– Over Half Of Hillary’s Private Meetings As Secretary Were With Donors Who Paid $156 Million:
In the latest confirmation that Hillary’s receipt of donations while Secretary of State was a conflict of interest at best and criminal cronyism and “favor peddling” at worst (it would be ideal if the DOJ could chime in here, however the just as conflicted Department of Justice, which is headed by a 1999 Bill Clinton appointee, has decided to avoid the topic of the Clinton Foundation for obvious reasons), AP reports that more than half, or at least 85 of 154 people from private interests who met or spoke to Clinton while she led the State Department, donated to her family charity or pledged commitments.
Combined, the 85 donors contributed as much as $156 million. At least 40 donated more than $100,000 each, and 20 gave more than $1 million.
Plenty of overlaps in meetings between Secretary of State Clinton and foundation donors. https://t.co/OKkzyjJSPQ pic.twitter.com/pAltaKwcYc
— AP Politics (@AP_Politics) August 23, 2016
The 154 number did not include U.S. federal employees or foreign government representatives: separately, Hillary met with representatives of at least 16 foreign governments that donated as much as $170 million to the Clinton charity, but they were not included in AP’s calculations because such meetings would presumably have been part of her diplomatic duties, but most likely resulted in such “quid pro quo” as the fast-tracking of weapons deliveries to countries such as Saudi Arabia.
Getting the information was, understandably, not easy. Despite the data being technically public, Hillary did not want the world to know just how many wealthy “donors” she is beholden to. As a result, the AP first sought Clinton’s calendar and schedules three years ago, but delays led the AP to sue the State Department last year in federal court for those materials and other records. The AP’s findings represent the first systematic effort to calculate the scope of the intersecting interests of Clinton foundation donors and people who met personally with Clinton or spoke to her by phone about their needs.
Hillary’s calendars and emails released as recently as this week describe scores of contacts she and her top aides had with foundation donors.
“There’s a lot of potential conflicts and a lot of potential problems,” said Douglas White, an expert on nonprofits who previously directed Columbia University’s graduate fundraising management program. “The point is, she can’t just walk away from these 6,000 donors.”
That is indeed the point, and while she was Secretary of State, not only did she not walk away from donors, but she greeted them with open arms. As to what favors were exchanged for the cash, we may never know.
Among the generous donors who were granted time with Clinton included an internationally known economist who asked for her help as the Bangladesh government pressured him to resign from a nonprofit bank he ran; a Wall Street executive who sought Clinton’s help with a visa problem and Estee Lauder executives who were listed as meeting with Clinton while her department worked with the firm’s corporate charity to counter gender-based violence in South Africa.
For those still unclear how one buys not only America’s top diplomat, but the entire Department of State, here are some details. Incidentally, for best results, donate to both the foundation and directly:
Some of Clinton’s most influential visitors donated millions to the Clinton Foundation and to her and her husband’s political coffers. They are among scores of Clinton visitors and phone contacts in her official calendar turned over by the State Department to AP last year and in more-detailed planning schedules that so far have covered about half her four-year tenure.
S. Daniel Abraham, whose name also was included in emails released by the State Department as part of another lawsuit, is a Clinton fundraising bundler who was listed in Clinton’s planners for eight meetings with her at various times. A billionaire behind the Slim-Fast diet and founder of the Center for Middle East Peace, Abraham told the AP last year his talks with Clinton concerned Mideast issues.
Others opted to give just to the Foundation. Big Clinton Foundation donors with no history of political giving to the Clintons also met or talked by phone with Hillary Clinton and top aides, AP’s review showed. What is more interesting is the clear case of give and take as shown in the following anecdote involving one Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi businessman whom Clinton repeatedly assisted even though in the end his bank was confsicated.
Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi economist who won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for pioneering low-interest “microcredit” for poor business owners, met with Clinton three times and talked with her by phone during a period when Bangladeshi government authorities investigated his oversight of a nonprofit bank and ultimately pressured him to resign from the bank’s board. Throughout the process, he pleaded for help in messages routed to Clinton, and she ordered aides to find ways to assist him.
American affiliates of his nonprofit Grameen Bank had been working with the Clinton Foundation’s Clinton Global Initiative programs as early as 2005, pledging millions of dollars in microloans for the poor. Grameen America, the bank’s nonprofit U.S. flagship, which Yunus chairs, has given between $100,000 and $250,000 to the foundation — a figure that bank spokeswoman Becky Asch said reflects the institution’s annual fees to attend CGI meetings. Another Grameen arm chaired by Yunus, Grameen Research, has donated between $25,000 and $50,000.
