Government Accountability Institute: Sen. Joe Manchin Resisted Many Corrupt Offers For Self-Enrichment and Cronyism Over Build Back Better

Peter Schweizer is the president of the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) and a very successful New York Times bestselling author. I’ve read many of his books. He is known for outstanding sourcing and disseminating complicated issues into understandable language for plain folks like me.

On Monday, during a segment on talk radio host and Fox News host Sean Hannity’s radio program, Schweizer, who was guest hosting the show, lauded Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) as a “profile in courage” because he has refused offers for self-enrichment. He and Eric Eggers, a GAI colleague, discussed research they did on Manchin.

The two of them talked about their research into political corruption in DC, while taking a look at Manchin’s refusal to join other Democrats to pass the $4.9 trillion (now $1.7 trillion) spending in the Build Back Better Act bill that was being pushed by the Democratic Party, the Biden White House, and the mainstream news media left-wing hacks.

Schweitzer said that Manchin resisted attempts to be bribed by political supporters of the Build Back Better scheme bill.

And Schweizer knows what he’s talking about. In 2019, he published his book, “Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family.” The book was all about political corruption and how many politicians take bribes or sell the influence of the office they hold, mostly paid through a family member by giving them a sweetheart business deal they never deserved.

“Eric, you and I, a lot of times, call people out — Republicans or Democrats — for cronyism, for corruption, for self-enrichment,” Schweizer said. “Joe Manchin resisted those temptations in voting ‘no,’ because believe me, he was offered a lot of things, and it’s a time-honored tradition in Washington, DC, to, basically, if you can’t buy a politician, to at least rent them.”

Schweizer also wrote another book where he documented corrupt politicians called, “Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite.”

The GAI president said that Manchin had to have shot down many offers to get him to vote for the Build Back Better bill, including offers to financially enrich him and his family in the same manner Joe Biden did numerous times using his son Hunter Biden and sometimes his own brother James Biden.

“There is a time-honored tradition of buying off politicians,” Schweizer said. “This is no doubt the sort of thing that was thrown at Joe Manchin, that was offered to him, that was offered to West Virginia, that was offered to his family.”

Eggers chimed in pointing out that the Biden administration nominated Joe Manchin’s wife, Gayle Manchin, to a top government job that provided a $163,000 salary and the authority over funding appropriated in the Build Back Better bill.

In previous iterations of the Build Back Better bill, Gayle Manchin, who’s married to Joe Manchin, was nominated to serve as the co-chair of something called the Appalachian Regional Commission. It’s just this regional entity that distributes funds to help improve infrastructure networks. That job, which she was nominated to by the Biden administration, comes with a salary of $163,000 dollars.

In subsequent iterations of this [Build Back Better] legislation, that Appalachian regional commissioner — the ARC — would have received upwards of $300 million dollars, right?

So some people have pointed this out that, “Hey, Joe Biden appoints Joe Manchin’s wife, everybody knows Joe Manchin is going to be a key vote on this, appoints his wife to this commission and is poised to receive a big time payout from this bill.” This is just how Washington works, right?

This is how they corrupt politicians and Washington in general. Another corruption scheme is whenever Democrats win the White House, they hire family members of the major news networks, be it television or print.