TGP EXCLUSIVE: GOP Challenger Omar Navarro Calls Out Maxine Waters For Interfering in Haitian Elections

In an exclusive statement to The Gateway Pundit, Republican Omar Navarro, challenging Maxine Waters in the 43rd Congressional District of California, accused the Democrat Congresswoman of meddling in past Haitian presidential elections.

https://twitter.com/joshdcaplan/status/889303669384130560

Earlier today, Navarro teased his over 77,000 Twitter followers about information on Maxine Waters interfering in previous Haitian elections.

In an email exchange published by WikiLeaks, U.S. State Department’s Special Coordinator for Haiti, Thomas Adams, revealed to Cheryl Mills that Maxine Waters pushed him to try to get her old friend Jean-Bertrand Aristide back into Haiti. Waters feared Aristide would be blocked by Michel Martelly, who went on to win the election soon after. How close are Waters and Aristide? When the former president of Haiti was ousted in 2004, Maxine Waters was in the helicopter with him and on the tarmac when his plane landed in South Africa from Central African Republic. More about the coup below.

For years, Waters has been on of Jean-Bertrand Aristide biggest supporters. Jean-Bertrand Aristide was president of Haiti four times (February 7, 1991 – September 29, 1991, June 15, 1993 – 12 May 1994, October 12, 1994 – February 7, 1996 and February 4, 2001 – February 29, 2004.)

According to Red State, The real reason why Waters pushed to get help from the U.S. Department’s help in returning Aristide to Haiti was because he was still active in the country’s politics.

RedState wrote:

Haiti has elections upcoming on November 28, 2010. Maxine Waters sent a letter to Sec. of State Clinton stating the U.S. should not provide funding for elections that do not “include all eligible political parties and ready access to voting for all Haitians, including the displaced.” Aristide is still active in Haiti politics and is head of the Laval movement that is excluded from the ballot. Waters also sent a similar letter in 2009 to Haiti’s President Preval, which, as JoAnneMor blog points out, may be in violation of the Logan Act which prevents unauthorized US citizen from conducting foreign relations without authority.

The WikiLeaks emails reads:

UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05778606 Date: 09/30/2015

RELEASE IN FULL

From: Mills, Cheryl D <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, March 14, 2011 3:59 PM
To:
Subject: FW: Conversation with Congresswoman Maxine Waters
FYI

We reached out to her staff who we briefed on fact that we were leaning into guidance and saying return b/f Sunday
was problematic. Maxine returned the call withi10minutes.

cdm

From: Adams, ThomasC
Sent: Monday, March 14, 2011 1:45 PM

To: Mills, Cheryl D
Cc: Adams, DavidS; Mcdonald, KaraC; Merten, KennethH; Lindwall, DavidE; Blumenfeld, JoshuaR
Subject: ConversationwithCongresswomanMaxineWaters

I took a call from Congresswoman Maxine Waters about two minutes before one. Josh had

apparently briefed her foreign affairs staffer, Kathleen Sietenstock about 20 minutes earlier on our
press statement.

The Congresswoman’s main point was that Former President Aristide needed to return before the
election because Martelly, who in her opinion was bound to win, would not allow him back after the

election, because he was “in the ton tons.” How we could allow Baby Doc back and try to prevent
Aristide was not understandable.

I told her that if that was her fear, then it was unfounded, because Preval would remain in power until

May. She said results would come out Sunday and that would be the end of his chances to come
back. I said the contestation period meant that there would be no official results until April 16, so
there was plenty of time for him to return after the election.

She gave her own history of our relationship with Aristide (the kidnapping, not allowing FL to register
for this election, our unwillingness to provide him security upon his return, etc.) all of which I gently
pushed back on. I suggested she allow us to give her a classified briefing on all of this at some point
in order to correct factual untruths related to this. She said she would follow up.

She was not as hysterical as she has been on prior conversations, but did at one point say “what are
you going to do when he returns in the company of Danny Glover, Harry Belafonte and maybe me,
mow us all down?”

I thanked her for calling and sharing her views and said that we believed that the interests of the
people of Haiti would best be served if they could vote in peace and calm.

Tom

In an interview with Amy Goodman, Aristide claims he was removed from power in 2004 by the U.S.:

AMY GOODMAN: On February 29th, 2004, three years ago, the democratically elected president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was removed from office by the United States and flown to the Central African Republic. Two weeks later, in defiance of the United States, a delegation led by California Congressmember Maxine Waters and TransAfrica founder Randall Robinson chartered a plane and headed off to the Central African Republic themselves to bring President Aristide and his wife Mildred back to the Caribbean. I accompanied them on that trip. After hours of negotiating with the dictator in the capital Bangui, they freed the Aristides. As we flew back over the Atlantic President Aristide said he had been kidnapped in a US-backed coup d�etat.

JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE: I will not go into details, maybe next time. But as I said, they used force. When you have militaries coming from abroad, surrounding your house, taking control of the airport, surrounding the national palace, being in the streets, and taking you from your house to put you in a plane where you have to spend twenty hours without knowing where they were going to go with you, without talking about details, which I already did somehow on other occasions, it was using force to take an elected president out of his country.

The Bush administration denied all accusations concerning Aristide’s claim.

CNN reported:

Tthe Bush administration vigorously denied that Aristide was kidnapped by U.S. troops, which is what two U.S. members of Congress said the deposed Haitian president told them in telephone calls.

“That’s nonsense,” White House press secretary Scott McClellan said. “I’ve seen some of the reports [and they] do nothing to help the Haitians move forward to a better, more prosperous future.”

One day after Aristide left the country and one month after a rebellion began in northern Haiti, heavily armed Haitian rebels drove into Port-au-Prince Monday, moving into the headquarters of the national police while U.S. Marines took up positions across the street at the presidential palace. (Full story) (Aristide’s home looted) (City streets)

McClellan said the United States took steps to protect Aristide and his family as they left Haiti, but denied that U.S. forces took him from his home to the airport.

“The military presence we had at the time was at the embassy,” McClellan said. “[Aristide] went with his own personal security.”

Waters’ meddling in Haitian affairs raised eyebrows at the Haitian Democracy Project, prompting the Raymond Joseph of the New York Sun to ask if the Congresswoman was a paid lobbyist for Aristide.

Haitian Democracy Project wrote:

Is Congresswoman Maxine Waters a paid lobbyist for President Jean-Bertrand Aristide?

Since the beginning of this year, she has been to Haiti three times, the latest trip occurring this past weekend, accompanied by her husband Sidney Williams.

The pro-Aristide couple traveled first class along with Ira Kurzban, the Miami lawyer-lobbyist for the Aristide government. Along were Fred Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas, who recently declared that Aristide is more popular than the opposition, and Colin Granderson, the vice president of CARICOM, the Caribbean Community organization.

On January 1, Maxine Waters was the only Black Congressional Caucus member to accompany Mr. Aristide to Gonaives for a shortened celebration of Haiti’s bicentennial as an independent nation. (Her husband tagged along.)

In a long diatribe February 18 against Andre “Andy” Apaid, coordinator of the Group 184, Maxine Waters said, “Yesterday, I returned from a trip to Haiti, where I observed the escalation of political violence that occurred over the weekend. This was my second trip to Haiti so far this year.” The she left Miami on February 21 on her third trip.

Has Ms. Waters been on official duty for Congress or for the Black Congressional Caucus during her three trips to Haiti in seven weeks? Who pays for expenses, especially the high-priced first class seats for herself and her husband? It’s more than $900 round trip per person from Miami to Port-au-Prince. In the case of the Congresswoman and her husband, one must add excess of $1,000 per person. A round trip coach ticket Miami- Port-au-Prince can be had for $400.

The phone call between Waters and the U.S. State Department’s Special Coordinator for Haiti illustrates one of a handful of examples where the California Congresswoman attempted to meddle in Haitian affairs. In 2011, Waters refused to accept the election results on November 28th, 2010.

According to Truthout.org

California Rep. Maxine Waters has called for the results of the disputed November presidential election in Haiti to be set aside and for new elections to be held. In a statement Wednesday, she writes:

I call upon the Government of Haiti to set aside the flawed November 28th elections and organize new elections that will be free, fair and accessible to all Haitian voters…. Haiti’s next government will be called upon to make difficult decisions that will have a lasting impact on Haitian society, such as the allocation of resources for cholera treatment efforts and earthquake reconstruction projects. If these decisions are made by a government that is not perceived as legitimate, the recovery process could be impeded for years to come.

Writing in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, (pay wall) Raymond Joseph, Haiti’s ambassador to the United States from 2004 to 2010, argues for a new presidential election in Haiti to be conducted by a new, politically independent, election commission. He argues that the cost of a new election would be small – the November election cost $30 million – compared to the costs of not seating a new president with democratic legitimacy, given that the next Haitian president will preside over $11 billion in pledged reconstruction funds, and the international community is counting on the presence of a democratically elected, legitimate Haitian government to help make sure those funds are well-spent. Thirty million dollars is 0.27 percent of $11 billion, so if the presence of a democratically-elected, legitimate government reduced waste of donor resources by 0.27 percent it would pay for itself. Joseph argues that the majority of Haitians support this call for a new election.

