Susan Bonzon Ralston (born October 15, 1967), is public relations and business consultant. Ralston was formerly Special Assistant to President George W. Bush and a deputy to Karl Rove, the Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor at the White House, from 2001 until her resignation in 2006.
Ralston was born in Pennsylvania to Filipino-American parents, Teotimo D. Bonzon and Purificacion Lagman Bonzon. She graduated from Loyola University Chicago with a bachelor's degree with honors, and from Keller Graduate School of Management with a Masters of Business Administration. [1]
Before moving to Washington, D.C., Ralston was an office administrator for M&J Wilkow, Ltd., a commercial real estate firm in Chicago, Illinois. [2] [3] In Washington, she worked for Jack Abramoff, at the legal and lobbying firm of Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds, LLP. In 2001, when Abramoff left Preston Gates to work at Greenberg Traurig, she also changed firms, continuing to work for Abramoff, with the title of assistant director of Governmental Affairs.
Ralston lives near Culpeper, Virginia with her husband Troy. [4] [5]
Ralston was hired in 2001 as the most senior assistant to Karl Rove. Ralston was the Special Assistant to the President and a deputy to Rove, the Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor at the White House for almost six years. She was responsible for managing the activities that comprised the Office of the Senior Advisor, including the development of policy, strategic planning, political affairs, public liaison, and intergovernmental affairs efforts of the White House. She was also responsible for the development and production of presidential and major surrogate events.
As a Filipino-American, Ralston was a member of the presidential delegation to attend the inauguration of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of the Philippines in June 2004. [6] She took part in a bi-partisan exchange to Vietnam in August 2003 that was organized by the American Council of Young Political Leaders (ACYPL). [7]
On July 29, 2005, Ralston testified before federal grand jury prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald, investigating whether government officials illegally disclosed the identity of CIA officer Valerie Wilson. Matthew Cooper made a call sometime in July 2003 to Karl Rove, but there were no records of the call. Ralston claimed there were no records because they had transferred his call. [8]
On January 3, 2006, Jack Abramoff pleaded guilty to conspiracy, and related charges, and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in a corruption probe in Washington. [9] In September 2006, the House Government Reform Committee released a report on Abramoff's dealings with the White House. [10] Ralston resigned on October 6, 2006, after it became known that she had accepted gifts and passed information to Abramoff. [11]
In May 2007, Ralston sought immunity before testifying in front of Representative Henry Waxman's House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. She was deposed in private before asking for immunity. [12] On May 10, 2007, she testified to the United States Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that Rove used a Republican National Committee (RNC) email account daily for most of his official communications as Deputy White House Chief of Staff for Strategic Planning and Senior Advisor to the President, a possible violation of the Presidential Records Act of 1978. [13]
Ralston created SBR Enterprises in 2012. It received $300,000 in funding from the Paul E Singer Family Foundation between 2018 and 2020. [4]
In 2019 Ralston founded Citizens for Responsible Solar, which advocates for the proper siting of utility-scale solar on industrial-zoned land, not on agricultural land. Lisa Lisker is its treasurer. Ralston and others lobbied against a 1600-acre 80 megawatt solar project by BayWa near Culpeper. [4] [5]
In 2020 Ralston also founded Culpeper Battlefield Tours, LLC as a result of her work to preserve historic agricultural land, specifically the Brandy Station Battlefield, the site of the largest cavalry battle of the Civil War. Virginia equestrians study cavalry battle Cavalries clash in Brandy Station
The United States National Security Council (NSC) is the principal forum used by the president of the United States for consideration of national security, military, and foreign policy matters. Based in the White House, it is part of the Executive Office of the President of the United States, and composed of senior national security advisors and Cabinet officials.
Executive privilege is the right of the president of the United States and other members of the executive branch to maintain confidential communications under certain circumstances within the executive branch and to resist some subpoenas and other oversight by the legislative and judicial branches of government in pursuit of particular information or personnel relating to those confidential communications. The right comes into effect when revealing the information would impair governmental functions. Neither executive privilege nor the oversight power of Congress is explicitly mentioned in the United States Constitution. However, the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that executive privilege and congressional oversight each are a consequence of the doctrine of the separation of powers, derived from the supremacy of each branch in its area of constitutional activity.
The White House FBI files controversy of the Clinton Administration, often referred to as Filegate, arose in June 1996 around improper access in 1993 and 1994 to FBI security-clearance documents. Craig Livingstone, director of the White House's Office of Personnel Security, improperly requested, and received from the FBI, background reports concerning several hundred individuals without asking permission. The revelations provoked a strong political and press reaction because many of the files covered White House employees from previous Republican administrations, including top presidential advisors. Under criticism, Livingstone resigned from his position. Allegations were made that senior White House figures, including First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, may have requested and read the files for political purposes, and that the First Lady had authorized the hiring of the underqualified Livingstone.
Jack Allan Abramoff is an American lobbyist, businessman, film producer, writer, and convicted felon. He was at the center of an extensive corruption investigation led by Earl Devaney that resulted in his conviction and 21 other people either pleading guilty or being found guilty, including White House officials J. Steven Griles and David Safavian, U.S. Representative Bob Ney, and nine other lobbyists and congressional aides.
