Discover the Networks

Born on February 9, 1957 in Syracuse, New York, Terence Richard McAuliffe graduated from Catholic University in 1979 and from Georgetown Law School in 1984. In 1985 he established the Washington, D.C.-based law firm/lobbying agency of McAuliffe, Kelly & Raffaelli, and he co-founded Federal City National Bank, also in Washington. Three years later, the bank’s governing board elected McAuliffe as its chairman.

Entering the World of Politics

McAuliffe first gained widespread public notice as a fundraiser for the Democratic Party, a career he launched as the national finance director of President Jimmy Carter’s failed re-election bid in 1980.^[1] He thereafter went on to serve as a fundraiser for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and as the finance director for Democrat Richard Gephardt’s 1988 presidential campaign. Four years later, McAuliffe raised money for Bill Clinton‘s first presidential run.

Raising Massive Funds for Democrats by Any Means Necessary

McAuliffe was particularly adept at the raising of so-called soft money for political campaigns – funds that, by endorsing an overall cause or party rather than a specific candidate, were legally permitted to exceed the limits normally placed on political contributions. In March 1994 he became finance chairman for the Democratic National Committee, and by the following year he was the national finance chairman of the Clinton–Gore 1996 reelection committee.

In early January 1995 – just a few weeks after Democrats had lost control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate in the mid-term elections of 1994 – McAuliffe authored a memo suggesting that Mr. Clinton, in order to strengthen his ties with Democratic donors, should personally invite them to pay large sums of money for the privilege of attending such events as meals, coffee sessions, golf games, or morning jogs with the president. “He [McAuliffe] wrote nothing about [White House] sleepovers,” reported McClatchy News, “but the idea for them was mentioned in notes that were later written on the document, and scandal erupted when it was [eventually] revealed that the administration was using overnight stays in the Lincoln Bedroom to court high-dollar donors.” The New York Times reports that Mr. Clinton himself “wrote on the back of the memorandum … that he was ready to start overnight visits right away.” All told, the White House raised some $27 million for the Democratic National Committee from at least 100 donors who attended “coffees,” plus another $4.1 million from at least 49 individuals who paid to sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom.

When the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal of 1998 threatened to cause a diminution of President Bill Clinton’s political donations, McAuliffe initiated and chaired Clinton’s multimillion-dollar legal defense fund. In December 1999, Mr. Clinton stated: “It is safe to say that I do not have a more loyal friend than Terry.”

As the ’90s drew to a close, McAuliffe boasted that he and his staff had raised the unprecedented sum of $275 million for various Clinton causes, among which were two political elections as well as Bill Clinton’s presidential library and his legal defense fund.

As Hillary Clinton prepared to run for a U.S. Senate seat representing New York, McAuliffe in 1999 pledged to put up $1.35 million in cash to help the Clintons secure a mortgage on a lavish suburban home in Chappaqua, New York. Thereafter, McAuliffe raised large sums of money for Mrs. Clinton’s successful 2000 campaign.

Board Member of the Clinton Foundation

In 2000, McAuliffe was named to the board of directors at the Clinton Foundation, a position he held until at least 2007.

DNC Chairman

McAuliffe served as chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 2001-05, during which time he raised a record $578 million and brought the DNC out of debt for the first time in its history. After McAuliffe had orchestrated a three-hour DNC fundraiser in 2000 that brought in $26.5 million, Vice President Al Gore dubbed him “the greatest fundraiser in the history of the universe.”

Bestselling Author

In 2007, McAuliffe published his memoir, What A Party!, which became a New York Times best-seller.

