Connie Mack Chief Of Staff Was Paid By Foreign Lobbying Interests, Anti-Chavez Groups

President Obama made what should be an uncontroversial statement the other day. He told a Spanish language television station that Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez does not pose a serious threat to the United States. [...]

But South Floridan politicians, many of whom pander to the right-wing Cuban exile lobby, pounced on Obama’s statement.

“Simply put, this President is unfit for duty when it comes to understanding freedom and national security in the Western Hemisphere, and neither are his liberal allies who allow such behavior,” thundered the campaign of U.S. Representative Connie Mack, who is vying to be the next Republican Senator from Florida. [...]

Groups dedicated to creating conflict between the Latin America left and the United States are likely cheering Mack’s alarmism. After all, they’ve paid his chief of staff and campaign manager, Jeffery Cohen, well for this service to their cause.

I went to the U.S. Capitol to look up Mr. Cohen’s financial disclosures. I found that in the period of time between 2009 and 2011, after he left his role as Connie Mack’s chief of staff and before he once again returned in the same role, Cohen worked as a private consultant, and he was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by a firm that manufactures grassroots campaigns, and another group that works on foreign elections, and tens of thousands of dollars by anti-Chavez groups.

Read more: http://www.republicreport.org/2012/connie-mack-chief-of-staff-foreign-lobbying/