Vets hit VA with federal lawsuit over Camp Lejeune water poisoning

The VA has been using non-medical personnel as subject matter experts (SMEs) to review (read "deny') Camp Lejeune veterans' disability claims in an office in Louisville for years.  Regardless of where the Marine veteran lives, his/her disability claim is forwarded to the Louisville VA office. The VA has refused to provide information to veterans on Louisville Subject Matter Experts’ (SME) credentials, training, methodology, and program mechanics use to review their claims, information requested via Freedom of Information Act (FOIAs).   The Veterans Legal Services Clinic at Yale Law School filed FOIA lawsuit in federal court Wednesday against the Department of Veterans Affairs for withholding information on a group of "experts" denying claims for scores of veterans exposed to cancer-causing chemicals at Camp Lejeune.  The SMEs have no medical backgrounds but you can bet they continue to follow the long standing practice of the VA to deny veterans' claims for every reason under the sun.  SMEs were used in the Defense Department when I worked for there in the 1990s on various projects such as evaluating a proposed change in the data processing system and its impact on contract administration.  Medical claims are an entirely different matter, especially when the veterans have nexus opinions from medical doctors supporting their medical conditions (many with cancers) were at least as likely as not caused by Camp Lejeune's contaminated wells. The VA’s use of SMEs gives a whole new meaning to "thank you your service.
 

By Cristina Corbin

Published April 27, 2016

FoxNews.com

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The quest for answers for thousands of veterans sickened -- in some cases terminally -- by contaminated water at Camp Lejeune has been stymied by a federal agency that refuses to hand over key documents, attorneys from Yale Law School charged Wednesday.

The Veterans Legal Services Clinic at Yale Law School filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit in federal court Wednesday against the Department of Veterans Affairs for allegedly withholding information on a group of "experts" denying claims for scores of veterans exposed to cancer-causing chemicals at the North Carolina base.

The suit, which represents two veterans groups, seeks to compel the VA to respond to a December 2015 FOIA request about the SME program -- an anonymous group of "subject matter experts" who render medical opinions on the veterans exposed to toxic water at Camp Lejuene  between 1953 and 1987.  

"The SME program remains a black box."

- Rory Minnis, Yale Law student and former Marine

Since the program's launch three years ago, the rate of Camp Lejeune toxic water disability claims being approved has dropped from approximately 25 percent to 8 percent, according to VA statistics. Advocates for veterans want to know who the purported experts passing judgment on the claims are, and how they arrive at their conclusions.

"The VA has yet to provide an official response to the request or even to provide a single responsive record," Rory Minnis, a former Marine and second-year Yale law student, told reporters Wednesday.

"For several years now, Camp Lejeune advocates, individual veterans, and the media have repeatedly requested information on the SMEs’ credentials, training, methodology, and program mechanics. Yet, the SME program remains a black box," said Minnis. "The VA’s failure to respond to our clients’ FOIA request is just the latest instance in a long pattern of foot-dragging and misdirection in response to inquiries about the SME program."

Between 1953 and 1987, nearly 1 million veterans, their families and civilian employees at Camp Lejeune were exposed to drinking and bathing water contaminated with dry cleaning chemicals, degreasers and a host of other toxins. Many base residents developed illnesses -- including rare cancers -- and disabilities in the aftermath.

According to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, "past exposures from the 1950s through February 1985 to trichloroethylene (TCE), tetrachloroethylene (PCE), vinyl chloride, and other contaminants in the drinking water at the Camp Lejeune likely increased the risk of cancers (kidney, multiple myeloma, leukemias, and others), adverse birth outcomes, and other adverse health effects of residents (including infants and children), civilian workers, Marines and Naval personnel at Camp Lejeune."

Victims claim the U.S. Marine Corps hid knowledge of the problem for years and did not warn people their health might be at risk.

Zambito, now 70, was exposed to the contaminated water at Camp Lejeune. The former Marine later lost both kidneys and his bladder to cancer. (Joseph "Danny" Zambito, 70, was exposed to contaminated water at Camp Lejeune when he was 18. The former Marine later lost both kidneys and his bladder to cancer.)