McAuliffe’s Transformation from Border-Security Advocate to Amnesty Advocate

In an interview with Southern California public radio station KPCC on January 30, 2007, McAuliffe called for the United States to “shut these borders down” and to deport illegal aliens who were “taking our jobs” back to “the countries they came from.” “We got to shut these borders down, absolutely,” McAuliffe said at the time. “These people shouldn’t be coming in this country. We need to enforce our border protections … for the people who have not been here, who have been here illegally, and who have taken advantage of the situation, we need to have a plan to get them back to the countries they came from…. I don’t care if you are Democrat or Republican, we all agree you got to shut the borders down. People coming into our nation, taking our jobs … first and foremost, which I couldn’t agree more, we got to shut these borders down. And we got to spend more money on the enforcement of this and we got to start it today.”

Within a few years, McAuliffe’s views on immigration would be radically transformed. For example, in September 2017 he said: “President Trump’s decision to rescind DACA [a 2012 executive order with which former President Barack Obama had protected hundreds of thousands of young illegal aliens from deportation] is a heartless attack on 800,000 young people who were brought here by their parents at a young age. It will plunge families, communities, businesses and schools into terrible uncertainty for no reason other than to keep a political promise to extremists on the far right-wing of his party.”

Chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 Presidential Campaign

In 2008 McAuliffe chaired Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful presidential campaign, and was one of her superdelegates at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

Failed Gubernatorial Bid in 2009

Governor McAuliffe (2013)

He ran again in 2013 and emerged victorious. In this campaign, he used the services of the political consulting firm 270 Strategies. McAuliffe formally took office as governor of Virginia on January 11, 2014.

Supporting the Normalization of U.S. Relations with Cuba

In October 2015, McAuliffe was one of nine state governors who signed a [letter] praising the Obama administration’s executive measures designed to normalize U.S. relations with Cuba, and exhorting House and Senate leaders to formally complete the process of ending America’s longstanding trade embargo of Cuba.

McAuliffe’s Executive Order Restores the Voting Rights of All Convicted Felons

On April 22, 2016 – two days after the Virginia’s State General Assembly had adjourned – Governor McAuliffe, in a move that was without precedent in Virginia’s history, issued an executive order to restore the voting rights of 206,000 convicted “nonviolent” felons – who could be counted upon to vote overwhelmingly Democrat – in his important battleground state. McAuliffe’s order classified all drug-related convictions as “non-violent,” it shortened the application for more serious offenders from thirteen pages to one page, and it removed a requirement that individuals pay their court costs before they could have their voting rights restored. Lamenting that the disfranchisement of felons “disproportionately affects racial minorities and economically disadvantaged Virginians,” McAuliffe said: “If we are going to build a stronger and more equal Virginia, we must break down barriers to participation in civic life for people who return to society seeking a second chance. We must welcome them back and offer the opportunity to build a better life by taking an active role in our democracy. I believe it is time to cast off Virginia’s troubling history of injustice and embrace an honest, clean process for restoring the rights of these men and women.” “Today,” he added, “we are reversing that disturbing trend and restoring the rights of more than 200,000 of our fellow Virginians who work, raise families and pay taxes in every corner of our Commonwealth.” Moreover, the governor vowed to re-enfranchise even more felons – including some violent offenders – before his term of office expired in January 2018.

Prior to McAuliffe’s executive order, the governor’s administration had already restored the voting rights of more than 18,000 Virginians, which was more than the state’s previous seven governors, combined, had done. Further, as Matthew Vadum reported in FrontPage Magazine, “The 206,000 figure for newly enfranchised felons … is substantially more than President Obama’s relatively thin 149,000 [vote] margin of victory over Mitt Romney (R) in Virginia in 2012.”

In July 2016, the Supreme Court of Virginia struck down McAuliffe’s executive order on grounds that it exceeded the governor’s powers under the Virginia Constitution; at issue was the fact that McAuliffe’s order had restored the rights en masse rather than on an individual basis. The Court also ruled that individual voters had a right to sue to prevent their votes from being offset by those of 200,000+ illegal voters. But a defiant McAuliffe vowed to sidestep the court ruling by individually reviewing every single case as quickly as possible, and using an autopen to sign the documents restoring each felon’s voting rights. As The Washington Post put it, “The difference between McAuliffe’s original action and his current approach is largely procedural. Instead of simply announcing that any felon whose sentence is complete is eligible to vote, the administration now will mail a notice to that effect to each one.” By election day 2016, McAuliffe had restored the voting rights of 50 to 60 thousand previously ineligible convicted felons.

