Havana’s man in America: A MAGA nominee files as Castro’s agent
Originally published by Washington Examiner.
Picture the situation: A crime family runs an island as its personal police state. The head of the family, the ancient don, exercises power from behind the scenes as the padrino or Godfather, dispensing favors in exchange for loyalty.
The don’s grandson, an underboss known as The Crab, interfaces with the outside world and insulates the don from his enemies.
The crime family’s grip is faltering. The head of an allied crime family had just been snatched and awaits trial in a New York jail. Now a federal grand jury has indicted the Godfather for murder. It’s The Crab’s job to protect him. He needs to make some deals.
The island is Cuba. The Godfather is Raul Castro. His underboss grandson, Raul Guillermo Rodridugez Castro, is The Crab. The Crab heads the General Department of Personal Security, the section of the Cuban KGB to protect his grandfather and the rest of the Communist Party leaders.
Enter a MAGA Republican running for Congress in Rhode Island. He’s a successful businessman with a sizable Florida construction business. He sees how deals are now made in Venezuela, whose ruling crime family boss, Nicolas Maduro, had been snatched on Trump’s command.
Big business deals, subject to U.S. approval, still go through the decapitated regime because that’s how the U.S. government set it up. The candidate says he wants to make his tiny state No. 1 in the nation in doing business with Cuba once the old order is gone.
The Crab is the point man. So the candidate navigates his Cuban American networks in Florida to get a meeting with The Crab. The candidate is public about what he’s doing in Havana. He and The Crab meet not once, but twice. The candidate returns home and registers with the Justice Department as a foreign agent for The Crab, his security directorate, and the Ministry of Interior.
The Ministry, known as MININT, is the enforcement arm of the Cuban Communist Party that runs the police, secret police, prisons, foreign spies, and more.
The registered agent who says he isn’t an agent
He says he went to Havana twice last spring to meet with The Crab and other Cuban officials, delivering humanitarian aid through local churches, while exploring business opportunities for Rhode Islanders.
Mellor registered with the Department of Justice on June 16 under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA. He says that despite registering as a foreign agent, he isn’t one at all.
In a Rhode Island TV interview posted a month after registering, Mellor insisted he was “absolutely not” acting as a Cuban agent, and that he is working for Rhode Island “on my own time and my own dime.” Asked explicitly if there was anything apart from pure business development in Cuba, Mellor said: “There’s nothing beyond that, no.”
In his Oct. 12 interview with this writer, Mellor said he had done nothing at all for The Crab or the regime.
“I have had zero contact with anybody from the Cuban government since I left,” Mellor said.
Read more HERE.
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