One SME report used to deny a Camp Lejeune veteran’s claim featured language cut and pasted from Wikipedia, Minnis said Wednesday. Another rejected the judgment of the veteran’s treating VA doctor amd a third falsely claimed – against well-established medical consensus – that there was no causal link between trichloroethylene, a known carcinogen, and kidney cancer, according to the legal team at Yale.

The goal of the lawsuit -- which represents The Few, The Proud, The Forgotten and Vietnam Veterans of America -- is to seek records on how the SME program is structured, staffed, and operated.

The VA told FoxNews.com in December that it established the SME program in 2012 to "complete Camp Lejeune medical opinions based on scientific studies and to bring additional occupational exposure science into the claims review process."

"The selected SMEs are clinicians trained in occupational medicine, environmental medicine, and toxicology," Walinda West, a Veterans Affairs spokeswoman, had said. "Additional training is provided following their selection as an SME at the Regional office Louisville, Ky."

West described the clinicians as "highly experienced professionals" who have been "directly or indirectly involved with care and/or assessment of our Veterans at VA Medical Centers."

The VA's response -- or lack thereof -- has sparked lawmakers, like Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., to press for greater transparency on the credentials and conclusions reached by the unidentified group of clinicians. 

"The VA's lack of response to these brave men and woman is utterly irreposnable and unacceptable," Blumenthal, D-Conn., said on a conference call Wednesday with reporters.

Retired Master Sgt. Jerry Ensminger, founder of The Few, The Proud, The Forgotten -- one of the groups seeking information -- lived on the base with his family in 1975. Ensminger's young daughter, Janey, was diagnosed with leukemia at age 6 and died when she was 9. After learning about the water contamination in a local news report years after Janey's death, Ensminger said he made it his mission to press the government for accountability.

On the same conference call Wednesday, Ensminger claimed Camp Lejeune veterans are the "only veterans who have been subjected to this so-called SME program." 

"Their modus operandi is delay and deny until they die," added Rick Weidman, executive director for policy and government affairs for Vietnam Veterans of America. 

"There is no definition of who the subject matter experts are," said Weidman. "It's absolutely unacceptable in a democracy to hide behind anonymity."

Cristina Corbin is a reporter for FoxNews.com. Follow her on Twitter @CristinaCorbin. 

MARINES, MURDER, COCAINE, GOVERNMENT LIES

The Marine Corps supported cocaine trafficking, officers were murdered who were a threat to blow the whistle, George H. W. Bush named as “drug kingpin” by DEA agent. 

 

(SALEM, OR) - The Marine Corps, the nation’s premier fighting force, was an active participant in a covert operation to support CIA proprietary airlines transporting cocaine in the US in the 1980s and early 1990s. This operation was the fuel for the crack cocaine epidemic in the US.  Billions of dollars were made from the sales of crack cocaine to Americans; thousands of mainly Black Americans became addicted to crack; others died of overdoses; and the prisons are full of those pushing the drug and users. 

 

The Reagan and Bush administrations used the profits from the sales of cocaine to fund an undeclared war in Nicaragua, disregarded the Boland Amendment, which prevented the use of appropriated funds to support the Contra War, and manufactured the hoax the Marine Lt. Colonel Ollie North, a member of the National Security Council (NSC), as responsible for the diversion of funds from illegal sales of arms to Iran to support the Contra War. 

 

The main stream media focused on North, missing the bigger story of the operations run by George H. W. Bush, including a myriad of covert operations, spying on US citizens, running guns all over the world and flooding the US with 'white power'.

 

In 1985, Enrique "Kiki" Camarena, DEA agent stationed in Mexico, paid the ultimate price for getting too close to the US government's involvement in cocaine trafficking.

 

 Enrique Kiki Camarena, DEA agent and former Marine, was kidnapped, tortured and murdered in Mexico in February 1985.  The official Mexican and US government version is that Rafael Caro Quintero, a Mexican drug cartel leader, was responsible for his torture and death.  Quintero was convicted of Kiki’s murder but freed from a Mexican prison in August 2013 after serving 28 years of a 40 year sentence.

 

In October 2013, the Borderland Beat reported that Camarena was murdered on orders of the CIA because he had discovered the connection of drug trafficking and its profits to support the “counterrevolution” (the Contras).

