One commentator on Wednesday suggested that the real solution for the scandal involving Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Family Foundation – the links between those who visited with her as secretary of state and their donations to the organization – would have been to shut it down in 2009, when she became secretary of state.
Too late.
Which leaves former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s forecast to alarm those on the Clinton campaign staff who constantly are on defense these days over some new allegation of misbehavior: He says it’ll end up being one of the biggest political scandals in America.
Ever.
“I am more than willing to predict, when the history of our day is written, the scandal you are watching unfold is going to be like the Teapot Dome scandal in the 1920s and maybe bigger. It’s going to be bigger than Watergate,” he said at a campaign rally for GOP nominee Donald Trump in Tampa, Florida.
“Nixon had to leave office and he did a lot of bad things, but it wasn’t raking in millions and millions of dollars through a phony charity,” he said. “I’m not sure how much money was involved in the Teapot Dome, but I bet it could not have been much more than the hundreds of millions of dollars the Clintons have been getting and turning the State Department into a pay-for-play operation.”
Daily Caller reported Giuliani was “outraged” at the “numerous, numerous serious federal felonies” Clinton committed.
It was John Cassidy in the New Yorker who suggested the closure should have happened eight years ago.
“It’s getting hard to keep track of all the developments in the story of the Clinton Foundation and Clinton emails,” he wrote.
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But he cited an opinion from the Boston Globe regarding the fracas.
“Even if they’ve done nothing illegal, the foundation will always look too much like a conflict of interest for comfort,” the paper said.
And the progressive Huffington Post ran a headline on its homepage that blared, “JUST SHUT IT DOWN.”
“At this stage, many Democrats (including, I’d guess, some members of the Clinton campaign) just want the Clinton Foundation to go away. But that won’t happen. … A strong argument can be made that the Clinton Foundation should have been closed, or at least thoroughly overhauled, before Clinton became secretary of state, at the start of 2009. But to shut down the foundation now, when it is under severe attack, would only give credence to Trump’s claims that it was never more than a corrupt scheme to enrich its founders and their cronies,” he wrote.
Clinton’s defenders were losing their cool a little bit.
On CNN, Paul Begala, a Democratic activist and senior adviser for Priorities USA Action, “flipped out,” according to the Free Beacon.
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“This is the Associated Press report that both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have now responded to that 85, Hillary Clinton, when she was secretary of state, met with 85 major donors to the Clinton Foundation. They gave something like in total $156 million to the foundation. How is that not paying for access?” host Alisyn Camerota asked Begala.
“How is it?” Begala said.
“They paid money and they got to meet with the secretary of state,” Camerota said.
“And who were they and what did they get? This really infuriates me,” Begala said.
Begala repeatedly talked over Camerota in the interview.
He even made the claim that the Clinton Foundation “keeps millions of people alive.”
The Daily Mail commented, “Her campaign went into spin mode Wednesday, calling the AP’s report an exercise in ‘cherry-picking.’”
“Chief strategist Joel Benenson said the Associated Press report was ‘cherry-picking’ Clinton’s long-hidden schedules from her time as secretary of state,” the report said. “Campaign manager Robby Mook used the exact same word to describe the blockbuster article that dominated Tuesday afternoon’s news cycle.”
Policy Director Stephen Miller for the Trump campaign said in an email, “Secretary Clinton, you claim the AP report is an incomplete accounting of your meetings. Why don’t you clear up any problems with the AP report by releasing all of your schedules from while you were in charge of the State Department?”
Trump’s opinion?
“It is a total embarrassment if our secretary of state can be bought or bribed or sold.”
A new report from the International Business Times also presented some interesting points.
“In May, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Clinton Foundation ‘set up a financial commitment that benefited a for-profit company part-owned by people with ties to the Clintons.’” The benefit was $812,000, but the Journal noted, “Under federal law, tax-exempt charitable organizations aren’t supposed to act in anyone’s private interest but instead in the public interest.”
And it reported in 2010, Clinton “pushed Russia to approve a $3.7 billion purchase from Boeing. Two months after the deal was solidified, reported the [Wsahington Post], Boeing announced a $900,000 contribution to the Clinton Foundation.”
“A 2015 analysis by Vox found that ‘at least 181 companies, individuals, and foreign governments that have given to the Clinton Foundation also lobbied the State Department when Hillary Clinton ran the place.’ IBT reported that Bill Clinton was paid more than $2.5 million by firms that were lobbying Hillary Clinton’s department.”
The report also has details on a coal deal, activity involving Morocco, Algeria, and Colombia.
The result, the IBT said, was “A new political firestorm.”
David Horsey at the LA Times wrote of the foundation and its donors, “No doubt gtood intentions were involved, but, at least for some donors, there was also an interest in getting access to a former president of the Untied States and a possible future president – are at least a secretary of state.”
He continued, “In politics donations buy access. Senators and members of Congress spend an obscene share of their days in office begging for campaign contributions and then many more hours hosting those contributors in private meetings. A secretary of state should be above that. Even though Clinton, herself, did not solicit donations, her husband did and, especially when the money came from foreign powers, that raises concerns both about ethics and foreign policy.
“Appearances are important, even if intentions are pure.”
from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2016/08/24/clinton-foundation-scandal-bigger-than-watergate/
from WordPress https://toddmsiebert.wordpress.com/2016/08/24/clinton-foundation-scandal-bigger-than-watergate/
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