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Bill and Hillary have accumulated quite a nest egg using dubious practices.


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2015 May 17, 9:33pm   12,702 views  33 comments

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NICOLE GELINAS
The Kickback Kids
Peter Schweizer’s new book documents the Clintons’ disturbing financial dealings.
May 17, 2015

PHOTO BY STEVE POPE/GETTY IMAGES
Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, by Peter Schweizer (Harper, 256 pp., $27.99)

George Washington Plunkitt, a late- nineteenth-century New York State legislator, made his extra money in a straightforward way. “I seen my opportunities and I took ‘em,” he said after people criticized him for patronage, corrupt land sales, and other business-as-usual Tammany Hall goings-on. But Plunkitt distinguished between “honest graft” and the regular kind. It was okay to steal if the stealing was part of a project for the public good—taking a kickback on, say, building a firehouse. By contrast, it wouldn’t be okay to steal at the expense of the public—say, taking a bribe from someone selling poisonous medicine. Bill and Hillary Clinton are good students of Plunkitt’s first lesson, according to Peter Schweizer’s new bestseller, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich. Since Bill left the presidency, the Clintons seen a lot of opportunities—and took ‘em all.

Last year, Hillary confessed her and her husband’s chief motive over the 14 years since they left the White House: money. She told Diane Sawyer that the family was “dead broke” in 2001 when Bill’s presidency ended. In the White House, she said, “we struggled to, you know, piece together the resources for mortgages, for houses,” and for daughter Chelsea to begin attaining her four college degrees. After the White House years, “you know, it was not easy. Bill has worked really hard . . . . He had to make double the money because of, obviously, taxes . . . and get us houses and take care of family members.”

Looking for a way to stay on top, the Clintons perfected a modern private-public business model: the Clinton Foundation, a charity with the noble-sounding goals of making people around the world healthier and of slowing global climate change. Running a charity, much less a charity operating in Africa, South America, and other global trouble spots, is complicated work, and the Clintons had no experience. No matter: hundreds of millions of dollars poured in. Donors gave to the foundation itself and to Bill directly for making speeches. Between 2001 and 2012, Bill made $105.5 million in such speeches.

During those 12 years, Hillary served her country, first as senator from New York and later as secretary of state. “No one has even come close in recent years to enriching themselves on the scale of the Clintons while . . . a spouse continued to serve in public office,” writes Schweizer. As Hillary moved from Capitol Hill to Foggy Bottom, Bill’s fees went up, especially from governments and business leaders overseas—both prohibited from donating to American candidates or political parties.

Reputable investors shy away from getting involved in places like Nigeria, Russia, Colombia, and Kazakhstan, seeing too much corruption. Not the Clintons. “Bill flew around the world making speeches,” Schweizer writes. “Very often on these trips he was accompanied by ‘close’ friends . . . who happened to have business interests pending in these countries . . . . Meanwhile, bureaucratic or legislative obstacles were mysteriously cleared or approvals granted with the purview of his wife.” The happy ending? “Huge donations . . . flowed into the Clinton Foundation while Bill received enormous speaking fees underwritten by the very businessmen who benefited.”

Let’s take the most egregious example, which New York Times reporters independently verified. In 2009, Rosatom, a state-owned Russian nuclear company, started buying up Uranium One, a Canadian firm that owned significant uranium assets in America, thanks to deals that several longtime Clinton associates from Canada had put together in the early 2000s (another interesting story that Schweizer tells). Uranium is an ingredient in nuclear weapons; Russia buying up American uranium is a big deal for several reasons, one of which is that Moscow provides Iran with nuclear materials and technology. The Rosatom deal required State Department approval, through the secretary’s position on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. In 2010, Hillary’s State Department helped wave the Russians through. A few years earlier, she had condemned the George W. Bush-era committee for approving the United Arab Emirates’ purchase of American ports. As Schweizer paraphrases her thinking, “there is a significant difference between a private company and a foreign government entity” buying American assets.

Follow the money trail to see Hillary evolve from being a hawk to a dove here. “Several multimillion-dollar Clinton Foundation donors were at the center” of the Uranium One sale, Schweizer writes. Over the years, people involved in the deal had given or would give more than $145 million to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One’s chairman, Ian Tefler, a Canadian, indirectly gave more than $2 million when Hillary was secretary of state. The Obama administration likely never knew about it, though, despite the Clintons’ pledge to disclose key foreign donations to the State Department. Tefler, a Canadian, made the donation through Fernwood, his own foundation, but Fernwood’s disclosures to Canadian tax authorities don’t jibe with those made by the Clinton Foundation.