 

The motive for the murder was to prevent him from blowing the whistle on narcotrafficking of cocaine into the US to fund the Contra War in Nicaragua, according to El Diario de Coahuila and Proceso, the two Mexican newspapers who first broke the story.

The story attracted media attention in South America, Europe, and on FOX in the US. Except for FOX, the US major media did not report the breaking news story—the involvement of the CIA in Kiki’s torture and murder.

 

William La Jeunesse and Lee Ross, correspondents for FOX News.com, reported on October 10, 2013 in a news story on the internet “US intelligence assets in Mexico reportedly tied to murdered DEA agent” that CIA operatives were present during the brutal murder of Kiki Camarena. 

 

According to the La Jeunesse and Ross news story, Phil Jordan, former director of DEA's El Paso Intelligence Center said, "In [Camarena’s] the interrogation room, I was told by Mexican authorities, that CIA operatives were in there. Actually conducting the interrogation. Actually taping Kiki."  

 

“The Kelly File” on FOX followed-up on the news story in a video report by La Jeunesse, “A look at DEA agent ‘Kiki’ Camarena’s murder.” William La Jeunesse reported the story on Megyn Kelly’s program on October 10, 2013, but the alleged involvement of the CIA in Kiki’s torture and murder was left out of the video report.

 

According to La Jeunesse and Ross, Hector Berrellez, Kiki’s DEA supervisor who headed up the DEA’s investigation of the murder said:

Obviously, they [the CIA] were there. Or at least some of their contract workers were there. It was I who directed the investigation into the death of Camarena. During this investigation, we discovered that some members of a US intelligence agency, who had infiltrated the DFS (the Mexican Federal Security Directorate), also participated in the kidnapping of Camarena. Two witnesses identified Felix Ismael Rodriguez. They (witnesses) were with the DFS and they told us that, in addition, he (Rodriguez) had identified himself as "US intelligence.  

 

     

 

 Operation Legend was a DEA investigation into the murder of DEA agent Camarena  (July 26, 1947 – February 9, 1985), an American undercover agent for the DEA who was abducted on February 7, 1985, and then tortured and murdered, while on assignment in Mexico.  The utube video in Spanish with English subtitles provides testimony from retired DEA agents on the murder of Camarena and the involvement of the CIA. 

          The official Mexican and US government version is that Rafael Caro Quintero, a Mexican drug cartel leader, was responsible for the torture and death of Kiki Camarena.  Quintero was convicted of Kiki’s murder but freed from a Mexican prison in August 2013 after serving 28 years of a 40 year sentence.

          In October 2013, the Borderland Beat reported that Camarena was murdered on orders of the CIA because he had discovered the connection of drug trafficking and its profits to support the Contras. Two retired DEA agents accused the CIA of complicity in the torture and murder of Kiki Camarena. Mexican news reports in 2013 said that CIA operatives were present during the inhuman torture of Camarena. Tapes of the interrogation were provided to Camarena’s DEA supervisor who questioned how the CIA got the tapes.

          The threat of public disclosure of cocaine trafficking by the Marines and the Air Force during Iran/Contra could have brought down the Bush administration, lead to the president’s impeachment, and the imprisonment of senior military and civilian officials.

 

          Congress and the Special Prosecutor knew about cocaine trafficking into US military bases but took no action.  The news of cocaine trafficking into military bases was briefed to the Iran/Contra and Lawrence Walsh, the Special Prosecutor, staffers by Gene Wheaton, a retired Army warrant officer and former Marine, with years of military criminal investigation experience and many CIA contacts.  Wheaton, a loyal America and good cop, blew the whistle but no one was listening.

 

Wheaton correctly called the government assassination group within the DOD/Pentagon treasonous. The mission of the group was to murder loyal military officers who were a threat to blow the whistle on covert activities.  No courts martials; just a bullet in the head.  

Gene Wheaton provided testimony to the DOD Inspector General of cocaine flights into El Toro and gave the US Attorney General copies of 50 aircraft tail numbers of C-130 aircraft illegally transferred to CIA proprietary airlines.  Wheaton never received a response to his ‘heads-up’. 

No one was questioned about cocaine trafficking during the Iran/Contra hearings; no indictments were made by Lawrence Walsh, the Iran/Contra special prosecutor for cocaine trafficking.   The government’s kneejerk response was to murder officers who were a threat to blow the whistle.

