I & I Editorial BoardLast week, the Washington Post reported that the Justice Department had wound down a Hillary Clinton-related inquiry after finding “nothing of consequence.” That set off a series of Hosannas from the allegedly non-partisan press, which seems to notice quid pro quos only when they involve a Republican.
A quick review of the flagrantly corrupt dealings of the Clinton Foundation is in order.
When Hillary took the job of secretary of state under President Barack Obama, she promised that the foundation wouldn’t accept foreign donations. It took in money from at least seven foreign governments.
Documents showed that 85 of the 154 private interests who met with Clinton at the State Department had donated money to the foundation.
Emails unearthed by Judicial Watch showed that Clinton’s top aide, Huma Abedin – who worked for both the State Department and the foundation – gave “special expedited access to the secretary of state” for those who gave $25,000 to $10 million.
Peter Schweizer’s book “Clinton Cash” exposed other unsavory entanglements between the foundation, government policy, and the Clintons’ pocketbooks.
As the late great columnist Charles Krauthammer put it, the foundation was “a massive family enterprise disguised as a charity” that was intended to help restore the Clintons to power.
All the evidence you need that the Clinton Foundation was a corrupt enterprise is contained in the nearby chart, which shows grants and contributions each year, along with relevant developments in Hillary Clinton’s career.
Donations hit $134 million in 2010, the year after she became secretary of state. They stayed close to that level through 2016. The moment Clinton lost the election, donations cratered. They went from $217 million in 2016 to $26 million in 2017. Just months after Clinton’s loss, the foundation fired 22 staffers and shuttered the Clinton Global Initiative part of the foundation.
As soon as political access to the Clintons became worthless, so did the foundation.
The fact that Obama’s highly politicized Justice Department and the partisan mainstream press didn’t aggressively investigate the foundation on public corruption grounds is hardly surprising.
When Trump took office, he pushed the Justice Department to see why the probe of the foundation went nowhere.
The Washington Post described it as nothing more than an attempt to “mollify conservatives clamoring for more investigations of Hillary Clinton” about “vague corruption allegations” involving the Clinton Foundation.
Vague? There wasn’t anything vague about it. Compared with the accusations against Trump, the corruption is crystal clear.
What is vague, however, is what the Post was reporting. While it says that the inquiry by U.S. Attorney John Huber found nothing to pursue, it adds, without explanation, that “the assignment has not formally ended and no official notice has been sent to the Justice Department or to lawmakers.”
Then, buried deep in the story, the Post reports that Huber’s inquiry was limited by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to determining “whether any matters not currently under investigation warrants the opening of an investigation, whether any matters currently under investigation require further resources or further investigation, and whether any matters would merit the appointment of a special counsel.”
The fact that Huber apparently decided that neither a new investigation nor a special counsel was needed, and that Justice didn’t require additional resources for matters “currently under investigation” hardly amounts to a vindication of Clinton.
Nor should it. Can anyone look at that chart and honestly say that the foundation was nothing more than an influence-peddling machine? Does anyone believe that the Clintons weren’t aware of this? Does anyone want to argue that this isn’t a textbook case of public corruption?
Well, yes. Reporters do.
Immediately after the Post story ran, we saw headlines such as:
“Surprise, Surprise: The DOJ’s Hillary Clinton Investigation Has Been a Bust,” and “Clinton investigation was baseless from beginning,” and “Another vindication for Clinton as probe reportedly hits dead end.”
The mainstream press has become a less reliable dispenser of facts and arbiter of truth than the public relations department of the Democratic National Committee.
— Written by John Merline
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She is the master of CYA. We can only “hope” that her blue dress appears someday, like bills did.
Compare the Clinton Foundation to the one by Trump which was ruled a con job and had to pay fines for illegal activity.
And why are we discussing this when we are in a sensitive time with the greatest test of politics and Democracy in our age right now?
No wonder trump fired his first AG. The guy was worthless as well as a swamp creature.
Its amazing what you can get away with, when you bleach bit and hammer away evidence. And a crooked cop doesn’t charge for you with obstruction of justice and destroyed evidence.
All I can figure is that after nearly three decades with their fingers in so many political pies that the Clintons must have some serious dirt on a lot of influential people. Not mere creatures of the swamp so much as masters of it. Combined with a fully supportive media and a carefully cultivated victim complex bought hook, line, and sinker by a willingly self-deluded public, they are truly made of teflon.
Look for Chelsea to continue in Mommy Dearest’s foodsteps.
Well you geniuses controlled the White House, the congress and the courts, why didn’t you do something about it? I suspect you were all too incompetent to figure out where the courthouse is. Or maybe you’d just rather complain 24/7.
Good article, but there is a significant typo: you write, “Can anyone look at that chart and honestly say that the foundation was nothing more than an influence-peddling machine?” The word “nothing” should read “anything”.
Given the corruption at the DOJ, I would think Barr would go over every case with a fine tooth comb. A lot of work but don’t we deserve it?
Barr is having others read all the pages, and it takes a while to go thru 4 million.
Remember the plane full of documents in Little Rock? [2 trips actually] Everyone was speculating as to who/what it could be about, and hoping it had to do with the Clinton Foundation investigations. Is it possibly connected to this ongoing investigation into legislator fraud? In August 2018, Deputy Attorney General Lloyd Warford, said that investigators have at least 4 million documents in a vault and another 200 gigabytes of information they have collected from the Department of Human Services.