It gets worse. Between 2010 and 2012, the Clinton Foundation and Bill himself took $2.6 million in donations and a speech fee from Salida Capital Foundation, another Canadian entity. Salida itself had just received a $3.3 million anonymous donation. Schweizer uncovered a subsidiary of Rosatom called Salida Capital. “If it were the same firm,” Schweizer writes, “an entity owned and controlled by Rosatom funneled millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation at the very time Hillary would have been involved in deciding whether to approve Rosatom’s purchase of Uranium One.”

As Hillary’s State Department was deciding whether to approve the deal, Bill showed up in Russia to meet with Vladimir Putin and to give a half-hour speech there, his first in five years. His fee was $500,000, paid by a company called Renaissance Capital. The Clintons told the State Department that RenCap is an investment bank, but they failed to note that, since Putin took over Russia in 2000, RenCap has become “populated by former Russian intelligence officers with close ties to Putin,” as Schweizer writes. One Putin associate held two jobs from 2006 to 2009: domestic-intelligence officer and RenCap first vice president.

It is hard not to conclude that Hillary Clinton took money from Putin’s Russian spies just as the State Department that she controlled had a key role in approving Russia’s purchase of key American nuclear assets. The money just took a circuitous route. The Uranium One deal fails Plunkitt’s “honest graft” test. As Schweizer writes, “the Russian purchase of a large share of America’s uranium assets raised serious national security concerns.”

In 2010, Haiti suffered a catastrophic earthquake. The impoverished nation would require billions in foreign donations to rebuild. Who got himself put in charge of directing those donations? Bill Clinton, as co-chairman of the Interim Haitian Relief Committee. Where would much of the relief money come from? Hillary Clinton, via the U.S. Agency for International Development, a State Department arm. USAID approved cash for a “mobile money initiative” run by Ireland’s Digicel, whose owner, Denis O’Brien, is a key Clinton patron. Bill and Hillary, directly or indirectly, also approved Haiti contracts for companies controlled by Clinton sponsors in housing reconstruction and economic development. The housing contractors performed poorly. Here, too, it’s hard to avoid concluding that the Clintons took money out of the hands of Haitian earthquake survivors. The money again took a circuitous route.

From Kazakhstan to Nigeria, from logging endangered forests to exporting gold, the pattern continues: the Clintons side with oligarchs and their favored politicians over powerless people, animals, and trees. In 2005, Bill traveled to Kazakhstan and stood with that country’s dictator, Nursultan Nazarbayev, a human-rights violator. Just before a sham election, Bill “gave [Nazarbayev] the international credibility he craved,” writes Schweizer. Clinton “praised Nazarbayev for ‘opening up the social and political life of your country.’” The year before, Hillary, as senator, had condemned Nazarbayev’s record. But in 2008, she was a no-show for Senate hearings on that record. In between, a friend of Bill who had secured lucrative Kazakh mining concessions began giving the Clinton Foundation tens of millions of dollars.

Schweizer’s deliberate writing style strengthens his case. There’s no sex and few women. The author relies almost entirely on public documents, from State Department cables via Wikileaks to global tax records to foreign-language press accounts. When he isn’t sure of something, he says so. This is no breathless, Clinton-hating book dependent on third-hand speculation. Even Schweizer’s subtitle is careful: “foreign governments and businesses helped make Bill and Hillary rich,” he says. They didn’t do it all.

Media Matters, a watchdog over conservative causes, has blasted Schweizer for errors. Some are genuine mistakes—he cites as a source a fake press release—but much of Media Matters’ criticism dings Schweizer for a key point he preemptively conceded in the book: he cannot prove any explicit quid pro quo, and he cannot prove that Hillary directly intervened in many State Department matters. Media Matters’ critique depends, too, on a recent interview that ABC’s George Stephanopoulos did with Schweizer—in which Stephanopoulos failed to disclose that he, too, had donated heavily to the Clinton Foundation.

