Hillary Clinton is drawing fire from Republicans for attending a fundraiser on Thursday night at the New York City home of onetime Democratic vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro's son John Zaccaro Jr., who was convicted in the 1980s of selling cocaine to a female undercover police officer.
"Hillary Clinton can't seem to kick her decades-long habit of taking money from sketchy campaign contributors," Republican National Committee spokesman Michael Short complained on the
RNC's website. "During her last presidential campaign it was straw donors, now it’s convicted cocaine dealers."
Back when Zaccaro was a 22-year-old student at Middlebury College in Vermont, he was sentenced as a felon after he sold a quarter gram of cocaine for $25 to a 22-year-old undercover policewoman outside the restaurant where he worked tending bar, reports from
The Washington Post from the time show
At his house, police found scales, marijuana and other drug paraphernalia, and in his car, police found eight grams of cocaine, $1,475 in cash, $160 in checks, and what arresting officer called "various miscellaneous papers with drug transactions."
Zaccaro's lawyers called the arrest entrapment, reports
The Washington Free Beacon, saying a pretty policewoman was assigned to persuade him to sell the drug.
Despite pleas from several Democrats, including Walter Mondale, Ferraro's running mate, a Vermont judge gave Zaccaro a
four-month sentence, allowing him to spend the prison term at a $1,500 luxury apartment in Vermont.
The sentence raised outcries from Vermont's Democrat Gov. Madeleine Kunin, who demanded a review of the program that allowed Zaccaro to spend his time at home.
Zaccaro has tried through the years to have his record expunged, the Free Beacon reports, but the Vermont Supreme Court has voted unanimously to reject the motion.
In the years since then, Zaccaro has become a
lawyer, and principal of P. Zaccaro Co., a third-generation full service, privately held real estate investment and management firm.
He also has also established himself as a Democratic fundraiser, reports The Free Beacon, including serving as a member of the Ready for Hillary super PAC's national finance council, contributing $5,000 to the group since 2014. In addition, he's made several political contributions to Clinton since she first ran for the Senate in 2000, and has donated nearly $100,000 to several Democratic candidates and groups.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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