Exclusive — Peter Schweizer: Harry Reid ‘Enriched Himself and His Family,’ Used ‘Fear’ to ‘Control and Persuade’
Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute and host of the Drill Down podcast, said on Thursday that former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) enriched himself and his family by leveraging his political power.
Reid “enriched himself and his family,” Schweizer said on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow, “but you’ve got to give him credit. He had staying power. He had enemies in Washington, DC, but he always seems to overcome them and win.”
Schweizer recalled a quote from Susan McCue, Harry Reid’s former chief of staff, which he included in his 2013 book, Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets. She said Reid was always assessing a person’s vulnerabilities in order to “disarm, to endear, to threaten, but most of all to instill fear.”
“The question is … if you’re really in private practice much at all over the course of 40 years and you’re serving in various government posts, how do you get this wealthy?” Schweizer asked, “and if you look at his career — that kind of a mobster, kind of scare people, use the leverage — played in.
Schweizer recalled an instance of Reid pushing an infrastructure project that increased the value of some property he owned.
He remarked, “In 2005, he’s a senator, he puts in an earmark to build a bridge in Bullhead City in Nevada for $18 million dollars — that’s taking our taxpayer money — this was to join Bullhead City with Arizona, to take it across the river joining Nevada and Arizona. The Arizona delegation said, ‘This is ridiculous. It’s not worth it. There’s another bridge further down the road. It’s not needed.’ But then, when you looked actually at Harry Reid’s holdings, you found out that he actually had a parcel of land right next to — or near — the bridge that was eventually built with taxpayer money. And the land that was valued at $400,000 before the bridge was worth $1.6 million after the bridge was built, and he profited.”
Schweizer explained how Reid’s sons’ lobbying careers benefits from the late senator’s political powers.
He stated, “The other part of [Reid’s] machine was his family — a big family — his sons Rory, Key, and Joshua were all lobbyists while he was a senator. His son-in-law, a guy named Steve Barringer, was also a lobbyist, and if you wanted anything done in Nevada — anything frankly, done in Washington, DC, — you were expected to hire one of his kids to effectively lobby his office. This was a very aggressive enterprise that was very profitable for the family.”
https://www.breitbart.com/radio/2021/12/30/exclusive-peter-schweizer-harry-reid-enriched-himself-family-used-fear-control-persuade/