If, to defend Hillary, you must rely on debating whether the secretary of state indeed has control over the State Department, or, alternatively, if you must whine that Republicans behave badly, too, you have a weak case. With months’ worth of warning, the Clintons have not answered the overriding question: Why take this money and create even the appearance of a scandal? Do they need the millions that badly?

Hillary, now a presidential candidate, participated in actions that seem little different from the alleged actions that got both the New York State Senate leader and the New York State Assembly leader indicted this year—essentially, bribery. Outside of New York, the abuses of these state officials won’t matter much. It matters a lot, however, that the Russians control much of our uranium. That foreign dictators and oligarchs now believe that the American government is biddable matters, too. Ultimately, American voters will have to decide how much. If Americans elect Hillary president, they can’t blame her or her husband for continuing to hold them in contempt.

http://www.city-journal.org/2015/bc0517ng.html

#housing

Comments 1 - 33 of 33        Search these comments

1   indigenous   2015 May 17, 9:34pm  

I particularly enjoyed the part where she as Secretary of State made uranium deals possible with Russia.

2   🎂 Ceffer   2015 May 17, 11:04pm  

Hildabeast is the next best thing to the Manchurian Candidate.

3   bob2356   2015 May 17, 11:05pm  

Let's see if the Republican National Committee is smart enough to distribute a copy of the book to every household in America.

I was sick of the billary twins in 1992. Why, if there is a merciful god, are they still on this earth?

4   indigenous   2015 May 17, 11:08pm  

I wonder how many of their person characteristics fall into the sociopath range.

5   Entitlemented   2015 May 18, 9:46am  

indigenous says

As Hillary’s State Department was deciding whether to approve the deal, Bill showed up in Russia to meet with Vladimir Putin and to give a half-hour speech there, his first in five years. His fee was $500,000, paid by a company called Renaissance Capital. The Clintons told the State Department that RenCap is an investment bank, but they failed to note that, since Putin took over Russia in 2000, RenCap has become “populated by former Russian intelligence officers with close ties to Putin,” as Schweizer writes. One Putin associate held two jobs from 2006 to 2009: domestic-intelligence officer and RenCap first vice president.

Now it appears that Clintons (Bill) dealings with an Investment firm lined with Ex KGB may undermine the DOD, National Security, and put the US on a path for takeover by Russia and China. Now we really need to know whats in those Emails of Hillary. Was Clinton already working with foreigners and ex KGB during NAFTA negotiations?

6   Dan8267   2015 May 18, 9:52am  

indigenous says

Bill and Hillary have accumulated quite a nest egg using dubious practices.

You mean they're Republicans?

7   socal2   2015 May 18, 10:18am  

Entitlemented says

Now it appears that Clintons (Bill) dealings with an Investment firm lined with Ex KGB may undermine the DOD, National Security, and put the US on a path for takeover by Russia and China. Now we really need to know whats in those Emails of Hillary. Was Clinton already working with foreigners and ex KGB during NAFTA negotiations?

If they were Republicans, they would already be in jail or indicted. If they weren't in jail, they wouldn't be allowed within a mile of running for high office.

Republican Governor from Virginia (Bob McDonnell) got a jail sentence for far far less.
Senator Menendez was indicted on far less too. He's a Democrat, but went against Obama on the Iran deal, so he is not protected.

8   Dan8267   2015 May 18, 10:22am  

socal2 says

If they were Republicans, they would already be in jail or indicted. If they weren't in jail, they wouldn't be allowed within a mile of running for high office.

Your statement is empirically false. Plenty of Republicans have committed crimes including violating the Geneva Convention, arming terrorists, and treason but have not been punished at all. The Clintons committed no crimes as much as you would like them to do so just to get them out of politics.

9   socal2   2015 May 18, 10:37am  

Dan8267 says

The Clintons committed no crimes as much as you would like them to do so just to get them out of politics.

What exactly is the difference between the crimes Bob McDonnell was convicted on and the current allegations against the Clinton slush fund?

Seems to me that there is already enough public information warranting numerous investigations. But the same lap-dog Liberal Media that poured through Palin's trash cans, are doing their very best to protect the Clintons like Stephonoloplous just got exposed doing for ABC. They won't be able to keep it up for long though.

