Bush Bucks: How Public Service and Corporations Helped Make Jeb Rich

By Peter Schweizer

In the eight years since he left the Florida governor’s mansion, Jeb Bush has raked in nearly $30 million. Who paid him and for what? And what “services” did Bush perform for those who gave him millions?

In Bush Bucks: How Public Service and Corporations Helped Make Jeb Rich, Government Accountability Institute (GAI) President and New York Times bestselling author Peter Schweizer and his team of GAI investigators perform a granular examination of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush’s financial dealings and accumulation of wealth. What unfolds is a disturbing pattern of cronyism and self-enrichment, one wherein the companies and individuals Bush benefited while governor, in turn, helped make Bush millions of dollars shortly after he left office.

Bush Bucks reveals:

§ How more than half of Jeb Bush’s post-gubernatorial income was derived from a handful of companies that benefitted while Bush was governor

§ How Bush provided “political intelligence” to Wall Street investment firms via Lehman Brothers and Barclays that gave them the inside track on pending mergers and acquisitions

§ How Jeb’s educational reforms enriched key companies that then put money in Bush’s foundations and pockets

Fact-based, quick-moving, and clear, Bush Bucks highlights a troubling constellation of cronyism and self-enrichment inside Bush world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Peter Schweizer
• Release date: Oct 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9780996778718

Peter Schweizer

Peter Schweizer is the president of the Government Accountability Institute and the former William J. Casey Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is a number one New York Times bestselling author whose books have been translated into eleven languages.

Book preview

BUSH BUCKS

–––––––––––—

How Public Service and Corporations

Helped Make Jeb Rich

Peter Schweizer

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Serious Questions

Lehman Brothers/Barclays

Tenet Healthcare

Randy Best and Education Reform

Rayonier

Conclusion

Notes

About the Author

Also by Peter Schweizer

Copyright

Preface

The nonpartisan Government Accountability Institute (GAI) was founded on the fundamental belief that no political party is immune to cronyism, corruption, or governmental malfeasance.

For that reason, GAI has and will continue to follow the facts wherever they lead as we investigate politicians of all stripes who engage in self-enrichment using taxpayer dollars.

From Spencer Bachus (R-AL) to Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Hillary Clinton (D-NY) to John Boehner (R-OH), GAI’s investigatory findings on these and myriad other politicians have become the subject of featured stories on 60 Minutes, ABC News, Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, and others. Similarly, GAI’s revelations have driven headlines in the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere.

The reason: facts transcend ideology and partisanship.

In that spirit, GAI presents Bush Bucks: How Public Service and Corporations Helped Make Jeb Rich.

GAI looks forward to releasing similar investigations in the months ahead as we strive to provide citizens with the transparency and accountability they deserve.

Stephen K. Bannon

Co-Founder and GAI Executive Chairman

Introduction

The intersection between money and politics often involves large sums of dollars flowing into American political campaigns, which, in turn, allow politicians, once elected, to disperse even larger sums of money through government programs that benefit their supporters and constituents.

Increasingly, public service can offer gateways to personal and family wealth, too. Sometimes, family members make the money when a public official serves in office. In other instances, public officials become wealthy after they leave office, thanks to the largesse of constituents a politician helped while in office.

Jeb Bush, throughout his early professional career, experienced a modicum of financial success in real estate. However, he accumulated a new magnitude of wealth in the years following his tenure as governor. How his public service relates to his new found wealth raises important questions about conflicts of interest and decisions he made while governor.

Jeb Bush graduated from the University of Texas magna cum laude after just two-and-a-half years. He married Columba young before plunging into the business world. He worked for the Texas Commerce Bank, setting up a branch office in Venezuela in 1977.¹ Jeb’s entrée into the Florida business world came in 1980, through one of his father’s political connections. Armando Codina, a Cuban-American Miami real estate developer, brought Jeb into the business. Codina was also the co-chairman in South Florida of the George H.W. Bush 1980 presidential campaign, before Ronald Reagan won the Republican nomination and picked H.W. Bush as his running mate.²

Codina offered the young Bush, then 27, a simple arrangement. He would provide the capital and South Florida contacts, and Jeb would help find tenants for commercial real estate developments.³ Jeb was not a real estate professional and was new to