One prominent casualty was Marine Colonel James E. Sabow at Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, CA.  El Toro—together with March AFB, Homestead AFB and other airfields—was used to refuel C-130A/E aircraft operated by CIA proprietary airlines and civilian crews to ship weapons to Central American and to offload tons of cocaine on the return flights for distribution into the nation’s drug network.

Colonel Sabow's Crime Scene 

This was a billion dollar operation and a major threat to the Corps’ outstanding record of service to the country. 

Someone had alleged that Colonel Sabow had been guilty of misuse of military aircraft.  But, he was not certified to fly the planes, had been in a training status on the, the Kingair and Saberliner aircraft for weeks. The flight logs and per diem travel reports were unblemished.  He was clean. 

This Marine officer’s record of 28 years of loyal service was disregarded by no other than the Marine Corps Inspector General—a three star general grade officer—who made a surprise visit to El Toro only days before the start of the Gulf Air War.

Colonel Joseph Underwood, El Toro’s Chief of Staff, was relieved of his duties and subsequently reduced in rank to major, fined and forced to retire.

 Several days later, Colonel Sabow, the Assistant Chief of Staff, was relieved of his duties on alleged charges of misuse of government aircraft. 

The Marine Corps IG and his staff had access to all records to quickly clear Sabow but left El Toro, leaving the colonel in ‘military limbo’.

 No formal charges were filed and he was bewildered until Colonel Underwood told him that he had to accept the false charges and retire since the CIA aircraft were flying cocaine into the base. 

Colonel Sabow learned of the misuse of El Toro to run drugs the night before he was killed.

He refused to kotow and told Colonel Underwood and others that he would blow the whistle at a courts martial. The next morning he was murdered; the death called a suicide by the government.

 

EVIDENCE SUPPORTS MURDER

The forensic evidence supports homicide: No fingerprints on the shotgun; the swelling on the  back of his head and the depressed skull fracture are characteristic of an external blunt force; x-rays taken at the Orange County Medical Examiner's facility show a large depressed occipital skull fracture; estimated blood loss at the crime scene of 50 cc means that the victim was dead without any circulating blood when he was shot; absence of blood on front of body means victim could not have shot himself sitting upright in a patio chair; the shotgun was tested by two independent forensic laboratories and both determined that this shotgun leaks gunshot residue (GSR) from its breech and trigger housing, the bathrobe and pajama bottom that Colonel Sabow was wearing at the time of death were analyzed by automated scanning electron microscopy.  These results show that the victim’s pajama bottom was in the environment of a discharged firearm.  However, there were no focal concentrations of GSR or backspatter residue (BSR) on any of these samplers that would support a suicide scenario. 

The Sabow family fought the false suicide verdict and threatened to go to the media.  

The Marine Corps’ answer was to call Colonel Wayne Rich, a DOJ lawyer and Marine reservist, to active duty.  

 

PLOT TO DISCREDIT DEAD MARINE 

Copies of personal notes taken during a telecom between Colonel Rich and Colonel George Lang, III, Deputy Staff Judge Advocate, HQMC show the extent to which the Corps would go to discredit a good Marine.  

The notes show the intention of dictating a “script” stating a plan to convince Dr. David Sabow in a March 1991 meeting at El Toro that his brother was a “crook” and committed suicide to avoid the shame of public disclosure.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Copy of Colonel Wayne Rich's notes

 

The call was made on March 8, l99l, the day before Dr. Sabow was to meet with BG Adams, the Commanding General of El Toro.

The plan was to have Colonel Rich run the meeting, convincing Dr. Sabow that Colonel Sabow was a "crook" and took his own life.  

COLONEL RON FIX TARGETED 

 

Col Rich’s notes also indicate that Colonel Ron Fix, who was in charge of the MWR at El Toro, "had a girlfriend in DC and made repeated travel to DC."  Col Fix was commissioned in '63 and retired in June '91. 

It’s possible that Rich visited Fix while he was at El Toro and ‘suggested that he retire early’.  Colonel Fix was commissioned in 1963 and would have completed 30 years of military service in 1993.  He retired in June 1991, three years early.

The next colonel in charge of El Toro's MWR was not so lucky. 

