It is huge. And should be. Cue the crickets while we wait for the MSM to run with it. Or the ‘transparent’ White House to respond.
BP Controversy
In May 2010, the Washington Examiner reported that DeLauro and her husband, media consultant Stanley Greenberg had provided free rent at their Washington, DC home to then Congressman and present White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. At the time Emanuel received free rent from the couple, Greenberg’s firm was engaged in a public relations campaign for British Petroleum touting their environmental record. Critics had accused Greenberg of greenwashing BP’s true record.
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Emanuel lived for five years rent-free in an apartment in Washington, D.C. which was provided by a close friend who was under contract with BP.
Stanley Greenberg, husband of Connecticut Democrat and U.S. Representative Rosa DeLauro, provided the apartment. Greenberg owns a consulting firm that was hired by BP to revamp its image, shifting its focus away from oil to ‘green’ technology.
The firm received hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars through a committee chaired by Emanuel.
Greenberg’s firm—Greenberg, Quilan, Rosner—details on its website the plan it developed for BP’s ‘rebranding.’
The firm also has close ties to the Democratic Party and some of the most well-known Democrats in the nation:
Greenberg Quinlan Rosner is also tied heavily to the Democratic Party, as it created a sister political consulting company named “GCS,” an acronym based on the last names of the principals – Stanley Greenberg of GQR, James Carville, the long-term adviser of Bill Clinton, and Bob Schrum, the campaign manager for Sen. John Kerry’s unsuccessful 2004 presidential campaign.
Within weeks of Obama’s inauguration to the Presidency, some of the top newspapers in the country had discovered that Rahm was living rent-free in an apartment provided by Greenberg and raised questions about the propriety of such a scenario.
The Associated Press, the Chicago Tribune, and the New York Post all reported the relationship and raised questions concerning possible conflicts of interest.
Yet, at the very same time, the Obama Administration was touting BP as a ‘model’ of safety among oil giants.
Interestingly, Rahm Emanuel served as Chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which awarded Greenberg’s firm with contracts totaling more than a quarter of a million dollars.
In addition, most of the major news outlets are reporting today that over half of the federal judges who will be handling lawsuits against BP are themselves heavily invested in BP, Halliburton, and Transocean.