A Republican former senator is sort of behind closed doors providing
a masterclass on corruption.
This is Norm Coleman, after leaving office, he apparently went on to become
one of Saudi Arabia's most influential lobbyists here in DC.
While representing wealthy individuals and groups that have provided millions
of dollars in donations to Republican politicians.
And we wanna give you some of the details of what he's been doing behind closed
doors, from some great reporting by responsible statecraft.
Say last year, he had a request for 30 Republican Congressional staffers.
So this is how you do the lobbying,
you contact their offices to get through them to their representatives.
Coleman had helped many of their bosses' campaigns in his role atop an organization
that raised and spent over $165 million in just the 2020 election cycle.
Maddening amounts of money.
So, he wrote to these 30 different offices.
At this time, the kingdom would appreciate if your member of Congress,
would publicly welcome this step and call out the Houthis for
their continuous obstruction of the political process.
So this is in regards to and at that point,
Saudi ceasefire initiative in Yemen that the rebels ultimately rejected.
They demanded that any such agreement would require the Saudis to fully lift
the blockade that was currently in effect around Yemen,
which has contributed to literally hundreds of thousands of deaths.
But while that was one request that he made on behalf of Saudi Arabia,
it was hardly the only one.
He wrote over 1000 emails to House and Senate staffers in 2021 and
2022 as part of his paid work for Saudi Arabia.
He and several of his colleagues at his law firm are registered as foreign agents
of the kingdom.
So, credit to them for actually registering as foreign agents,
that's almost novel in this day and age.
The emails,
as well as the details of $175,000 per month contract between the law firm and
Saudi Arabia, are all contained in filings that have been submitted to the DOJ.
To put it in perspective, the total amount of lobbying that was spent
by Saudi Arabia, it was $21 million dollars just last year.
And we know that there's a lot of money in politics, nobody is surprised by that.
But the huge amount of money that he is responsible for,
the huge amount of money coming from just one country that could hardly be counted
as one of our major allies.
That is a lot of money that can buy you a lot of influence.
And who is to say how it affected our political outcomes,
how it affected what legislation was written or not, passed or didn't,
vetoes that were done or not, what can you buy with $21 million?
What do you guys think?
>> So this is a great example of basically money laundering that happens in DC.
So it's not technically money laundering, but
what the foreign governments do is they give money to lobbyists like Norm Coleman.
And then norm Coleman takes different money from other donors and
funnels it to the politicians, right?
So, they're getting money from different sources here and
then pushing them out through different vehicles to the politicians.
So when norm Coleman writes them a letter saying the kingdom would like this.
The republicans know, if I don't do what the kingdom wants,
it's gonna cost me a ton of money.
So, look I give you guys scale here, okay?
So and let me explain these two groups, all right?
He helped found the Congressional Leadership Fund, Norm Coleman did.
So, that's their super pack, okay?
Where he serves as the chair [INAUDIBLE] according to current biography on his law
firm profile.
And Coleman also serves as the chair of the American Action Network.
American Action Network has given $94 million to Republicans since 2011.
When somebody gives you $94 million, when they write you a letter saying,
I would like this, or the Kingdom would like that, you pay attention.
But that's nothing compared to the Congressional leadership one,
which he's the chair, they gave $165 million in just 2020 alone.
So, they are massive, massive donors to the Republican politicians.
So when Norm Coleman writes you a letter, you pay attention, that's your boss.
And Norm Coleman's boss is Saudi Arabia, and
he is over the top fawning of Saudi Arabia.
He says things as absurd as, that the Saudi government
is the model of moderate Islam, moderate Islam?
He [INAUDIBLE] code is nearly identical to ISIS, I'm not exaggerating.
They chopped up a political opponent, and a journalist here in America,
they chopped him to pieces and carried him out of luggage.
And after that, Norm Coleman says, model of moderate Islam,
because it's all about the bribes, the bribes, the bribes.
And yet mainstream media says Norm Coleman was totally fine.
I remember when I, look we're ancient, we've been around 20 years,
I remember covering Norm Coleman's race against Al Franken.
And in that case, Norm Coleman has been corrupt his whole life,
he had a no show job for his wife.
There was hilarious quotes about people,
where his wife was theoretically an employee, they're like, who's that?
We've never seen her here, right?
And she was getting paid a ton of money through someone who wanted political
favors and said, well technically it's not going to Norm Coleman,
technically it's going to his wife.
