OBAMA GETS KICK BACKS FOR ALL HIS DEALS
Obama Regulations on For-Profit Colleges, Finance, Railroads, and Airlines All Profited His Best Friend.
Barack Obama led regulatory attacks on numerous industries during his tenure at the White House. In many cases, his regulations — ostensibly to protect the public good — tanked the stock of various companies, enabling his close friends to swoop in and buy them for pennies on the dollar. Perhaps no figure best represents this "smash and grab" technique better than Marty Nesbitt, now head of the Obama Foundation.
Nesbitt
 first met Obama back in the 1980s, after playing basketball with 
Michelle Obama's brother, Craig Robinson, at Princeton University. While
 at business school in Chicago, he met Obama playing basketball. When 
Obama ran for Congress in 2000, Nesbitt served as campaign chairman. He 
also fundraised for Obama's state Senate and U.S. Senate campaigns, and 
served as his campaign chairman in 2008.
Nesbitt's
 wife supposedly delivered Obama's two daughters although the rupors abound that Michelle did not birth them! His family frequently 
vacationed with the Obamas in Hawaii or Martha's Vineyard. Nesbitt 
became chairman of the Obama Foundation in 2014. The Chicago Tribune has branded Nesbitt "the First Friend."
Obama's policies enabled Nesbitt to swoop in and profit after companies felt the regulatory fire of the White House.
Nesbitt
 even formed a firm called Vistria, aimed to capitalize on "the nexus of
 the public and private sectors." He filed for the trademark shortly 
after Obama's reelection, and ten days before joining the Obamas for 
Christmas in Hawaii.
“Obama 
and his administration would attack industries with government power, 
which led to substantially lower valuations for these companies. Nesbitt
 and Vistria, or others close to Obama, could then acquire those assets 
for pennies on the dollar," Schweizer explains. Nesbitt followed this 
pattern in at least four industries targeted by Obama.
In
 2013, President Obama turned his ire toward for-profit colleges. He 
declared that students were being "preyed upon very badly," and accused 
these schools of "making out like a bandit." For all their faults, 
for-profit schools have their defenders, and Nesbitt himself would later
 invest in America's largest one..
The Obama administration began the push in 2011, when the Department of 
Education (DOE) announced the so-called gainful employment rule, 
requiring for-profit schools to track job placements for graduates. DOE 
meetings to craft regulations included Deputy Education Secretary Tony 
Miller and Secretary Arne Duncan, both of whom would later join Vistria.
The left-leaning Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) sounded the alarm
 about emails showing that senior DOE officials were communicating with 
hedge fund investors planning to "short" for-profit stocks based on 
these rules.
In his second term, Obama's administration pushed
 "a broader series of crackdowns on the industry by agencies including 
the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the Federal Trade 
Commission (FTC), and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)."
The
 regulatory onslaught hit Apollo Education Group, which operated 
America's largest for-profit college, the University of Phoenix, 
particularly hard. In July 2015, the FTC announced an investigation into
 Apollo, and in October, the Department of Defense (DOD) put the 
University of Phoenix on probation.
This DOD attack suspended the 
University of Phoenix at military bases across the country and cut off 
the school's $2-4 billion per year in taxpayer funds. The soldiers, 
sailors, and Marines attending the school lost their GI Bill benefits, 
leaving some bereft of housing payments — and some homeless -- as a 
result.
According to 
Schweizer, about 15 schools committed similar offenses to the University
 of Phoenix, but the Pentagon only suspended four of them, including 
this largest school.
Thanks 
to these attacks, Apollo's stock price dropped from $11.29 per share in 
October 2015 to $6.38 by January 2016. The January price represented a 
90 percent drop from January 2009 when Obama took office.
The
 "smash" had been carried out, and it became time for the "grab." 
Obama-connected investors swooped in. The Wall Street firm Apollo Global
 Management (not previously affiliated with Apollo Education Group), 
another firm called Najafi Companies, and ... Marty Nesbitt's Vistria 
Group teamed up to buy the company. The purchase required DOE approval, 
but Vistria's Paul Miller used to be a senior official there.
Vistria and its partners hired an attorney to lobby the Pentagon, and the suspension was lifted in January 2016.
In
 December 2016, the Obama administration approved the sale, but the DOE 
required a few conditions — most notably a signed letter of credit 
valued at 25 percent of the federal funding the University of Phoenix 
would receive from student loans and grants. Vistria and its 
co-investors objected. On December 20, just weeks before Obama left 
office, the requirement was dropped to 10 percent.
Apollo
 Global Management, Najafi, and Vistria bought the University of Phoenix
 for just $10 a share, at $1.14 billion. Before the Obama 
administration's regulatory onslaught, the company was worth almost nine times that price.
