The Strange Patrícia Lélis Bolin Story
Lélis further claims former Attorney General William P. Barr knew of the fraud and used burner phones to communicate and conceal the scheme.
. . . Lélis reported the visa fraud scheme to the FBI, which she claims triggered her prosecution while others involved remain uncharged.
Indicted in January 2024, Lélis faces 19 charges, including wire fraud, unlawful monetary transactions, and aggravated identity theft. She is accused of defrauding immigrants by posing as a lawyer and soliciting payments for fraudulent E-2 and EB-5 visa services.
Project Veritas reviewed hundreds of text messages, emails, and documents, confirming a September 2022 text from Attorney Clyde Vanel to Patrícia Lélis. In it, Vanel directs her to finalize the business plan for [a Peter and Vivienne Reis' E-2 visa application] as a “back-up” measure, instructing her to act as his “paralegal” assistant without credentials. Vanel claims the visa scheme is foolproof, stating that former Attorney General William P. Barr bypasses standard government processes to expedite and “automatically approve” visas for their “business partners.”
A January 12, 2024 Justice Department press release confirming the indictment is here. The circumstances it outlines are these:
Patricia De Oliveira Souza Lelis Bolin, 29, a resident of Arlington [Virginia], posed as an immigration lawyer able to help foreign clients obtain E-2 and EB-5 visas to the United States. The EB-5 program provides lawful permanent residency, and possible citizenship, if a foreign national invests substantial funds—typically, a minimum of $1 million—in qualifying job-creating enterprises in the United States.
According to the indictment, on September 22, 2021, Lelis Bolin sent a legal retainer agreement to a victim for help in obtaining EB-5 visas for the victim’s parents. The victim made two initial payments totaling over $135,000 based on Lelis Bolin’s representation that the money was going into a Texas real estate development project that qualified for the EB-5 program. Instead, the victim’s money is alleged to have gone into Lelis Bolin’s personal bank account. Rather than investing the money as promised, Lelis Bolin allegedly used it for a downpayment on her Arlington townhouse, bathroom renovations, and paying other personal expenses, such as credit card debt.
According to the indictment, to cover up the scheme and to obtain more money, Lelis Bolin allegedly provided a victim with a fabricated U.S. District Court pleading with a false case number showing her as the litigating attorney. Lelis Bolin is not a licensed attorney. She is also alleged to have falsified U.S. immigration forms, forged multiple signatures, and created fake receipts from the Texas investment project, all of which she emailed to a victim. Lelis Bolin also allegedly created false personas associated with the Texas investment fund and sent emails from those individuals to try to obtain even more money.
According to the first Project Veritas link,
Lélis alleges she’s being set up as the fall-guy in an ongoing DOJ cover-up to protect the powerful ‘deep state’ individuals involved.
. . . hired in 2021 by Armstrong Williams’ media company, Howard Stirk Holdings, [she] claims she was pulled into a visa fraud scheme to secure U.S. visas and green cards for wealthy clients, including the parents of Superordinary CEO Julian Reis, a former JP Morgan trader and hedge fund founder. Lélis alleges that Williams and his legal counsel, NY Assemblyman Clyde Vanel, instructed her to craft business plans for fake companies, like “Reis Cosmetics,” to obtain E2 Investor Visas, which allow foreign nationals to work in the U.S. by investing in a business.
. . . Lélis further stated, “Bill Barr knows the companies that they launched for the visa was not real companies.” She revealed a suspiciously swift visa approval process, including a mere 10-minute interview in Singapore for Julian Reis’ parents, expedited through Barr’s connections. “After they got their visas, I discovered they do not have any plan to open and operate the company. So, it’s basically like they create a fake company that I helped to create with them,” she said.
Projexct Veritas then alleges that Pam Bondi is trying to cover this up:
Project Veritas sought to present evidence of this visa scheme to U.S. Department of Justice officials, who took no action. An anonymous government source has informed us of an ongoing cover-up within the Department of Justice, including by Attorney General Pam Bondi.
This is hard to believe; I'm simply not in the camp that thinks Bondi and Patel are trying to pull punches or slow-walk investigations. However, the second link above contains allegations that may not be entirely connected to those in the first link:
A whistleblower, currently under indictment by the U.S. Department of Justice and granted political asylum in an undisclosed foreign country, has provided Project Veritas with explosive evidence alleging secret meetings orchestrated by former U.S. Attorney General William P. Barr, media figure Armstrong Williams, and other prominent Washington, D.C., insiders to plan the prosecution of President Donald Trump, his allies, and January 6 defendants.