Opposing Any Restrictions on Abortion Rights

In January 2017, McAuliffe pledged to veto a piece of legislation attempting to ban abortion after the 20th week of a pregnancy. Claiming that the bill would damage the state’s image and business climate because abortion was a “socially divisive” issue, he implored Virginia’s General Assembly not to “waste time” attempting to pass it.

Challenging President Trump’s Moratorium on Immigration from Terrorism-Infested Muslim Countries

On January 31, 2017, McAulliffe appeared with Attorney General Mark Herring to announce that Virginia was joining the Aziz vs. Trump lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s executive order calling for a temporary moratorium on immigration to from seven majority-Muslim countries that were known to be hotbeds of Islamic terrorism.

Condemning the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” Rally, While Refusing to Condemn Antifa

On August 12, 2107, the city of Charlottesville, Virginia was the scene of a bloody riot, where a gathering of white nationalists — who had obtained a city permit to hold a peaceful “Unite the Right” rally protesting the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from a public park — clashed with leftist counter-protesters who had not obtained a permit to demonstrate, and many of whom were affiliated with the Antifa movement. In the aftermath of the violence, McAuliffe denounced “the white supremacists and the Nazis.” But when he was asked whether he would also condemn the violence of Antifa and its allies, he ignored the question and left the room.

Post-Gubernatorial Career

In December 2018, he blamed President Trump for the partial government shutdown which was in effect at that time. “The Democrats should not give an inch on this,” said McAuliffe. “Donald Trump owns this. He has been in the White House. He has been isolated. He is too emotional. He is too unstable. And he has now forced people to go through the holidays without a paycheck…. Donald Trump, because of his tricks and Republican radio hosts pushing him, challenging his manhood, he has caused so many problems for so many people in this country. He is an angry, emotional, unstable man sitting in the White House.”

McAuliffe expanded upon these remarks in a January 2019 appearance on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, when he portrayed President Trump as “an emotional, moody mess.” “He is a compulsive liar, throwing temper tantrums every day,” said McAuliffe. “He has emotional mood swings constantly. That’s why we’re in the mess with the shutdown that we are in today. I think with that going on with the White House. He [Trump] says we have a crisis on the border? We have a crisis in the White House, and it’s named Donald Trump.”

In June 2019, McAuliffe was hired by CNN to serve as a contributor. “Super excited to be joining @CNN as a commentator,” he tweeted on June 18. “Start tomorrow night – talking politics and the economy. Will be MUST WATCH TV. Game on!” “I’m going to work the next six months every single day to make sure Virginia, we win the House and the Senate, and then next year I’m going to work like a dog to make sure that we are blue,” McAuliffe said in an interview. “We were the only southern state that went for Hillary in 2016, very proud of that. We need to do it again.”

In July 2019, McAuliffe blamed President Trump for creating an “atmosphere” of hate and racism in America. “People used to wear hoods in this country,” said the former governor. “They used to do it at night. Now, they think they can walk in broad daylight. It has to stop.”

In a September 2019 appearance on PBS’s Firing Line, McAuliffe was asked if he thought it was politically prudent for Democrats to characterize President Trump a white supremacist, as so many of them had done. McAuliffe replied: “We’re dealing with a very specific group of individuals who hate blacks, hate Jews, hate any person of color. They do, they say this every single day. Trump talks in their language. He incites them to take action…. I don’t know why anyone is quibbling about it. He says and does things that promote a white America and to bring discord and racial divide to our country.”

Calling for “Diversity” & “Inclusion” to Be Taught in Elementary School

While appearing on C-SPAN’s Book TV to promote his 2019 book Beyond Charlottesville: Taking a Stand Against White Nationalism, McAuliffe said:

Running for Governor Again

In June 2021, McAuliffe defeated four other Democrats in a gubernatorial primary, thereby setting up a general election contest against Republican businessman Glenn Youngkin, who was been endorsed by former President Donald Trump.

