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How Did Harry Reid Get Rich?
Try this thought experiment. Imagine that someone grows up in poverty, works his way through law school by holding the night shift as a Capitol Hill policeman, and spends all but two years of his career as a public servant. Now imagine that this person’s current salary — and he’s at the top of his game — is $193,400. You probably wouldn’t expect him to have millions in stocks, bonds, and real estate.
But, surprise, he does, if he’s our Senate majority leader, whose net worth is between 3 and 10 million dollars, according to OpenSecrets.org. When Harry Reid entered the Nevada legislature in 1982, his net worth was listed as between $1 million and $1.5 million “or more,” according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. So, since inquiring minds inquire, let’s try to figure out how Reid’s career in public service ended up being so lucrative. He hasn’t released his tax returns, which makes this an imperfect science, but looking at a few of his investments helps to show how he amassed his wealth.
In 2004, the senator made $700,000 off a land deal that was, to say the least, unorthodox. It started in 1998 when he bought a parcel of land with attorney Jay Brown, a close friend whose name has surfaced multiple times in organized-crime investigations and whom one retired FBI agent described as “always a person of interest.” Three years after the purchase, Reid transferred his portion of the property to Patrick Lane LLC, a holding company Brown controlled. But Reid kept putting the property on his financial disclosures, and when the company sold it in 2004, he profited from the deal — a deal on land that he didn’t technically own and that had nearly tripled in value in six years.
Czar of Defenestration
August 16th, 2012
You *sure* it wasn’t from his movie work back then as “Hairy Reed”?!?
Bad Brad
August 16th, 2012
No, it’s from his part time Underwear Model gig.
Billy Fuster
August 16th, 2012
He drives a Smart car and pockets the savings?
He buys his clothes at Thrift Stores?
He saves by getting cheap haircuts?
dba...vagabond trader
August 16th, 2012
A slightly different take. I heard from a neighbor who had a cousin who lived near Harry Reid that he was a big porno distributor for the Southwest. Don’t know what the truth is, just what was said.
wth
August 16th, 2012
Selling pomegranates?
tripseven
August 16th, 2012
He got rich from doing “THE Harry Reid.”
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=harry+reid
cfm990
August 16th, 2012
Shady deals and hints of organized crime in Nevada? Intimations of crooked politicians? I’m surprised any one takes us seriously.
Unneutral
August 16th, 2012
I thought being crooked was a democratic resume enhancer.
Tim
August 16th, 2012
After he rapes the little children, he gives the parents the choice of paying a ransom or never seeing their little ones again.
Most of them pay – and pay well.
After the cops get their cut, it’s quite lucrative.
Stranded in Sonoma
August 16th, 2012
“I learned everything I know about investments from Hillary Clinton.”
Robert Fine
August 16th, 2012
He got rich by trading on inside information, same as John Kerry.
Geoff C.
August 16th, 2012
When Romney is in the White House he needs to release the Hounds From Hell on everyone who has called him a crook, we know the names. IRS, SEC, ATF, Darrell Issa, really make them pay.