RICHMOND, VA – Virginia’s Republican Lt. Gov.-elect Winsome Sears said she is “destroying all of the narratives about race” after becoming the first black woman elected to the post on Tuesday.
Sears, a Marine veteran running with Glenn Youngkin , a Republican, defeated Democratic state Delegate Hala Ayala on Tuesday. She will serve alongside Republican Glenn Youngkin, who unseated Democrat Terry McAuliffe.
Meet Winsome Sears, Virginia’s new Lieutenant Governor.
She is a black woman who immigrated from Jamaica, served in the Marines, has a Masters degree, ran a women’s homeless shelter, raised 3 kids— and now she has made history. pic.twitter.com/AFPdR0jSG0
— Benny (@bennyjohnson) November 3, 2021
During an interview on Fox News on Wednesday. Sears said that claims of white privilege and other narratives about race limiting potential were being used as a tool to divide people:
“We’re framing too many issues in terms of race, and it just continues to divide us. And unfortunately, politicians are using it as a tool … to advance their nefarious purposes.
“If we stop just looking at race and just (start) looking at people — because I’m destroying all the narratives about race. Look at me. Look at me. I am a heartbeat away from the governorship in case anything happens to the governor.
“And how are you going to tell me then, I’m a victim? And I didn’t do anything special to get here except stay in school and study.”
Congratulations, @WinsomeSears pic.twitter.com/9preocZH8d
— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) November 4, 2021
Sears, who was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1964 before her family moved to the United States, said that she took advantage of opportunities that were available to her in America, and said others could do the same:
“I wasn’t born here. This is not my culture, not my country. But it allowed me — America allowed me to come and do for myself and for my family. And I remember when I was wanting to go to college, I had three children under five.
“My husband took a lower-paying job so he could stay home because he already had his degree, and I put one of my children on the back of a bicycle so that I could get to college. So, no one can say to me I don’t know what it is to be poor. You’re looking at the American Dream.”
Shouldn’t media be all over a black woman who immigrated from Jamaica, served in the Marines, has a Masters degree, ran a homeless women’s shelter, raised 3 kids, and is now running to be the highest ranking minority woman gov’t official in Virginia history? Winsome Sears: pic.twitter.com/ePseTRJn93
— Brent Scher (@BrentScher) October 25, 2021
She added that racism that plagued the country during the height of the Civil Rights movement cannot compare to today’s world, where opportunities in America call to the world:
“It’s not 1963 when my father came at the height of the Civil Rights movement, 17 days before Martin Luther King Jr. gave his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. We’re better than that.
“We’re always going to have problems. I understand that. I’m not saying we’re perfect, but you can see those people at the border, right now, trying to get in. They’re dying to get in. Because they know if they can put a foot on American soil, the trajectory of their lives will change, just as it did for my father.”
Responding to a clip showing MSNBC host Joy Reid accusing Republicans of encouraging “soft white nationalism.” The Lt. Gov.-elect challenged the host to have her as a guest:
“I wish Joy Reid would invite me on her show. Let’s see if she’s woman enough to do that. I’d go in a heartbeat, and we’d have a real discussion without Joy speaking about me behind my back, if you will. She talks about white supremacy.
“Does she know that I ran against a white supremacist? I mean, Joy, come on, get your facts straight and then come talk to me.”
The victory of Youngkin and Sears is a blow to the Democratic agenda and shows cracks in a state that President Joe Biden won by double digits in the 2021 presidential election.
Aside from her service in the United States Marine Corps, Sears has accomplished many firsts in her career. She was the first Republican to win election in a majority black legislative district in Virginia since 1865. She also became the only black Republican woman elected to the House, and the first legal immigrant to do the same.
.@WinsomeSears was born in Jamaica, grew up in the Bronx, and served as an electrician in the Marines. She is the American Dream.❤️🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/2xGHxbELey
— kaitlin (@thefactualprep) November 3, 2021
Editor note: In 2020, we saw a nationwide push to “defund the police”. While we all stood here shaking our heads wondering if these people were serious… they cut billions of dollars in funding for police officers. And as a result, crime has skyrocketed – all while the same politicians who said “you don’t need guns, the government will protect you” continued their attacks on both our police officers and our Second Amendment rights.
And that’s exactly why we’re launching this national crowdfunding campaign as part of our efforts to help “re-fund the police”.
For those looking for a quick link to get in the fight and support the cause, click here.
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Report: Virginia gubernatorial candidate McAuliffe received $350k from foreign interests in violation of federal law
November 1, ,2021
VIRGINIA- Voters in Virginia have the opportunity to send a loud and clear message to Democrats this week; first that they don’t support the Biden administration’s Marxist agenda, and secondly they do not support Virginia Democrats’ attempted indoctrination of their children.
Now we are learning that not only did Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe violate IRS regulations in his campaign by the also apparently accepted foreign money from a foreign entity linked to a money laundering probe, Breitbart News reports.
Now, an ethics probe has been launched into the $350,000 donation where it is alleged the McAuliffe campaign accepted the money from foreign nationals, which is against federal law. The probe was requested by the National Legal and Policy Center, which is asking for the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to investigate, first reported in the Washington Free Beacon, which obtained a copy of the filing.
The organization is asking the FEC to “promptly investigate” if the contribution to McAuliffe’s campaign violated federal laws prohibiting such donations from foreign nationals.