I can't wait for this election cycle. Just wait until they bring up Bill's trips to the Pedophile Island with Epstein. Stephonopolous was there too. This election has the potential to do alot of damage to the Clintons and Democrat brand along with expose the incestuous and corrupt media.

10   HydroCabron   2015 May 18, 11:11am  

socal2 says

Seems to me that there is already enough public information warranting numerous investigations.

Won't someone finally, at long last, investigate the Clintons?

11   socal2   2015 May 18, 11:23am  

HydroCabron says

Won't someone finally, at long last, investigate the Clintons?

The other Prog meme "Clintons are the most vetted couple in human history".

I guess you can try to ride that horse for the next 2 years.

12   dublin hillz   2015 May 18, 11:31am  

Hiillary vs Jeb is exactly what we need to teach the young generation that anyone can succeed if they try hard enough.

13   HEY YOU   2015 May 18, 11:42am  

How many Americans did the Clintons allow to be killed on 9/11? OH! That was Bush & the Republicans.

14   socal2   2015 May 18, 11:50am  

HEY YOU says

How many Americans did the Clintons allow to be killed on 9/11? OH! That was Bush & the Republicans.

Love the desperation we are already seeing. It's palpable.

PLEASE run with this type of rhetoric.

15   Dan8267   2015 May 18, 12:17pm  

socal2 says

What exactly is the difference between the crimes Bob McDonnell was convicted on and the current allegations against the Clinton slush fund?

The allegations, like all those levied against the Clintons for decades by the Republicans, are false. Let me refer you to Townsfolk v. Boy Who Cried Wolf. If you lie enough times, no one will believe you.

16   socal2   2015 May 18, 1:21pm  

Dan8267 says

The allegations, like all those levied against the Clintons for decades by the Republicans, are false.

Monica was false?
Bill lying under oath was false?
Hillary foolishly using her own server was false?
Hillary deleting her emails was false?
Clintons failing to disclose millions in foreign donations was false?

There is soooo much shit coming out now, your only hope is that the sheep just get overwhelmed by the sheer number of scandals and unethical behavior.

Also, when you lost SNL.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/BXdNYXMQoy8

17   Dan8267   2015 May 18, 1:58pm  

socal2 says

Monica was false?

Bill lying under oath was false?

Hillary foolishly using her own server was false?

Hillary deleting her emails was false?

Clintons failing to disclose millions in foreign donations was false?

Monica was false?

Monica was not illegal. The Republicans were trying to entrap Clinton for something they were all doing. While trying to create a sex scandal, Newt Gingrich was cheating on his wife.

Furthermore, the attempts to derail a president with an irrelevant sex scandal greatly interfered with Middle East negotiations. In this way, the Republican Party caused 9/11. That tragedy could have been averted if Republicans didn't interfere with important state business at a critical time in shaping the Middle East.

Bill lying under oath was false?

Correct. Bill Clinton answered the question correctly. He did not volunteer additional information, but he is not required to do so under law. He was asked if he "had sexual relations" with Monica and "sexual relations" is a euphemism for sexual intercourse, not any sexual act. This is clearly the case since what constitutes a sexual act is extremely vague. Is kissing a sexual act? Is holding hands? Is a massage a sexual act? Lawyers are suppose to ask specific, clear questions that can be answered clearly.

The Republicans didn't have the balls to ask Clinton if he received fellatio from Monica. They knew they would be laughed at if they did. So they asked the wrong question and Bill truthfully gave a correct answer to it. It's not Bill's fault that the Republicans were too dumb to ask what they meant to ask.

Now let's contrast this to the lies told by the entire Bush administration that resulted in the deaths of over a million people so far and cost our country trillions of dollars, our good will, and our human and civil rights. You can't even compare the two things.

Also, the Republican Party lied like crazy during the 2000 election committing election fraud to get Bush in office after Gore won the electoral vote. Now that's a lie the American people should remain pissed off at forever.

Hillary foolishly using her own server was false?

This statement is an opinion and therefore is neither true nor false. As to the statement Hilary used a personal email account, while that is true, it did not break ANY law.

Furthermore, if you are trying to suggest that the American public should be pissed off at that because of lack of transparency, then you are a disingenuous hypocritical shit. Bush, while in office, deliberately did not use email so there would be no paper trace. Bush also enacted secret torture chambers, a domestic spying program with no oversight, and classified all the crimes committed during the Iraq War.