. . . Project Veritas examined photos dated March 15, 2022, of Armstrong Williams and Bill Barr, alongside Lélis’ corresponding notes from a meeting at Sinclair Broadcast Group. The notes detail discussions revealing Barr was in talks with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and special prosecutor Jack Smith about planning prosecutions in Florida, Georgia, and New York. Lélis recorded that Barr predicted an FBI raid on Trump’s home would occur “soon.” Five months later, the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago.
Project Veritas also verified a January 19, 2023, text from Williams to Lélis confirming a planned meeting between Bill Barr and Fani Willis. Notes from February 27, 2023, confirm the meeting took place, with Barr advising Willis to pursue RICO charges against Donald Trump. Lelis stated, “Bill Barr was like, we should bring RICO because it's a very difficult type of charge to defend,” noting Barr described the charge as broad and challenging to counter under U.S. law.
. . . Lélis reported Armstrong Williams and Bill Barr to the FBI in June 2023 for their secret meetings and the visa fraud scheme exposed in Project Veritas’ Part 1. Text messages reveal panic from Williams and his associates upon learning of the FBI report. Lélis faced a barrage of threats and demands to return meeting notes and other documents she recorded during her employment, suggesting their authenticity and a frantic effort to conceal these covert meetings.
It’s critical to highlight that Project Veritas was first tipped off to this story by Department of Justice officials troubled by an apparent DOJ cover-up to pin Barr’s actions on Lélis. A Trump DOJ official stated, “Barr has put the entire FBI after this woman to get the documents she has.”
There can be no question that William Barr turned against Trump in the final days of his first administration. He submitted an early resignation effective December 23, 2020, and began a process of distancing himself from Trump. According to Wikipedia,
Barr testified to the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack behind closed doors on June 2, 2022. Portions of his videotaped testimony were presented during the committee's public hearings days later. Barr testified that before resigning as attorney general, he had told President Trump that allegations of election fraud were "bullshit." At times during his testimony he could not control his laughter at the absurdity of some fraud allegations. . . . Barr testified Trump never gave "an indication of interest in what the actual facts were," adding the president had "become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff."
Acccording to The Guardian,
Former attorney general William Barr came to the defense of the FBI and the justice department’s (DoJ) judicial request to search Donald Trump’s Florida home and country club compound last month, saying Friday that documents seized in the search appeared to support the department’s claims of a national security risk.
“As more information comes out, the actions of the department look more understandable,” Barr told the New York Times in an interview.
“It seems to me they were driven by concern about highly sensitive information being strewn all over a country club, and it was taking them almost two years to get it back,” he said.
The former attorney general, who resigned in December 2020 as Trump ramped up his claims that the election has been rigged, also dismissed Trump’s call for an independent review of materials confiscated from Mar-a-Lago by a “special master”.
“I think it’s a crock of shit,” Barr said. “I don’t think a special master is called for.”
This blog has never been a friend of William Barr. In 2022, I wrote,
Why is this man not smiling? Based on all the images I find on the web, William P Barr has got to be one of the saddest, angriest men in current public life. . . . The man is rich. He's respected. He's in demand as a talking head. No doubt his mere stroke of the pen will get any candidate into Dalton, Horace Mann, Hackley, whichever, not to mention Columbia. I think it's because of Trump. I think it's because Trump hasn't gone away. Trump is the wrong kind of Republican, not like, say, Jeb Bush. And that has him awfully, awfully angry. Why did he ever agree to become Trump's attorney general? That's a good question, wouldn't you say?
I don't think there's any question that after he left as Trump's Attorney General, Barr went to meetings trying to forestall Trump's return. On the other hand, if the meetings were with the likes of Armstrong Williams, they would have been exercises in fecklessness, not really conspiracy. But then, Lélis Bolin says he also helped plan the Mar-a-Lago raid with Jack Smith, which would be a different matter altogether. Still, he was 70 when he quit the Trump administration, a bitter old man, his law career effectively over no matter how hard he tried to rehabilitate himself with the establishment, so I suspect he can't be taken seriously as an active conspirator.So this is probably little more than an interesting footnote and mostly for me an indication that he was never especially bright. But I could also be wrong.