“I Don’t Think Parents Should Be Telling Schools What They Should Teach”; Asserting That “Experts” Should Determine School Curriculum

In a September 28, 2021 gubernatorial debate between McAuliffe and Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin, Youngkin — citing a recent incident where parents in Fairfax County complained that they had been unaware of sexually explicit content in certain books at their children’s school library — raised the issue of “school systems refusing to engage with parents.” “You believe school systems should tell children what to do,” Youngkin said to McAuliffe. “I believe parents should be in charge of their kids’ education.” McAuliffe replied by complaining that parents had “the right to veto books, not to be knowledgeable about it, also take them off the shelves.” He then said: “I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions,” adding: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” In a subsequent interview, McAuliffe reaffirmed his position: “Listen, we have a Board of Ed working with the local school boards to determine the curriculum for our schools. You don’t want parents coming in in every different school jurisdiction saying, ‘This is what should be taught here’ and, ‘This is what should be taught here.’”

In the October 31, 2021 airing of NBC’s Meet the Press, host Chuck Todd played a video showing the aforementioned comments that McAuliffe had made about the proper role of parents in their children’s education. Noting that McAuliffe had subsequently claimed that his critics were taking his words out of context, Todd asked: “Governor, what about that makes you feel as if you were taken out of context? Do you feel as if anything you said there should reassure parents that they have some say in their kid’s schooling?” McAuliffe replied: “Listen, that was about a bill I vetoed which people were very happy that I vetoed the bill, that literally parents could take books out of the curriculum. I love Billy and Jack McAuliffe, my parents, but they should not have been picking my math or science book. We have experts who actually do that. He [Youngkin] is closing his campaign on banning books. It’s created controversy all over the book. He wants to ban Toni Morrison’s book, Beloved. He’s going after someone who won a Nobel Prize, Presidential Medal of Freedom. He wants her books banned. In all the hundreds of books you could look at, why the one black female author? Why did you do it? He’s ending the campaign on a racist dog whistle.”

McAuliffe Says Stacey Abrams Was Robbed of Victory in Georgia Governor’s Race

At an October 24, 2021 campaign event, McAuliffe claimed that Stacey Abrams, who had lost to Republican Brian Kemp in the 2018 Georgia governor’s race, was robbed of victory in that election. “She would be the governor of Georgia today had the [Republican] governor of Georgia not disenfranchised 1.4 million Georgia voters before the election,” McAuliffe said as he introduced Ms. Abrams to the crowd. “That’s what happened to Stacey Abrams. They took the votes away.”

McAuliffe Campaign Email Reveals Effort to “Kill This” Fox News Story About His Hiring Attorney Famous for Election-Related Legal Challenges

On October 28, 2021, Fox News reported that McAuliffe’s gubernatorial campaign had recently spent $53,680 for the services of the Elias Law Group headed by Marc Elias, a former partner at the Perkins Coie law firm that the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign had hired in 2016 to conduct opposition research on Donald Trump – research that included the subsequently discredited Christopher Steele dossier that made numerous false and serious allegations against Trump. Mr. Elias had also represented Democrats in a number of past efforts to contest lost elections.

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley characterized McAuliffe’s decision to hire Elias as an “astonishing move,” adding: “There are a host of election lawyers but McAuliffe selected an attorney accused of lying to the media, advancing rejected conspiracy theories, and currently involved in a major federal investigation that has already led to the indictment of his former partner.” “McAuliffe may be preparing to challenge any win by Republican Glenn Youngkin,” Turley wrote on Twitter.

When Fox News’ Tyler O’Neil later sent an email asking the McAuliffe campaign to explain why it had hired Elias, and to address “Jonathan Turley’s suggestion that McAuliffe may be planning to contest the election,” McAuliffe spokesperson Christina Freundlich replied with a message that was apparently meant for her fellow campaign allies rather than for Fox News. “Can we try to kill this[?]” she wrote.