If you honestly believed in transparency, you would be calling for the government to issue Edward Snowden the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Hillary deleting her emails was false?

Again, not illegal. And it's highly hypocritical of you to suggest that it is wrong when the Bush administration deleted massive amounts of data to cover up actual crimes like torture.

The Republican Party also gave immunity to the big telecoms who violated anti-wiretapping laws so that the 300 million American victims of those crimes could not sue or even get informed about which ones of their calls were recorded against the law. Now there's something to be pissed off about.

Clintons failing to disclose millions in foreign donations was false?

Again, there is no law being broken and no crime being committed. And, as usual, you conservatives are hypocritical shits because conservatives are the ones behind Citizens United and superpacs and the great influx of money from undisclosed sources including foreign donations (Rupert Murdoch is a foreigner and a known criminal in multiple countries) for the sole purpose of rigging elections.

The bottom line is that no matter how many false allegations conservatives throw against Hillary Clinton, she will be the next president because the American public remembers the Bush administration and the Republican agenda and there is no way the American public is going to let a bunch of chicken-shit, warhawk, sabotaging traitors get into the White House again.

18   HEY YOU   2015 May 18, 2:24pm  

socal2 says: "PLEASE run with this type of rhetoric."

I'll eliminate the rhetoric.
Bush & Rep/Cons were,& always will be,complete failures for failing to protect the American homeland on 9/11 & then killing American servicemen & Iraqi women & children based on a LIE.

19   socal2   2015 May 18, 2:28pm  

Dan8267 says

Furthermore, the attempts to derail a president with an irrelevant sex scandal greatly interfered with Middle East negotiations. In this way, the Republican Party caused 9/11.

Ha ha ha!

Republicans caused 9/11 because Bill was getting blow-jobs from Monica.

PLEASE run with this type of idiocy and do not replace Hillary on the ticket.

20   Dan8267   2015 May 18, 2:59pm  

socal2 says

Republicans caused 9/11 because Bill was getting blow-jobs from Monica.

No, Republicans caused 9/11 because they hindered the prevention of terrorism by negotiating peace in the Middle East, which is exactly what Bill Clinton was doing when they derailed his efforts with a synthetic scandal and politically motivated legal proceedings. Yes, stopping a sitting president from negotiating peaceful relations in and with the Middle East does have dire repercussions.

Feel free to run on the idiotic platform that bad foreign policy has no effect on terrorism.

21   socal2   2015 May 18, 3:45pm  

Dan8267 says

No, Republicans caused 9/11 because they hindered the prevention of terrorism by negotiating peace in the Middle East, which is exactly what Bill Clinton was doing when they derailed his efforts with a synthetic scandal and politically motivated legal proceedings.

You mean Clinton couldn't execute his duties as president and bang interns at the same time? I guess that is an excuse!

Besides, Clinton bombed and killed a bunch of Christian Serbs to prevent genocide of Balkan Muslims during the Monica scandals. He was accused of wagging the dog back then..........along with bombing Iraq. Shouldn't Bin Laden and Al Qaeda have been happy that the US was defending Muslims from a European genocide and going after the secular Baathists?

22   Dan8267   2015 May 18, 4:29pm  

socal2 says

You mean Clinton couldn't execute his duties as president and bang interns at the same time? I guess that is an excuse!

No, I mean Republicans interfered with national defense for political reasons, something those traitors do all the time. Remember when Republicans compromised a CIA agent who was actively preventing terrorists from gaining nuclear weapons? Republicans have no problem destroying our country and killing millions of Americans for their own personal gain.

And for every time they did that, Republicans should have been tried as traitors giving material aid to the enemy in a time of war.

27   indigenous   2015 May 19, 10:55am  

Obligatory

31   Onvacation   2020 Jan 1, 9:42am  

indigenous says
Reputable investors shy away from getting involved in places like Nigeria, Russia, Colombia, and Kazakhstan, seeing too much corruption.

And Ukraine!
32   FortwayeAsFuckJoeBiden   2020 Jan 1, 9:48am  

Left will not say that these bribes are quid pro quo. It’s only quid pro quo if Trump asks to investigate corruption.
33   Onvacation   2020 Jan 1, 9:51am  

socal2 says
Bill's trips to the Pedophile Island with Epstein.

Who did not hang himself!

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