaign, she worked with two media buyers named Barbara Abar Bougie and Shelli Hutton-Hartig – two names that would become significant when Bernie’s political ambitions went national.
Bernie Sanders’s insurgent 2016 presidential campaign brought in a huge sum of money. A large chunk of it — nearly $83 million — flowed to a mysterious limited liability company with no website, no phone number, and no office space. Indeed, the LLC was registered to a private home on a cul-de-sac in suburban Virginia.
The mysterious company is called Old Towne Media LLC. Two names connected to the company are Barbara Abar Bougie and Shelli Hutton-Hartig, Jane’s associates from the 2006 campaign.
The Sanders campaign purchased a whopping $82.77 million in political ads through Old Towne Media, which could have earned the company a media fee of more than $12 million, based on the industry standard for ad-buy commissions. Was Jane Sanders somehow involved in this financial arrangement? FEC disclosures make it easy to hide where media buying fees actually go. Jane listed her income from her professional work at the time as simply “more than $1,000.”
When a highly respected Vermont reporter named Jasper Craven, working for the nonprofit VTDigger.com, asked Jane about Old Towne Media during a phone interview, she replied, “I have no idea what Old Towne Media is.” Then she hung up the phone.
Not surprised. This is what socialists are known for. That and mass murder.
What a lying POS
