Pro-Trump fundraiser accused over $6.8m fraud says it’s all ‘that b****’ Hillary Clinton’s’ fault
David Schamens claims to have testified against Hillary Clinton before a secret grand jury in 1997, purporting to have evidence of illegal campaign contributions ‘out of China’
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The treasurer of a pro-Trump PAC has blamed "that b**** Hillary Clinton" for his arrest over an alleged Ponzi scheme that funded his lavish lifestyle.
David Schamens told The Daily Beast in an interview that Ms Clinton’s alleged political vendetta and his support of Donald Trump was behind the Justice Department’s charge that he duped investors out of $6.8m.
"That’s where this all started," Mr Schamens said of Ms Clinton. "With that b**** Hillary Clinton… I had my computer seized, I had all my information seized, my daughter and my wife had automatic weapons pointed at them when they took it at 6 o’clock in the morning on August 31st."
The Justice Department on Monday charged Schamens, 64, with one count of wire fraud, securities fraud and money laundering over the alleged scheme to defraud at least 25 people through several investment funds starting in 2014.
Under the promise of annual rates of return between 12 to 30 per cent, Schamens allegedly diverted at least $6.8m to repay earlier investors, while also funding the purchase of a house, payments for a luxury car, and other personal expenses.
"Schamens took several steps to keep his customers’ trust, including sending false account statements; posting false monthly account statements to his companies’ websites showing balances for trading accounts that did not exist; and sending false tax documents reporting earnings that did not exist," the Justice Department alleged in a statement.
Schamens, however, told the Beast that it was all a "made up" witch hunt over Ms Clinton’s supposed vendetta. He claimed to the outlet that he “testified against Hillary Clinton in a secret grand jury in 1997".
He purported to have evidence of “millions of dollars in illegal campaign contributions out of China. So you can draw your conclusions from that”.
Mr Schamens added that allegations in the Justice Department’s search warrant affidavit were "100 per cent false" but that he didn’t have time to "get into it now".
“But I’ll tell you something—I’m not happy. I’m tired of living in this country and being attacked if you’re on the wrong side of the political spectrum… If you’re not with the right group, they will come after you… In this country, politics has now been criminalized. That’s what’s going on here,” he told the Beast.
Mr Schamens also said he shared evidence against Ms Clinton with Mr Trump, and claimed that Mr Trump promised: "Don’t worry, Dave. We’ll get her".
Mr Schamens’ pro-Trump PAC America Comes First, meanwhile, was found by a ProPublica investigation to have disobeyed campaign finance laws.
In its TV ad titled "Email Servers are a Joke", the PAC lampooned Clinton’s dismissal of deleting government emails off her private server as a national security issue she doesn’t take seriously.
“Trump takes it seriously,” the ad said.