 

ANOTHER MARINE COLONEL DEAD

On February 24, l995, five days after 60 Minutes did a story on illegal C-130 acquisitions and drug flights, Colonel Jerry Agenbroad was found hanged in the BOQ at El Toro. 

Colonel Agenbroad was in charge of Morale, Welfare, and Recreation (MWR).  This job included responsibility for contracts with civilian air carriers. At one time, Agenbroad headed the El Toro air museum [one aspect of Iran-Contra was the illegal exchange of working C-130 and Navy P-3A aircraft from air museums for obsolete C-119 aircraft to CIA proprietary airlines].

The information that the Corps was supporting CIA proprietary flights of cocaine into El Toro could have brought down the Bush administration and sent more than one person to prison.  People have been killed for less.  Still unconvinced.   

MEETING IN THE DESERT

 

Nick Schou, writing for the Orange County Weekly in September 2006, reported a meeting in the desert with a mysterious source who claimed to have top secret documentation showing the use of US military bases to fly drugs into the country in the 1980s.  Schou wrote:

…the man pulled a folder from his pocket and handed it to me. Inside was a piece of paper stamped with the logo of the US Department of Defense. It looked like an uncensored version of what had been faxed to my office a week or so earlier: instructions from the Pentagon to El Toro Marine Corps Air Station and March Air Force Base not to record landings or takeoffs by two civilian airlines.  This time, the names of the airlines weren't blacked out: Southern Air Transport and Evergreen International Airlines. The man with the walkie-talkie didn't demand anything—except that I take the paper from his hands. But the document wasn't stamped "declassified." It could be stolen, Wheaton warned, and if I accepted it, I could go to federal prison for violating national security laws.”^[1]

To his regret, Schou decided not to accept the document; asked the source to mail it to him, but never heard from him again.

---

   

[1] Nick Schou,” Cocaine Airways”, Orange County Weekly, September 14, 2006, http://www.ocweekly.com/2006-09-14/news/cocaine-airways/

 

At Secretive Meeting, Tech CEOs And Top Republicans Commiserate, Plot To Stop Trump

By Ryan Grim, Nick Baumann and Matt Fuller

 

Billionaires, tech CEOs and top members of the Republican establishment flew to a private island resort off the coast of Georgia this weekend for the American Enterprise Institute's annual World Forum, according to sources familiar with the secretive gathering.

The main topic at the closed-to-the-press confab? How to stop Republican front-runner Donald Trump.

Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google co-founder Larry Page, Napster creator and Facebook investor Sean Parker, and Tesla Motors and SpaceX honcho Elon Musk all attended. So did Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), political guru Karl Rove, House Speaker Paul Ryan, GOP Sens. Tom Cotton (Ark.), Cory Gardner (Colo.), Tim Scott (S.C.), Rob Portman (Ohio) and Ben Sasse (Neb.), who recently made news by saying he "cannot support Donald Trump."

Along with Ryan, the House was represented by Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Fred Upton (Mich.), Rep. Kevin Brady (Texas) and almost-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), sources said, along with leadership figure Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Wash.), Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-Ga.), Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (Texas) and Diane Black (Tenn.).

Philip Anschutz, the billionaire GOP donor whose company owns a stake in Sea Island, was also there, along with Democratic Rep. John Delaney, who represents Maryland. Arthur Sulzberger, the publisher of The New York Times, was there, too, a Times spokeswoman confirmed.

"A specter was haunting the World Forum--the specter of Donald Trump," Kristol wrote in an emailed report from the conference, borrowing the opening lines of the Communist Manifesto. "There was much unhappiness about his emergence, a good deal of talk, some of it insightful and thoughtful, about why he's done so well, and many expressions of hope that he would be defeated."

"The key task now, to once again paraphrase Karl Marx, is less to understand Trump than to stop him," Kristol wrote. "In general, there's a little too much hand-wringing, brow-furrowing, and fatalism out there and not quite enough resolving to save the party from nominating or the country electing someone who simply shouldn't be president."

A highlight of the gathering was a presentation by Rove about focus group findings on Trump. The business mogul's greatest weakness, according to Rove, was that voters have a very hard time envisioning him as "presidential" and as somebody their children should look up to. They also see him as somebody who can be erratic and shouldn't have his (small) fingers anywhere near a nuclear trigger.

