McCain camp downplays adviser's links to pay-for-play energy company

The McCain campaign is trying to downplay the relationship between its top national security adviser, Randy Scheunemann, and Stephen Payne, the lobbyist caught on tape offering political access in exchange for donations to the G.W. Bush Library.

As I reported yesterday, Scheunemann was part of the executive team of Payne's company, Worldwide Strategic Energy.

A pre-prospectus for WSE circulated in 2007 touting Scheunemann's role as a PR flak for the Iraq war. The same document also used his close ties to the Republic of Georgia as a selling point to solicit capital from selected high net-worth investors: "Randy Scheunemann is a registered representative of the Government of Georgia in the United States. Accordingly, Mr. Scheunemann has developed a very close relationship with President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili and many senior Georgian officials. The WSE team has also begun negotiating possible deals with the Georgian state-run oil company, National Oil Company of Georgia, to assist in the development of Georgia’s hydrocarbon industry."

The photograph of Stephen Payne, Ahamad Chalabi, and Randy Scheunemann shown above is from the same pre-prospectus document.

According to AP, the McCain camp admits that Scheunemann lobbied for Payne's Worldwide Strategic Partners in 2002 and for the Caspian Alliance from 2002 to 2006. What they don't say is that Payne was a member of the executive team of Worldwide Strategic Energy at least as late as 2007.

On Monday, the McCain campaign said that from 2002 to 2006, Scheunemann periodically engaged in consulting relationships with the two companies and that Scheunemann was never on the payroll of either firm, but that he was an occasional outside expert consultant. [AP]

That Scheunemann was never on the payroll of WSP or the Caspian Alliance is only marginally relevant to the questions at hand. He is listed as a member of the executive team of WSE and his qualifications, especially his political connections, are given top billing in WSE's pre-prospectus memo. 

So far, the McCain campaign done nothing to address the substantive allegations of conflict of interest against Scheunemann--namely, that he was (and may still be) in business with an international influence peddler who makes his living selling access to the White House.

Comments

[swampcracker]

This article by Sam Stein:

Another Chalabi advocate was McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann, who promoted the exiled figure as "the new Iraqi Atatur," and championed the now-debunked claims that Saddam possessed caches of WMD. As president of the neoconservative Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, Scheunemann accused the State Department and CIA of distrusting Chalabi for "ideological reasons" (not personality concerns) during a 2003 NewsHour interview. A year later, Chalabi was reported to have passed Iraqi government secrets to Iranian agents, prompting the Defense Intelligence Agency to conclude that he was "manipulating the United States."

Get him !!