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The Valerie Plame Scandal

• RJC board member Ari Fleischer identified himself as being the party responsible for the Valerie Plame leak, for which he was shielded from prosecution by an immunity deal. 
• The RJC’s board members dominate the Scooter Libby Legal Defense Trust. Libby was convicted of obstruction of justice and perjury in connection to the Plame investigation.

Graft & Corruption

• RJC board member and former RNC finance chair Elliott Broidy was found guilty of attempting to bribe NY State officials.
• The IRS recently warned RJC board member Norm Coleman’s non-profit American Action Network about violating its tax-exempt status by fundraising for Republican candidates after a complaint was filed by Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Washington. AAN, which spent more on political ads than any other group ($26.1m) except for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in the 2010 cycle, wrote on its IRS filing that its political activities would be “minor.” The group is accused of using its 501(c)(4) status to shield its donors identities.
• Coleman’s travel expenses were frequently covered by the RJC while he was still in office.
• The RJC-hatched Freedom’s Watch engaged in illegal campaign finance activities and other criminality and deception.
• As chairman of the RNC, RJC board member Ken Mehlman oversaw the expansion of the GOP’s anti-gay agenda while he was himself a closeted homosexual.
• RJC board member Mel Sembler had his drug treatment facility’s license revoked in 1993 following multiple allegations of abuse, including physical abuse, sexual assault and torture.
• In 1999, Michigan State House Speaker Jeff Perricone was found to have improperly and illegally used state resources to set up a meeting for RJC board member Ronald Weiser who was then Michigan finance chairman of George W. Bush’s campaign.
• RJC board member Sheldon Kamins referred to chairing Newt Gingrich’s GOPAC as “a badge of honor” after Gingrich was fined $300,000 for violating House campaign finance rules and reprimanded for misleading the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct.

Buying Influence & Power

• Top RJC supporter and board member Sheldon Adelson outspends even George Soros in campaign contributions and abuses his undue influence to drive policy in both the U.S. and Israel.
• RJC chairman Sam Fox funded Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which promulgated false and defamatory statements about Senator John Kerry’s military service record during his 2004 Presidential campaign, and was rewarded by George W. Bush with a highly contested ambassadorship to Belgium appointed during a one-day congressional break. At the time, Senator Chris Dodd said that what the President had done was “deceptive at best and illegal at worst.”
• Former RJC chairwoman Cheryl Halpern was appointed chair of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting after making significant contributions to George W. Bush’s reelection campaign as well as two Republican Commerce, Science & Transportation Committee members who oversaw the confirmation process.
• RJC board member Earle I. Mack was appointed Ambassador to Finland by George W. Bush after donating $20,000 to the RNC in 2004.
• RJC board member Ned L. Siegel was appointed Ambassador to the Bahamas by George W. Bush after donating $50,000 to the RNC in 2004.
• RJC board member Mel Sembler was appointed ambassador to Italy by George W. Bush after making significant contributions to the RNC.
• RJC board member and RNC finance chairman Ronald Weiser was appointed Ambassador to Slovakia by George W. Bush after donating $265,000 to Republicans in 2000.
• RJC board member and Bush fundraiser Fred Zeidman’s son Jay was appointed the Jewish community liaison to the White House in 2006. Though the elder Zeidman acknowledges introducing his son to White House officials, both insist that his hiring was not an act of nepotism.

Promoting Extremism

• The RJC, which denies promulgating “birther myths,” has played host to Michele Bachmann and Orly Taitz, as well as Conservative muckraker Andrew Breitbart, all of whom have repeatedly cast doubt on the authenticity of Barack Obama’s birth certificate.
• The RJC also distributed the anti-Muslim propaganda film “Obsession” during 2008 election cycle, during which time RJC ally and regular guest speaker Frank Gaffney was actively spreading the myth that Barack Obama is a Muslim.
• RJC board member Larry Mizel is chairman of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an institution that is presently building a “Museum of Tolerance” atop a Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem and which also opposed the construction of the Park 51 Muslim community center in lower Manhattan.
• RJC board member and IDT CEO Howard Jonas funds the Central Fund for Israel, which in turn funds a radical West Bank yeshiva responsible for multiple mosque arsons and publishing literature inciting the murder of non-Jews.
• RJC board member J. Philip Rosen is an unabashed financial supporter of West Bank settlements, in violation of long-standing U.S. foreign policy which views such activities as an impediment to the Middle East peace process.
• Several RJC board members also serve on the boards of the Jewish Policy Council, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs and the Hudson Institute, three neoconservative think-tanks that were instrumental in promoting the U.S. invasion of Iraq which has to date cost U.S. taxpayers nearly $800 billion dollars, took the lives of 4,500 U.S. soldiers and led to the deaths of an estimated 100,000 Iraqi civilians.