White House Invites Gabonese Tyrant into the Oval Office

Morgan Lorraine Roach / June 10, 2011

President Obama has kept at least one campaign promise: agreeing to meet with nefarious world leaders.

Yesterday, President Ali Bongo Ondimba from Gabon added his name to the guest book at the White House. As director of Heritage’s Margaret Thatcher Center, Nile Gardiner, states, “In yet another display of extraordinarily bad judgment, the Obama Administration is extending the hand of friendship to another prominent tyrant.” Such actions are unbecoming of an American President.

Bongo and his family, the subjects of a 2010 Senate Subcommittee on Investigations Special Report, are known for using lobbyists, family connections, and U.S. trust accounts to bring $18 million in suspect funds into the United States. For decades, family members used the United States as a piggy bank to store their dirty money. According to a recent report by ABC News this should be hardly surprising, as the political dynasty has “siphoned off 25 percent of the gross domestic product of the country.” (more…)