“Terry McAuliffe has a history of accepting foreign contributions. The FEC must fully investigate these serious charges that he accepted $350,000 in illegal foreign contributions for his current campaign,” the complaint, written by Washington, D.C. attorney Paul Kamenar, counsel to the NLPC wrote.
As first reported in early October by the Washington Free Beacon, a company called LycaTel LLC, owned by a Sri Lankan-British national named Allirajah Subaskaran gave that some of money to McAuliffe.
That company is a New Jersey-based subsidiary of Subaskaran’s U.K.-based telecom conglomerate, which is comprised of a complicated mix of offshore businesses and which has been subjected to a number of tax fraud and money laundering investigations in France.
Federal campaign finance laws prohibit campaigns from accepting money from foreign nationals and/or entities, either directly or indirectly, in local, state or federal elections.
While exceptions are made for U.S. cased subsidiaries of foreign corporations, any such campaign donations cannot be made under the direction of a company’s foreign leadership, a rule which can be somewhat cloudy in its interpretation.
“This is effectively a really easy way to launder foreign money into the U.S. political process and to avoid the FEC prohibition on foreign nationals making contributions in U.S. elections,” said Ben Freeman, director of the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy in a statement to the Free Beacon earlier this month.
The Beacon noted that LycaTel did not appear to have donated to previous campaigns in Virginia, nor any federal races. In July, the company retained a Washington, DC based lobbyist, Robert Thompson to lobby on “telecom” issues, according to disclosure records.
Thompson was previously registered as a foreign agent representing Subsakaran as part of a “business expansion within the U.S.A,” according to records filed with the Justice Department.
Subsakaran owns a host of companies worldwide in the technology, media, and gaming sectors, many of which use the name “Lyca” in the names. The group of companies has come under scrutiny of British law enforcement officials over allegations of unpaid taxes.
In 2015, LycaMobile couriers were photographed transporting bags of cash—estimated by some at $1 million per week, to various post offices around the U.K., according to a number of articles from BuzzFeed. The company denied any wrongdoing involving the deposits, claiming it operated a “cash-heavy business.”
The investigation into Subaskaran in France led to French officials arresting “19 people suspected of being involved in a money laundering system implicating Lycamobile and Lycamobile Services,” French prosecutors said at the time.
LycaTel’s United States operations have also drawn attention from regulators. For example in 2011, the Federal Communications Commission fined the company $5 million for “deceptively marketing prepaid calling cards” to mostly immigrant buyers.
The company pushed the cards by claiming the “low-cost’ cards could be used to make “hundreds of minutes of calls” overseas, however buyers were only able to use “a fraction of those minutes for calls because LycaTel applies a variety of fees and surcharges that quickly deplete the card,” said the FCC.
The Free Beacon said they emailed a host of questions to LycaTel, who did not respond. They followed up with a telephone call, whereby the company’s general counsel said the company would not comment on the donation to McAuliffe’s campaign, and were waiting to “hear back from management as to what they want to disclose and what they don’t.”
Not surprisingly, McAuliffe’s campaign did not respond to request for comment.
The latest complaint about McAuliffe’s campaign comes after a stunt pulled by foes of his gubernatorial opponent, Glenn Youngkin failed miserably late last week.
The failed hoax involved five people, including at least one Democrat operative, holding Tiki torches in front of Youngkin’s campaign bus to remind people “what happened in Charlottesville four hears ago.” It was later found that the RINO Lincoln Project was behind the scam.
It was a pathetic stunt to tie Youngkin’s campaign with former president Donald Trump, whom the Lincoln Project and desperate Democrats tried to paint as sympathetic to neo-Nazis who provoked violence in that city.
While McAuliffe’s campaign has denied any involvement in the stunt, the presence of a Democrat operative in the group of five holding the tiki torches seems to indicate that is not true.
To make matters still worse, McAulliffe’s communication director was discovered to have made some ill advised, albeit racist tweets, which he was forced to apologize for on Friday.
“I want to profoundly apologize and use this as a moment to grow and learn from my mistakes,” said Renzo Olivari to Breitbart News. “When I was in high school student [sic], I tweeted things that were clearly unacceptable. I am ashamed and I profoundly regret what I tweeted.”
Screen captures of the since deleted tweets show what he said:
“#TweetLikeAGuy going out with da nigguhs,” and “#ThingsBlackFolksNeverThrowAway broken lamps.”
Terry McAuliffe’s comms guy kinda sounds like a racist. pic.twitter.com/7IE32ECWGE
— Arthur Schwartz (@ArthurSchwartz) October 29, 2021
Referring to the ridiculous tiki torch stunt, Youngkin told Breitbart News Saturday:
“These [are] political tricks that are just divisive and beyond the pale and have no place in Virginia or any politics,” and Terry McAuliffe is showing his true colors, and people are rejecting it,” Youngkin said.
Here’s the crowd in Alexandria, where Glenn Youngkin is delivering his stump speech at a farmers’ market this morning. pic.twitter.com/CiUTW4UCHQ
— Eric Bradner (@ericbradner) October 30, 2021
“Virginians are absolutely rejecting this partisan, divisive politics that’s been the trademark of Terry McAuliffe’s 43-year political career. I mean, he’s the Godfather of [the] modern day progressive Democratic party, and he’s seeing it all fail,” the upstart politician and successful businessman said. “He’s seeing it crash down on him because Virginians are rejecting it.”
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