by Frank Holmes, reporter
It has taken years of work and countless investigations, but the walls are finally closing in on the Pelosi family.
The latest scandal shows records that show the Pelosi family seemingly caught red-handed in a bribery probe over a rundown property.
Pelosi is the most famous name FBI agents have scooped up while investigating charges that officials in San Francisco took pay-offs to give favorable government decisions.
The investigation centered around a fleabag hotel overrun with drugs and hookers at the corner of Utah Street and 24th Avenue.
The first floor of the building used to be a massage clinic frequented by now-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, her husband Paul, and her son Paul Pelosi Jr., who said they went there in the 1990s and 2000s to get foot massages. Pelosi Jr. later dated the owner’s daughter, Karena Apple Feng, and eventually became deeply involved in its operations and finances.
The hotel was in such bad shape that officials repeatedly cited it for code violations and called it “The Pit.”
The congresswoman’s son, Paul Pelosi Jr., said he was “helping remove the citations from the property”—and whipped out the uber-wealthy family checkbook to get his way.
The Daily Mail reported that someone named in legal documents about the San Francisco palm-greasing operation as “Client 9” sounds the Speaker’s 53-year-old son.
E-mails show that San Francisco permit expediter Rodrigo Santos told “Client 9” if he wanted citations removed from the hotel, it would cost him.
Santos said all he had to do was cut a check to a charity tied to city building inspector Bernie Curran, and Curran would make everything go away at the Department of Building Inspection.
“I will forward the address to Curran. He will abate it,” Santos wrote. “Please drop off a check payable to Golden Gate Youth [Rugby] Association for $1k,” which is “Bernie’s nonprofit.”
“With pleasure,” Pelosi Jr. replied. He then sent a picture of a $1,500 check with a note that he “made the donation and it is being sent today.”
A building inspector told a local San Francisco news site that Pelosi’s connection sounded right to him.
He said Pelosi wanted to get the hotel, which is falling apart, cleared, and the contractor told Pelosi’s people, “if he wants to take me there, I could say, ‘fix this, do this’ — that’s what I do. But he would never go to the property.”
Evidently, it seemed Pelosi wanted to use his family’s money to get the city’s OK without fixing up the property — and he even seemed to lie about it to local media.
“’It’s not my business. I never got paid,” Pelosi Jr. said, even though internal documents say that he owned 20 percent of the company and was listed as an officer.
As a matter of fact, Feng sued Pelosi Jr., saying his company wrangled the company that owned the hotel right out from under her.
Pelosi isn’t facing charges—surprise, surprise—but he’s been at the center of at least five different FBI investigations over the years.
Paul Pelosi Jr. was senior vice president of a company that helped its partners scam senior citizens. InfoUSA sold lists of “gullible” elderly gamblers and Alzheimer’s patients to companies it knew were under investigation for defrauding senior citizens.
He was Business Development Executive’ of the Corporate Governance Initiative (CGI), where he had a close relationship with an alleged crook named Asa Saint Clair, who said he would take up collections for poor countries around the world for the UN, but officials say he used the cash “to pay his personal expenses, including dinners at Manhattan restaurants, airline tickets, and online shopping.”
He sat on the board of a biofuel company whose leader was convicted of bribing officials in Georgia.
He worked for a medical company that the FDA says tested products on people without their consent.
And he got a sweetheart stock deal as part-owner of a lithium mining company the FBI said was part of a massive $164 million stock fraud scheme.
Somehow, investigators have never laid a glove on Nancy Pelosi’s boy.
Could all that be changing at last?
The Democrats’ coming wipeout in the midterm elections may not be the worst piece of news Nancy Pelosi gets in 2022.
Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative who talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”