It's like that mob has those, no show jobs, that's what this was.
So, but that entire time, all the way through to today,
Norm Coleman is a very legitimate upstanding member of Washington.
He is very respectable, very credible, and just a wonderful upstanding citizen.
No, he's a crook, he's a crook who facilitates money laundering and
bribes to politicians.
But the mainstream media would never tell you that, cuz it would be politically
incorrect, Republicans would get mad at them for exposing corruption.
By the way, So would corporate Democrats.
>> And that's it, cuz the corporatists and both parties, same coin different sides.
I mean, this is sickening, absolutely sickening.
If you have more money, you get more voice.
Even if you are a foreign country, it's who's your daddy?
Who's your mama?
That's what's going on here.
And I am so glad that we continue to cover stories like this,
because we people got to wake up.
We cannot be complicit in our own damn demise.
And this is what is happening, and has happened in the past,
continues to happen right now.
This is really some sick stuff.
>> Yeah, and by the way, of course,
the Republicans just voted down a bill that wouldn't end money.
All I would do was just disclose donors above $10,000, you want to give $9,500,
they think you're middle class, or fine you don't have to be disclosed.
Above $10,000, no way, no way.
You think we'll let you find out who's bribing us?
No and, >> Wait Cenk, you mean,
all of the Republicans voted against it, except for the anti-elite,
right wing populist Republican politicians, right?
Cuz surely they would want the disclosure.
>> Surely they would John, and that's why none of them voted for this,
because there are no populist in the Republican Party.
They're all frauds, they're all liars, they're serving these giant corporations,
these foreign governments, and billionaires.
Every one of them, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee,
they all said no, I want the bribes to be undisclosed.
That money has to be kept hidden from the American people.
They're such huge liars, by the way, don't get me wrong, it's not like the Democrats
cemented, they put that bill up because they knew the Republicans were gonna vote.
>> I say it, you was gonna fail.
>> Yeah, and look, I gotta say this last thing.
So Nina, we talked about this in the context of your race.
So, we had a group called Democratic Majority for Israel, just [INAUDIBLE] says
it in their name, we're not for America, we're for Israel, okay?
And they put in millions into that race.
And then when we said,
hey, wait a minute, it looks like they're trying to help a foreign government,
cuz Israel, I looked at a map of Cleveland, couldn't find Israel.
And the press yelled at us, yelled at us instead of the goddamn lobbyist.
I mean, and we said it at the time and we said it doesn't matter if it's Israel or
Saudi Arabia, they're all buying our politicians.
>> Right, [INAUDIBLE] said country, and give a damn that 50%
of the children in Cleveland are living in poverty.
They don't care that big mama,
big daddy can't take care of their families cuz inflation is so high.
They don't care that the child erosion, or child tax credit,
not just erosion just flat out disappeared, has a profound impact on
the people who live and not only Cleveland but the greater Cleveland area.
You think they give a damn about that?
No, not at all.
But when you stand up and advocate for your constituents, as you just said Cenk,
you went through similar stuff, then we get shouted down.
What about Cleveland?
This is again, we the American people
must stop being complicit in our own damn demise.
We got to stand up and fight back against this.
More money should not be speech.
I know we got to deal with citizens united, but in the meantime in between
time, we should have some righteous indignation over this stuff.
And they're doing it in the broad open daylight, you know what?
Because they know it will not be any consequences or repercussions for
their actions.
I gotta say one last thing, you, John just read us that,
did you see that anywhere else in the mainstream press,
that 370,000 people died in Yemen because of the Saudi blockade?
So, you hear about all the deaths in Ukraine, and you should, and
I'm glad they're covering them.
But Russia is not an ally.
So when they invade Ukraine, my God, the civilians.
Good, good, Saudi Arabia is an ally.
In other words, they bought all of our corrupt crooked politicians, right?
So they invade, I mean, killed 370,000 people on the blockade alone.
Where's the press?
Where's the dead kids on the TV?
Where's all the dead bodies?
Where's all the stories of outrage?
Where's all the stories of the Yemen people heroically fighting back which they
have, just like the Ukrainians have?
Nowhere to be found, cuz the media doesn't do news,
there in the manufacturing consent business.
Noam Chomsky wrote this decades ago and he was 100% right.
The point of news for corporate media is not at all news.
It's marketing for corporations and foreign governments, and corruption.