The McAuliffe campaign provided no on-the-record response to Fox News regarding the matter.

Virginia Democrats Pose As Neo-Nazi Supporters of McAuliffe’s Republican Gubernatorial Opponent

As of late October 2021, the Republican candidate in the Virginia gubernatorial election, Glenn Youngkin, had taken a slight lead over McAuliffe in voter polls. Then, on October 29, a group of five people — three white males, a black male, and a white female — presenting themselves as tiki-torch-bearing white supremacists, gathered near the site of a Youngkin campaign event in Charlottesville and posed for a photo in front of Youngkin’s campaign bus. Their objective was to create a public perception that Youngkin’s mindset was akin to that of the white nationalist, tiki-torch-bearing marchers who had participated in the infamous 2017 “Unite the Right Rally” in that same city.

Almost immediately after the photo of the five purportedly pro-Youngkin torch-bearers was posted to Twitter by NBC29 reporter Elizabeth Holmes, McAuliffe campaign aides retweeted Holmes’ tweet. McAuliffe communications aide Jen Goodman, for instance, showed the photo and tweeted: “This is disgusting and disqualifying.”

In a similar vein, Democrat Rep. Eric Swalwell of California claimed that the only reason why Youngkin had refrained from making openly racist remarks himself, was because he knew that such a course of action would be politically counterproductive. “There’s a word @GlennYoungkin would really like to say to talk about black people, but he knows he can’t, so he codes it with ‘Critical Race Theory.’” wrote Swalwell on Twitter.

Likewise intimating that Youngkin was a racist, NBC and MSNBC legal analyst Glenn Kirschner tweeted: “To my fellow Virginia residents: please vote against the blatant racism, hatred and intolerance of Donald Trump & his follower Glenn Youngkin. Please vote FOR a kind, welcoming, diverse Virginia. Please vote @TerryMcAuliffe for governor. Because #JusticeMatters.”

Soon thereafter, Daily Caller reporter Alec Sears identified the five torch-bearing activists in Charlottesville as committed Democrat operatives. One, for example, was Camden Layton, finance director for the Virginia Young Democrats. Another was Colleen Wachenfeld, a data tracker for that same organization. And a third was a Democratic election lawyer.

Once the identities of the fake white supremacists had been publicly revealed, the McAuliffe campaign issued a statement denying any suggestion that its members had been involved in the phony stunt, saying: “This was not us or anyone affiliated with our campaign.” Andrew Whitley, executive director of the Virginia Democrats, similarly tweeted: “For anyone to accuse our staff to have a role in this event is shameful and wrong.”

Late in the afternoon of October 29, 2021, the Lincoln Project — a nominally “Republican” organization committed to defaming Donald Trump and his political allies and agendas — confessed to having planned and orchestrated the entire tiki-torch charade, describing it as a “demonstration” that was intended to draw attention to Youngkin’s refusal to “denounce Trump’s assertion that the Charlottesville [white supremacist] rioters possessed ‘very fine’ qualities.” Added the organization on its website: “Today’s demonstration was our way of reminding Virginians what happened in Charlottesville four years ago, the Republican Party’s embrace of those values, and Glenn Youngkin’s failure to condemn it. The Youngkin campaign is enraged by our reminder of Charlottesville for one simple reason: Glenn Youngkin wants Virginians to forget that he is Donald Trump’s candidate. We will continue to hold Glenn Youngkin accountable. If he will denounce Trump’s assertion that the Charlottesville rioters possessed ‘very fine’ qualities, we’ll withdraw the tiki torches. Until then, we’ll be back.”

That same afternoon, a Democrat communications consultant named Lauren Windsor, who initially had pretended to be shocked and scandalized by the photo of the tiki-torch bearers — confessed on Twitter that she personally had worked with the Lincoln Project to “coordinate today’s Youngkin action in Charlottesville.”