In a statement published by haitilibre.com, Waters once again refused to let go of the results from 2010 election, calling for a new election yet again in March 2011. Waters wrote “I and other advocates for Haiti warned the State Department and our international allies prior to November 28th that we should play a role in helping to establish free and fair elections.”

“Many Haitians and international observers have never felt the CEP to be legitimately organized under the Prevál government, and I remain convinced that the presidential election held on November 28th was deeply flawed and that the results should have been thrown out because of reports of ballot-stuffing; missing or excluded tally sheets at many polling locations; the exclusion of Lavalas, the country’s largest political party; and the thousands of displaced persons who were disenfranchised either because they were unable to obtain new voter cards or because there were no accessible polling places at the tent camps where they now live.Following the publication of the final results of the first round of the elections of November 28, 2010, giving winner Michel Martelly and Mirlande Manigat for the second round of the presidential elections, a result in accordance with the recommendations contained in the report of the Organization of the Organization of American States (OAS); the congresswoman Maxine Watersraises has doubts about credibility of the results and questions about way forward.

It appears that the international community – led by the United States, Canada, and France – has used its tremendous power and influence to determine the outcome of the first round of the elections and the candidates for the runoff. Once again, the people of Haiti have been denied the opportunity to express their will through free, fair, credible, and transparent elections – which are important factors for effective governance – and once again, it appears that the international community is determining the political fate of Haiti.

Just as I and other advocates for Haiti warned the State Department and our international allies prior to November 28th that we should play a role in helping to establish free and fair elections, we now are warning them that – with the combination of this electoral outcome; the unclear status of President Prevál’s departure; the continued exclusion of Lavalas and other would-be electoral participants; Baby Doc’s return and the reemergence of individuals who were part of his brutal Tonton Macoutes paramilitary force; and the widespread unrest among the Haitian people because of the political and humanitarian state of the nation – none of this bodes well for Haiti.

Here, Waters admits to actively attempting to inference in a “do-over” election she called for.

As recent as 2015, Maxine Waters attempted to influence elections in Haiti, asking the FEC to allow her make financial contributions to candidates running in their elections.

According to the Sunlight Foundation:

Congresswoman Maxine Waters, D-Calif., wrote to the House Ethics Committee and Federal Election Commission asking if she could contribute to foreign candidates running for office, both individually and through her affiliated political action committees.

“This is the first time I’ve heard about a sitting member of Congress, or any government official for that matter, trying to influence a foreign government by making a contribution,” said Craig Holman, the government affairs lobbyist for watchdog group Public Citizen. “I suspect that the FEC may well allow this … as long as this doesn’t go for personal use.”

An email from her chief of staff, Twaun Samuel, to the FEC’s office of general counsel added that Haiti was the country of interest. The Caribbean nation has scheduled parliamentary elections for Aug. 9 as well as presidential and municipal elections for Oct. 25 after political turmoil over the near three-year delay in elections. Incumbent president Michel Martelly is not running due to term limits.

Waters, a 13-term congresswoman and member of Democratic leadership, maintains a Haiti issue page on her congressional website, though it is unclear what candidates and parties she would consider supporting if the FEC were to greenlight her advisory request. Her office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

As recent as 2015, Maxine Waters called on then Secretary of State John Kerry to get involved in Haiti’s electoral process to ensure a “free and fair” vote takes place.

Per the Office of Maxine Waters:

October 5, 2015
Press Release
Calls for Investigation of Election Violence, Fraud, and Voter Intimidation

WASHINGTON – Today, Congresswoman Maxine Waters (CA-43), Ranking Member of the Financial Services Committee, sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, expressing deep concern about Haiti’s 2015 elections and the impact they will have on Haiti’s future if the Haitian people do not perceive them to be credible. According to the State Department, Secretary Kerry will be visiting Haiti tomorrow.

Congresswoman Waters’ letter urges Secretary Kerry to take all necessary and appropriate action to support free, fair and democratic elections in Haiti.  The letter specifically calls on him to make a clear statement that the violence, fraud and voter intimidation witnessed in the first round of the elections should be thoroughly and independently investigated, that the individuals and parties responsible for the violence must be sanctioned, regardless of political party affiliation, and that the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) must make the reforms necessary to establish public trust.  A copy of the letter was sent to Kenneth Merten, the State Department’s Haiti Special Coordinator. 

Maxine Waters’ meddling in Haitian elections is the ultimate hypocrisy, as the California Democrat is constantly accusing Russia of meddling in the 2016 election (despite zero proof). The information above is a broad overview of nearly a decade of interference in Haitian politics by Waters and should be mentioned by all news outlets whenever Waters accuses Russia of interference.

 

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