The Plame affair was a political scandal that revolved around journalist Robert Novak's public identification of Valerie Plame as a covert Central Intelligence Agency officer in 2003.
The CIA leak grand jury investigation was a federal inquiry "into the alleged unauthorized disclosure of a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee's identity", a possible violation of criminal statutes, including the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, and Title 18, United States Code, Section 793.
Israel Hernández served as the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for International Trade and Promotion and Director-General of the United States Commercial Service under President George W. Bush. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on October 3, 2005. This U.S. government agency is a global trade office with presence in more than 47 states and 80 countries to protect and advance U.S. trade interestes abroad and provides international business advocacy assistance at the federal, state and local level. In January 2009, Hernandez was appointed to the President's Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations (ACTPN) for a five-year term at the United States Trade Representative's Office in the Executive Office of the President.
On December 7, 2006, the George W. Bush administration's Department of Justice ordered the midterm dismissal of seven United States attorneys. Congressional investigations focused on whether the Department of Justice and the White House were using the U.S. attorney positions for political advantage. The allegations were that some of the attorneys were targeted for dismissal to impede investigations of Republican politicians or that some were targeted for their failure to initiate investigations that would damage Democratic politicians or hamper Democratic-leaning voters. The U.S. attorneys were replaced with interim appointees, under provisions in the 2005 USA PATRIOT Act reauthorization.
During the 2007 Congressional investigation of the dismissal of eight U.S. attorneys, it was discovered that administration officials had been using a private Internet domain, called gwb43.com, owned by and hosted on an email server run by the Republican National Committee, for various official communications. The domain name is an abbreviation for "George W. Bush, 43rd" President of the United States. The use of this email domain became public when it was discovered that Scott Jennings, the White House's deputy director of political affairs, was using a gwb43.com email address to discuss the firing of the U.S. attorney for Arkansas. Communications by federal employees were also found on georgewbush.com and rnchq.org. Congressional requests for administration documents while investigating the dismissals of the U.S. attorneys required the Bush administration to reveal that not all internal White House emails were available. Conducting governmental business in this manner is a possible violation of the Presidential Records Act of 1978. Over 5 million emails may have been lost. Greg Palast claims to have come up with 500 of the Karl Rove emails, leading to damaging allegations. In 2009, it was announced that as many as 22 million emails may have been lost.
A detailed chronology of events in the dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy.
The White House Office is an entity within the Executive Office of the President of the United States (EOP). The White House Office is headed by the White House Chief of Staff, who is also the head of the Executive Office of the President. The staff work for and report directly to the president, including West Wing staff and the president's senior advisers. Almost all of the White House Office staff are political appointees of the president, do not require Senate confirmation and can be dismissed at the discretion of the president.
Barry Steven Jackson is the former chief of staff to U.S. House Speaker John Boehner. He served as Chief of Staff to John Boehner from 2011 to 2012. He also served as Senior Advisor to the President for George W. Bush.
Karl Christian Rove is an American Republican political consultant, policy advisor, and lobbyist. He was Senior Advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff during the George W. Bush administration until his resignation on August 31, 2007. He has also headed the Office of Political Affairs, the Office of Public Liaison, and the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives. Rove was one of the architects of the Iraq War.
Beth Nolan was vice president and general counsel of the George Washington University. She was also Bill Clinton's final White House Counsel, as well as the first woman to hold the office. Prior to serving as White House Counsel, Nolan worked in other White House and Department of Justice positions, taught law, and worked in private practice.
Christopher P. Lu is a Chinese American political advisor who serves as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations for Management and Reform. He is also an alternative representative to the United Nations General Assembly during his tenure as Representative for Management and Reform. In the Obama administration, Lu served as the United States Deputy Secretary of Labor from 2014 to 2017, the White House Cabinet Secretary and Assistant to the President from 2009 to 2013, and the co-chair of the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Lu graduated from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University and from Harvard Law School, where he was a classmate of Obama's.
Pablo E. Carrillo is a one-time admiralty lawyer from New Orleans, Louisiana, who was U.S. Senator John McCain's chief of staff. In that capacity, Carrillo led McCain's investigations of the Jack Abramoff tribal lobbying scandal and the KC-X Boeing tanker scandal, which McCain referred to extensively throughout his campaign.
Todd Boulanger is an American lobbyist. He was senior vice president of Cassidy & Associates and was a figure in the Jack Abramoff scandal.
Catherine M. Croft is a United States Department of State official who has served as a special advisor for Ukraine both in the State Department and on the United States National Security Council. Croft testified in closed-door hearings before the House Intelligence, Oversight and Foreign Affairs committees in October 2019.
Ashley Danielle Etienne is an American political advisor who served as the communications director for Vice President Kamala Harris. She is the former communications director and senior advisor to Nancy Pelosi, the first woman and person of color to hold the position of Communications Director for the House Speaker. She was also a former special assistant to Barack Obama.
Anthony M. Ornato is the former assistant director of the United States Secret Service Office of Training. He was the service's deputy assistant director who headed the security detail of president Donald Trump until taking a leave of absence when the president named him White House Deputy Chief of Staff for operations in December 2019. After his tenure as a political appointee in the Trump administration, he returned to the Secret Service where he worked as the assistant director in the office of training until August 29, 2022.
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