Furthermore, on January 4, 2018, the Justice Department launched a new inquiry into whether the Clinton Foundation engaged in any pay-to-play politics or other illegal activities while Hillary Clinton served as Secretary of State. As far back as October 31, 2016, The Wall Street Journal reported that FBI field offices in New York, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., and Little Rock had been collecting information on the charity for more than a year.
2 part story here – https://www.coreysdigs.com/clinton-foundation/arkansas-swamp-part-ii-spotlight-on-clinton-foundation/
They get one chance to try the case, so don’t want to release until they have it right.
And let’s see how the Malvinder and Shivinder Singh trial goes and if any other information come to light.
You would think that with all the corruption at the DOJ, that Bar would go over all the cases with a fine tooth comb. A lot of work, but aren’t we worth it?
Gee, I guess none of this stuff ever came to the attention of the other dozen-plus investigations into Hillary that the GOP has pursued like a white whale over the past 25 years. Because if they knew about all this, she’d surely have been indicted.
Or all this stuff is already common knowledge, has been investigated nine ways to Sunday and still has turned out to amount to noting. Hmm – which do you suppose it is?
Zeeman, you are one funny person! Are you on the comedy circuit somewhere?
Nice chart. Correlation isn’t causation.
Nice chart. However correlation isn’t causation and anecdotes aren’t evidence. Otherwise you’ve done your best to make “the most exonerated presidential candidate ever” look like she did… something. Anything?
Crooked Hillary was the most corrupt scum ever to seek the presidency in the history of the United States….Secretary of State Crooked Hillary was primarily responsible for American deaths in Benghazi and lied about it,…Crooked Hillary engineered the sale of 25% of the U.S. uranium supply to Russia in exchange for her husband receiving a $500,000 one-time speaking fee in Russia,…. The Clinton Foundation collected hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions in 2016 when Crooked Hillary was the presumptive future president according to the polls. Do you believe those contributions were based on Crooked Hillary’s good looks or on pay-for-play politics?…..Crooked Hillary pathetically conspired with Donna Brazille to cheat during the third and most critical presidential debate by stealing the confidential sealed questions in advance in order to develop prepared answers….Crooked Hillary’s campaign paid for the infamous Christopher Steele dossier to smear President Trump with what they knew to be salacious lies and fictions in the failed Crime of the Century to steal the 2016 election ….. and Crooked Hillary destroyed incriminating evidence in the middle of a Congressional investigation against her, yet got exonerated from prison time for a slam dunk Felony Obstruction of Justice conviction by Obama goon Loretta Lynch and other high-ranking officials in the Justice Department of the corrupt Obama administration.
I think you may be biased.
Influence peddling and money laundering. Imagine how wealthy the Clintons would become if she had been elected. We’d be paying rent to every rogue nation on the planet. Mind boggling.
Instead of taking orders from Putin?
>sigh< What a tiresome trope. Can’t you do better?
Another investigation into the most investigated person in the history of the world and the best you can come up with is “no official notice has been sent to the Justice Department”. I demand another investigation.
And while we on it- that Bengoozi stuff- was an official notice ever sent?
Your Hillary obsession is pathetic and embarrassing.
Grow up.
Is commenting about news involving Hillary an obsession? Please clarify.
Acquiring and distributing charitable funds is not corrupt unless the funds are not actually used for charitable purposes or if the distribution was conditioned on – let’s say – a quid pro quo.
By contrast the Trump family operated their charity as as their personal piggy bank until the state forced them to close it down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_J._Trump_Foundation
Boy I know a lot of charities that would appreciate receiving $25 million in donations a year (Clinton Foundation in 2017, 2018). Their work and quality are described here “https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=6903”. You can insinuate anything, but in the real world you have to prove it legally.
Oh, for goodness’ sake! Next you’ll be insisting on a reinvestigation into her child-porn ring in the basement of Comet Pizza, the Rose Law Firm, Whitewater, and Vince Foster’s murder. With an administration so viciously and relentlessly bent on punishing the Clintons, you’d think they’d have found something to hang on them by now, if there were anything to be found. Here’s a suggestion — don’t let Hillary Clinton live, rent-free, in your head. Why not investigate the current administration’s alleged and actual corrupt activities — you know, the ones that have actually led to criminal charges, convictions, and jail time?
When you see some of the jail sentences handed down to the great unwashed for minor crimes and then look at arch criminals like Hillary and Biden walking free you just have to wonder what happened.
Just as she disbursed 5 million dollars in payoffs to fellow Dems (verified by FBI inspection of bank statements) for lies against candidate Trump in 2016, Clinton should be prosecuted to establish her as a serial felon.
Her famous quote “What does it matter” is ample evidence that she is a hard stone criminal. Lock Her Up !
Adam of CA.
Except for the fact that she WAS exonerated. Oops; there goes your premise. Better luck next time, I guess.
Oh give it up already! Hillary was cleared of any wrong doing period! This is like Whitewater first the Pillsbury Report exonerates the Clintons but dissatisfied with that outcome the Republicans demand a Special Prosecutor and spend tens of millions of taxpayer dollars only to have the same outcome seven years later!
Sessions = Swamp