Sources familiar with the meeting -- who requested anonymity because the forum is off the record -- said that much of the conversation around Trump centered on "how this happened, rather than how are we going to stop him," as one person put it.

Trump, who already has nearly one-third of the delegates he needs to secure the GOP nomination, faces major tests in the Florida and Ohio primaries next week. If he wins both those states, he will need to win just half of the remaining delegatesto secure the nomination.

He wasn't the only topic of the wide-ranging conference, however. At one point, Cotton and Apple's Cook fiercely debated cell phone encryption, a source familiar with the exchange told HuffPost. "Cotton was pretty harsh on Cook," the source said, and "everyone was a little uncomfortable about how hostile Cotton was." (Apple is in the midst of a battle with the Justice Department and the FBI over an encrypted iPhone that belonged to one of the San Bernardino shooters.)

AEI has held the annual forum on Sea Island for years. It's so secret that in 2015, Bloomberg News complained that no one would even say whether it had snowed.

Federal Aviation Administration records available on FlightAware.com show that a fleet of private jets flew into and out of two small airports near Sea Island this weekend. Fifty-four planes flew out of the airport on St. Simons Island, Georgia, on Sunday -- nearly four times as many as departed from the airport the previous Sunday.

Many of the planes are registered to jet-sharing companies such as NetJets and Flexjet or private jet services companies such as Jetsetter. At least two of themflew directly to San Jose, California, home of many tech giants, on Sunday.

Another plane, which arrived from Eaton, Colorado, on Wednesday and flew back there on Sunday, is registered to Monfort Aviation, LLC, a private, tax-exempt trust. FAA records don't indicate who controls Monfort Aviation, but it shares a name with Dick and Charlie Monfort, the Colorado-based heirs to a meatpacking fortune who now own the Colorado Rockies baseball team. The plane, a Raytheon Hawker 800XP, seats 15 people. Anschutz, the billionaire whose company part owns Sea Island, is also from Colorado.

Another private plane, a Canadair Challenger, flew cross-country from St. Simons to Van Nuys Airport in Southern California on Friday. Van Nuys Airport is so associated with millionaires and billionaires that their disputes over space at the field occasionally spill into the news media.

Another plane, a tri-jet Dassault Falcon 900, flew into St. Simons on Thursday from Westchester County, New York, and returned on Sunday. It's registered to Northwood Investors LLC, which is run by John Kukral, whose official bio noteshe's been involved in real estate deals worth over $40 billion.

"The event is private and off-the record, therefore we do not comment further on the content or attendees," said Judy Stecker, a spokeswoman for AEI. She described the forum as "an informal gathering of leading thinkers from all ideological backgrounds to discuss challenges that the United States and the free world face in economics, security and social welfare."

Sea Island Resort -- which boasts three golf courses and a spa and fitness center that, at 65,000 square feet, would fill nearly two-thirds of a Home Depot -- is famous for its isolation. It's surrounded by marshes and some distance from the nearest large commercial airports. In 2004, when President George W. Bush hosted the annual G-8 summit on the island, the press center for the event was located 80 miles away in Savannah, Georgia.

The Anschutz Corp., Starwood Capital Group Global, Avenue Capital Group, and Oaktree Capital Management bought the then-bankrupt resort -- which covers the entire island -- in 2010 for $212.4 million.

"It is not much of a place to experience average America," The New York Timeswrote of Sea Island in 2004. "But it is a fine locale to shut out the rest of the world, view conspicuous architectural consumption and walk beaches that have little or no public access."

In 2015, AEI's Sea Island gala drew most of the men who would become the Republican party's presidential candidates, according to an agenda Bloomberg obtained at the time. Scheduled speakers included former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. (Some scheduled speakers may not have attended; a snowstorm snarled transportation up and down the East Coast that weekend.)

AEI paid $32,490.97 for 11 members of Congress to attend the conference in 2015 alone, according to disclosure records available on Legistorm.com.

Democratic officials, including Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Jason Furman, the chair of Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, Gene Sperling, another top Obama economic adviser, and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, were listed as 2015 attendees, Bloomberg reported at the time.

Christie was scheduled to deliver the opening remarks at the conference that year.