May 1, 2008, - 10:15 am
ABC News, Detroit Free Press Cite Schlussel Story on McCain Dumping Hezbo
By Debbie Schlussel
**** UPDATE: ABC News’ Jake Tapper corrected the items I identified. Thanks, Jake. ****
Both ABC News and the Detroit Free Press have picked up on the story I ran Tuesday about John McCain swiftly dumping Hezbollah agent and federal convicted insurance defrauder Ali Jawad from his campaign, after I notified his people about it.
The Free Press story, by political reporter Dawson Bell, is excellent and accurate. Nothing to say about it, other than I urge you to read it. Bell is a longtime, no-nonsense political reporter for the Free Press, and he consistently delivers the goods in his hard news and investigative reporting on the political scene.
Then, there’s ABC News Chief Political Correspondent Jake Tapper’s piece, which–while overall, a good summation–contains a few important inaccuracies. He did spell my surname wrong. It’s SchLussel, not Schussel–an easy and frequent mistake with a name far more tricky than “Smith.”
In general, I think Tapper is an excellent reporter and researcher, but he incorrectly wrote about Ali Jawad:
In 1997 he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor insurance fraud. Prosecutors accused him of submitting names of non-employees to Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan to receive health insurance benefits and claims. He received two years of probation and he paid approximately $6,000 in fines and restitution.
In fact, in USA v. Makki et al, Jawad was ordered to pay at least $252,331.08 for submitting false insurance claims. While some of that was assessed against Jawad personally, the majority of it was assessed against his small company, Armada Oil, through which he committed the insurance fraud of which he was convicted. As CEO and one of two owners of Armada Oil, he was responsible for this amount of insurance fraud and it came out of his funds. As we all know, a small company is a non-human entity, and does not make the decision to commit insurance fraud. The person running the company, Jawad, does, and he did it through his company, Armada Oil. His associate Michael Mustapha Makki–who apparently took part of the fall for him–was sentenced to 8 months in prison and about $75,000 in fines and restitution.
Moreover, the insurance fraud apparently included myriad false insurance claims for cash, not just enabling non-employees to receive health benefits as Tapper reports.
Read his article, too.
Glad this story is getting out there, as I doubt you’ll see any Republicans taking money from Ali Jawad, again. Democrats . . . well, that’s a different story. I doubt we’ll be seeing John Dingell, John Conyers, or Cynthia McKinney turning away repeat donations from criminal convict and Hezbollah agent Jawad.
Good Job Debbie! Yay! I’m really glad to see that you brought this matter to the attention of McCain and he actually did the right thing. I’m glad to finally see some positive actions!
PrincessKaren on May 1, 2008 at 12:17 pm