Tony
 Miller, who had been the number two official at the DOE, became the 
chairman of the board. Arne Duncan set up an office at Vistria's 
headquarters in Chicago.
"It's ironic that a former 
senior official at the Department of Education — an agency that has 
intentionally targeted and sought to dismantle the for-profit college 
industry—would now take the reins at the country's largest for-profit 
college," said Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-Va.). Diane Jones, a DOE official 
under former President George W. Bush, told Schweizer these changing 
terms were highly unusual.
President
 Obama's best friend Marty Nesbitt also jumped into the financial 
industry after Obama's regulations brought it to heel.
The
 president turned his ire against the cash advance industry, which 
provided short-term loans to individuals and businesses. Many abuses had
 taken place in the industry, but in 2011 the Federal Deposit Insurance 
Corporation (FDIC) reported that more than 33 million households were 
unbanked or underbanked. This industry plays a vital role in the 
economy.
Even so, under 
Obama, the DOJ teamed up with the CFPB in December 2012 to target what 
it deemed to be financial crimes. They formed a new agency, the 
Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force (FFETF). The DOJ also launched 
Operation Choke Point in 2013, targeting banks and the business they do 
with payday lenders, payment processors, and other financial companies.
In
 response, banks terminated their accounts with payday lenders. Cash 
advance firms began to shrink. Regular banks stopped offering cash 
advances.
Amid this 
crackdown, however, ForwardLine Financial, a company founded in 2003 to 
extend alternative financing solutions to small businesses, adapted to 
the new rules. In October 2015, none other than Obama best friend Marty 
Nesbitt became FrontLine Financial's board chairman. Vistria associate 
Michael Castleforte also joined the board.
Early
 on, Vistria had hired Obama's former deputy assistant for legislative 
affairs, Jon Samuels. Samuels had worked on the Dodd-Frank Financial 
Reform Act. Fortune magazine
 noted Samuels' hiring at the time, reporting that he "doesn't appear to
 have any experience working in the financial services industry. Rather,
 Samuels has made his career in politics."
As
 of June 2017, FrontLine boasted that it finances "98% of U.S. 
businesses that banks consider too small and too risky for a business 
loan." Its competitors had been effectively smashed, and it seems 
FrontLine had been grabbed by Obama's best friend.
The
 Obama administration also targeted the railway industry, which had been
 deregulated back in 1980 by President Jimmy Carter. Roughly thirty 
years later, Obama sought to tax and regulate the industry.
In its 2012 report to the SEC, Norfolk Southern Railroad noted,
 "Efforts have been made over the past several years to re-subject the 
rail industry to increased federal economic regulation, and such efforts
 are expected to continue in 2013." The Surface Transportation Board 
(STB) became a wholly independent federal agency, with widespread 
control over railroads' environmental, safety, and security practices.
Mere
 weeks after President Obama was sworn in for his second term, Norfolk 
Southern announced that Obama best friend Marty Nesbitt was joining 
their corporate board. He had no background in railroads or 
transportation, but his 2015 compensation was $278,937.
Nesbitt took part in at least 
one other "smash and grab," Schweizer notes. Just as Obama's best friend
 joined the board of Norfolk Southern, American Airlines was facing 
bankruptcy, and announced a merger with US Airways. The Obama DOJ filed 
suit to stop the merger.
A 
whopping sixty-five Democratic congressmen and congresswomen signed a 
letter in support of American. While the Obama administration backed 
down from this attack, American Airlines struggled with the Pension 
Benefit Guaranty Corporation, and the administration launched a federal 
investigation into price gouging in July 2015.
American
 Airlines also lobbied the federal government to "shield us from 
competition and roll back consumer protections." On October 17, 2015, 
the merger between American Airlines and US Airways took place. Less 
than a month later, Obama's best friend Marty Nesbitt joined the board 
of directors.
As with 
Norfolk Southern, Nesbitt had no experience in the airline industry. In 
2016, he took home $395,704 as a member of the board for American 
Airlines.
"Today, as chairman of the Obama Foundation, Marty Nesbitt is, as Politico
 puts it, 'the man building Barack Obama's future.' From an 
empire-building perspective, this payback makes sense, given that Obama 
has already helped Nesbitt build his legacy," Schweizer concludes.
Schweizer
 includes many stories of Obama's "smash and grab" technique. "A circle 
of investors including Vistria and others linked to Obama would 
consistently purchase companies in these sectors once their valuations 
dropped under the government onslaught," the author writes. Other 
investors besides Nesbitt cashed in on the financial crackdown, and many
 more made bank in the energy industry thanks to new regulations.
Nesbitt
 is far from alone, but as Obama's friend and the head of the Obama 
Foundation, his corruption proves particularly egregious. In his 
powerful book, Schweizer also reveals multiple scandals involving Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry, leading congressmen, 

 