McAuliffe Loses the 2021 Governor’s Race in Virginia

On November 2, 2021, Republican Glenn Youngkin defeated McAuliffe in the Virginia governor’s race by a margin of 50.9% to 48.4% of the vote.

McAuliffe’s Many Scandals

McAuliffe has been the subject of a number of federal investigations into questionable business deals and real estate ventures, illegal fundraising initiatives, and campaign finance abuses:

(1) Consider, for example, what occurred after McAuliffe in 1988 married the daughter of American Pioneer Savings Bank (APSB) executive Richard R. Swann, a man who had helped organize fundraising activities in Florida for President Jimmy Carter’s re-election campaign eight years earlier. Soon after the 1988 wedding, McAuliffe invested $800,000 in APSB. When federal regulators subsequently took over APSB in 1990, Mr. Swann filed for bankruptcy, and a federal agency used $500 million in taxpayer funds to rescue the bank and place it in receivership.

Over the ensuing two years, McAuliffe conducted a series of real-estate deals with a pension fund that was controlled jointly by the the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and the National Electrical Contractors Association (NECA). Through these deals, he was able to purchase a number of foreclosure properties from the federal trust agency holding the assets from APSB’s bankruptcy. McAuliffe financed these deals through his friend, IBEW Secretary Jack F. Moore. The joint union pension fund loaned more than $50 million to McAuliffe’s real estate ventures, including a $6 million loan in 1992 that helped him pay off debts owed to the failed APSB. In 1999 the U.S. Department of Labor — characterizing the $6 million loan as a highly imprudent loan that never had a realistic chance of being repaid — sued the union executives after the collateral that McAuliffe had pledged suddenly became unavailable. In the end, McAuliffe earned more than $16 million on the union-financed real estate deals, a windfall that the Washington Post described as “a far greater return for McAuliffe than for the union.”

(2) Another questionable McAuliffe deal involved a lease with a government agency for which McAuliffe’s firm may have illegally received a $375,000 contingency fee. According to the leftist publication Mother Jones:

(3) In 1997 McAuliffe was implicated in a money laundering scandal that involved the illegal juggling of funds between McAuliffe, the tax-exempt group Citizen Action, the AFL-CIO, the Democratic Party, former Clinton White House deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes, and the leaders and officials of individual labor unions (including the SEIU, the Teamsters Union, and AFSCME). One purpose of this juggling was to launder money, through Citizen Action, to Ron Carey’s campaign for re-election as president of the Teamsters Union. The Washington Times reports that McAuliffe was responsible “for some of the most questionable perhaps illegal … donations.” According to the Internal Revenue Service:

(4) The Washington Examiner reports that “as McAuliffe set records raising money for the Clintons” in the 1990s, “congressional investigators uncovered a Chinese government scheme to funnel money to the Clinton operation through a number of businesspeople, including a man named ‘Charlie’ Trie. In that case, 94 people either refused questioning, pled the Fifth Amendment, or left the country.”

(5) Also during the Nineties, added the Examiner, “McAuliffe helped a company named Loral Space get seats on official trade missions, and, reportedly with McAuliffe’s intervention, the Clinton administration overruled national security officials to approve a Loral deal that gave China critical missile technology. Loral’s CEO [subsequently] became the largest donor to the Democratic National Committee, where McAuliffe became chairman.”

(6) In 1999, McAuliffe pocketed an extraordinary windfall when the value of his $100,000 initial investment in the telecommunications company Global Crossing (GC) grew (in just 18 months) to approximately $18 million; he netted $8.1 million when he sold 176,017 of his shares in GC. As Politifact put it, “McAuliffe made a fantastic profit through an insider deal that allowed him to buy Global Crossing stock before it was offered to the public.” The New York Times repor ts that McAuliffe then went on to earn additional millions by trading GC’s stock and options after the company went public in 1998. Press reports indicate that McAuliffe also did “political” work for Global Crossing CEO Gary Winnick, and even arranged a golf outing for Winnick with then-president Bill Clinton. Winnick would later contribute $1 million to Clinton’s presidential library. Soon after Winnick made this contribution, the Pentagon awarded Global Crossing a $400 million contract. Before long, GC had become the Democratic Party’s biggest corporate donor.

