On Monday, Judicial Watch (JW), a conservative government watchdog group, released its findings that President Obama’s closest advisor, Valerie Jarrett, has had close ties to Communists for decades. Thanks to files released to JW by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Jarrett’s father, grandfather, and father-in-law all “had extensive ties to Communist associations and individuals.”
Jarrett’s father, Dr. James Bowman, worked closely with a paid Soviet agent named Alfred Stern, who fled the country after being charged with espionage. Bowman was also a member of the pro-communist group the Association of Interns and Medical Students, which, according to the FBI, “has long been a faithful follower of the Communist Party line.”
Jarrett’s maternal grandfather, Robert Taylor, also had close ties to Stern while her father-in-law, Vernon Jarrett, was a major communist sympathizer in Chicago, according to the FBI’s files. For a period of time, Vernon Jarrett was on the FBI’s Security Index as a potential communist saboteur who was to be arrested immediately in the event of a conflict with the Soviet Union. Vernon Jarrett was assigned by the party the responsibility for writing anti-American propaganda for a Communist Party front in Chicago that would “disseminate the Communist Party line among [Chicago’s] middle class.”
Those files also show her family’s close ties to Obama’s mentor, Communist Frank Marshall Davis, on whom the FBI also had extensive files.
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Valerie Jarrett, officially President Obama’s senior advisor and assistant for public engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs, runs a staff of 35 people who have been developing policy for the White House ever since Obama’s election in 2008.
Jarrett’s influence with Obama is remarkable. As Dr. Paul Kengor, a professor of political science at Grove City College and a long-time investigator of communist activities in the United States, put it, “Valerie Jarrett is President Obama’s single most important and influential adviser. No one else in the White House, or the entire administration, is as close to Obama. She has been described as everything from his ‘right-hand woman’ to like a sister and even a mother to Obama.”
The New York Times says Jarrett is Obama’s “closest friend in the White House”, his “envoy,” his “emissary,” his “all-purpose ambassador,” and the “ultimate Obama insider.” Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank says Jarrett’s connection with Obama is “deep and personal” and that she is “the real center of Obama’s inner circle.”
Much about Valerie Jarrett’s communist background was left unsaid by Judicial Watch. Jarrett’s mother, for example, was a co-founder of a propaganda ministry to young children called the Erikson Institute. The institute is currently funded with grants from left-wing foundations such as the Joyce Foundation and the Woods Fund of Chicago. The institute’s board has been populated by hard-core leftists and communists such as Tom Ayers (the father of lifelong Marxist Bill Ayers, another Obama insider), and Bill Ayers’ wife, revolutionary terrorist Bernardine Dohrn.
Also left unsaid by JW was that Jarrett’s grandfather, Robert Taylor, was involved with various communist front groups such as American Peace Mobilization and the Chicago Civil Liberties Committee, along with Frank Marshall Davis.
Vernon Jarrett’s communist background was also far more extensive than that revealed by JW and its FBI files. Vernon was the first nationally syndicated black columnist for the pro-communist Chicago Defender, where he wrote columns praising the communist poet Langston Hughes and hard-left Stalinists W.E.B. DuBois and Paul Robeson. Vernon also served as a leader in the Chicago chapter of American Youth for Democracy, the youth wing of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA).
In summing up the remarkable confluence of communist influence in Valerie Jarrett’s family background, professor Kengor wrote, “Obama’s mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, worked with the relatives of Valerie Jarrett … in Chicago’s Communist Party circles in the 1940s…. So imagine where we are today: Barack Obama, Frank Marshall Davis’ political godson, and Valerie Jarrett, daughter-in-law to Vernon Jarrett and granddaughter of Robert Taylor … are the two dominant figures in the White House.”
To say that Jarrett has “influence” in the Obama administration vastly understates her importance. According to a November 2014 article in New Republic, “Jarrett holds a key vote on Cabinet picks … and has an outsized say on ambassadorships and judgeships.… She has placed friends and former employees in important positions across the administration.”
By her own admission, Jarrett holds massive sway over the Obamas: “We have a kind of mind meld. Chances are, what he wants to do is what I’d want to do … I kind of know what makes them who they are.”
One of those chosen by Jarrett was the self-identified communist revolutionary, Van Jones, who wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near his position as green jobs czar in March 2009 without her influence. In fact, Jones “did not [even] go through the traditional vetting process,” said a White House official. But once Jones was in, Jarrett gushed over the new revolutionary joining the team: “We were so delighted to be able to recruit him into the White House. We were watching for him … for as long as he’s been active.”
He lasted only until September 2009 when his blatant revolutionary background came to light, which Jones said was the result of “a vicious smear campaign against me.” Jones is now exercising his skills as a senior fellow at the leftist Center for American Progress as well as a senior advisor at Green for All. He is also serving as a “distinguished” fellow at Princeton University and at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
Jarrett’s influence over Obama extended to his overzealous remarks following the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Lewis Gates. She persuaded him to withdraw those remarks, as they were rightfully perceived to be disrespectful to local police.
Her influence also extends to foreign affairs. Author Richard Miniter, writing in Leading From Behind, noted that Jarrett repeatedly urged Obama not to kill Osama bin Laden, resulting in the president cancelling that mission three separate times.
She also used her influence to benefit her friends and benefactors. She actively promoted Solyndra, the California-based solar-panel company, in which George Kaiser, one of her wealthiest Chicago connections, just happened to have a 35-percent share. On Jarrett’s advice, Obama visited and publicly extolled the wonders of the company in 2010 even while its finances were unravelling. In September 2011 the company declared bankruptcy, leaving the U.S. taxpayers holding the bag for $535 million in government-backed loans.
Her view of the proper role of government was on display in an interview in September 2011 when she said,
We have to give people a livelihood so they can provide for their families…. [President Obama’s] is a moral vision … based deeply in values and taking care of ‘the least of these.’ And making sure that we are creating a country that’s a country for everybody, not just for the very, very wealthy. We are working hard to lift people out of poverty and give them a better life, a footing, and that’s what government is supposed to do.
She’s also vicious and vindictive. In unedited comments from one of Jarrett’s staffers, Jarrett exclaimed in November 2012: “After we win this election, it’s our turn. Payback time. Everyone not with us is against us and they better be ready because we don’t forget. The ones who helped us will be rewarded; the ones who opposed us will get what they deserve. There is going to be hell to pay.”
She is also, according to author and journalist Ed Klein, the driving force to keep Hillary from taking the White House in 2016. It was Jarrett who leaked the information about Hillary’s e-mails to the press, doing so “through people outside the administration, so the story couldn’t be traced back to her or the White House.” In addition, wrote Klein:
At Jarrett’s behest, the State Department was ordered to launch a series of investigations into Hillary’s conduct at Foggy Bottom, including the use of her expense account, the disbursement of funds, her contact with foreign leaders and her possible collusion with the Clinton Foundation. Six separate probes into Hillary’s performance have been going on at the State Department. I’m told that the email scandal was timed to come out just as Hillary was on the verge of formally announcing that she was running for president — and that there’s more to come…. With Obama’s approval, Valerie has been holding secret meetings with Martin O’Malley and Elizabeth Warren. She’s promised O’Malley and Warren the full support of the White house if they will challenge Hillary for the presidential nomination.
Apparently, there’s more than one Communist in the White House, and the most influential one may not even be the president.
A graduate of an Ivy League school and a former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at www.LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics.