The Bush administration eventually cancelled the Pentagon deal when it learned of irregularities in the bidding process, which were detailed in separate complaints filed by those who had lost the bidding war. Global Crossing’s stock price quickly plummeted at that point, and the company filed for bankruptcy in 2002. In summation, this was a case where GC had artificially inflated its stock price, allowing its executives – and Terry McAuliffe – to reap enormous profits during the year preceding GC’s bankruptcy filing – while thousands of employees lost their 401(k) retirement plans and their life savings.

(7) In 1999 as well, McAuliffe joined the board of directors of the Syracuse-based Telergy Corporation and urged Global Crossing to invest $40 million in Telergy. In exchange for this favor, Telergy paid McAuliffe $1.2 million. Two weeks after McAuliffe resigned from the Telergy board in 2001, the company laid off 150 employees, and by the end of the year it had filed for bankruptcy.

(8) During his 2013 gubernatorial campaign in Virginia, McAuliffe received a $120,000 donation from Chinese businessman Wang Wenliang, a former delegate to China’s National People’s Congress, described by CNN as “the country’s ceremonial legislature.” In May 2016, CNN reported that the FBI was investigating McAuliffe “over whether donations to his gubernatorial campaign” – most notably by Wenliang – had “violated the law.” Wenliang had also pledged $2 million to the Clinton Foundation, whose Clinton Global Initiative counted McAuliffe among its board members.

(9) In April 2013 The Washington Examiner reported on McAuliffe’s suspicious relationship with an electric car company called GreenTech:

On November 28, 2017, the Daily Caller reported that McAuliffe was being sued for his role in GreenTech-related fraud scheme:

(10) In July 2013, National Review Online (NRO) reported that then-gubernatorial candidate McAuliffe had once headed – and was still closely tied to – Leaf Clean Energy, a self-described “renewable energy and sustainable technology investment firm” headquartered in the Cayman Islands, which many prominent Democrats have long denounced as an immoral and irresponsible tax shelter, and which President Obama once called “the largest tax scam in the world.” “During the 2012 presidential campaign,” said NRO, “McAuliffe himself suggested that GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s use of tax shelters created the impression if not the reality of impropriety”

(11) In October 2013, The Washington Post reported that McAuliffe had invested money with a Rhode Island estate planner “charged with defrauding insurers by using the stolen identities of terminally ill people.” “McAuliffe’s name,” said the Post, “appeared on a lengthy list of investors with Joseph A. Caramadre, an attorney and accountant who obtained the identities of dying people to set up annuities that ultimately cost insurance companies millions of dollars.” McAuliffe personally made a $47,000 profit on the annuities deal. Federal court documents related to the case did not accuse McAuliffe of wrongdoing, and McAuliffe’s gubernatorial campaign spokesman said that McAuliffe was merely a “passive investor” who had been deceived by Caramadre. In November 2012, Caramadre and his former employee, Raymour Radhakrishnan, pleaded guilty to a 66-count indictment accusing them of wire fraud, money laundering, and witness-tampering. Notably, in 2009 Caramadre had donated $26,599 to McAuliffe’s first gubernatorial campaign. Said the Post report:

In 2013, Caramadre was sentenced to six years in prison on charges of conspiracy and wire fraud. And although McAuliffe claimed to have been ignorant of any wrongdoing by Caramadre, the Washington Post reported in 2013 that he had chosen not to publicly reveal the investment on his 2009 Virginia electoral candidate financial disclosure forms. “The ghoulish quality of that investment,” said the Post, “could add to the impression — created by his long history of controversial business and political schemes — that McAuliffe is an unscrupulous dealmaker.”

Terry McAuliffe