As it turns out, Yunus may have had quite a few shady dealings behind his back, so many in fact that Bangladesh ultiamtely seized control of his bank, even as the State Department did everything in its power to help him out.
As a U.S. senator from New York, Clinton, as well as then-Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry and two other senators in 2007 sponsored a bill to award a congressional gold medal to Yunus. He got one but not until 2010, a year after Obama awarded him a Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Yunus first met with Clinton in Washington in April 2009. That was followed six months later by an announcement by USAID, the State Department’s foreign aid arm, that it was partnering with the Grameen Foundation, a nonprofit charity run by Yunus, in a $162 million commitment to extend its microfinance concept abroad. USAID also began providing loans and grants to the Grameen Foundation, totaling $2.2 million over Clinton’s tenure.
By September 2009, Yunus began complaining to Clinton’s top aides about what he perceived as poor treatment by Bangladesh’s government. His bank was accused of financial mismanagement of Norwegian government aid money — a charge that Norway later dismissed as baseless. But Yunus told Melanne Verveer, a long-time Clinton aide who was an ambassador-at-large for global women’s issues, that Bangladesh officials refused to meet with him and asked the State Department for help in pressing his case. “Please see if the issues of Grameen Bank can be raised in a friendly way,” he asked Verveer. Yunus sent “regards to H” and cited an upcoming Clinton Global Initiative event he planned to attend. Clinton ordered an aide: “Give to EAP rep,” referring the problem to the agency’s top east Asia expert.
Yunus continued writing to Verveer as pressure mounted on his bank. In December 2010, responding to a news report that Bangladesh’s prime minister was urging an investigation of Grameen Bank, Clinton told Verveer that she wanted to discuss the matter with her East Asia expert “ASAP.”
Clinton called Yunus in March 2011 after the Bangladesh government opened an inquiry into his oversight of Grameen Bank. Yunus had told Verveer by email that “the situation does not allow me to leave the country.” By mid-May, the Bangladesh government had forced Yunus to step down from the bank’s board. Yunus sent Clinton a copy of his resignation letter. In a separate note to Verveer, Clinton wrote: “Sad indeed.”
Clinton met with Yunus a second time in Washington in August 2011 and again in the Bangladesh capital of Dhaka in May 2012. Clinton’s arrival in Bangladesh came after Bangladesh authorities moved to seize control of Grameen Bank’s effort to find new leaders. Speaking to a town hall audience, Clinton warned the Bangladesh government that “we do not want to see any action taken that would in any way undermine or interfere in the operations of the Grameen Bank.”
At that point we assume Yunus’ political (and financial) goodwill with Clinton courtesy of his prior donations, had ran out.
Then there was Blackstone:
In another case, Clinton was host at a September 2009 breakfast meeting at the New York Stock Exchange that listed Blackstone Group chairman Stephen Schwarzman as one of the attendees. Schwarzman’s firm is a major Clinton Foundation donor, but he personally donates heavily to GOP candidates and causes. One day after the breakfast, according to Clinton emails, the State Department was working on a visa issue at Schwarzman’s request. In December that same year, Schwarzman’s wife, Christine, sat at Clinton’s table during the Kennedy Center Honors. Clinton also introduced Schwarzman, then chairman of the Kennedy Center, before he spoke.
Blackstone donated between $250,000 and $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation. Eight Blackstone executives also gave between $375,000 and $800,000 to the foundation. And Blackstone’s charitable arm has pledged millions of dollars in commitments to three Clinton Global aid projects ranging from the U.S. to the Mideast. Blackstone officials did not make Schwarzman available for comment.
There are various other examples of outside donors purchasing benefits from Hillary, although for the full picture to emerge, they would all have to be revealed to connect all the dots, and that will likely never happen.
The good news for Hillary – if bad for Donald Trump – is that the meetings between Hillary and foundation donors do not appear to violate legal agreements Clinton and former president Bill Clinton signed before she joined the State Department in 2009. However, as AP puts, it, “the frequency of the overlaps shows the intermingling of access and donations, and fuels perceptions that giving the foundation money was a price of admission for face time with Clinton.”
As Indiana Senator Richard Lugar, who had previously grilled Hillary on her Foundation ties, said he hoped that the Clintons would make a “clean break from the foundation”
“The Clintons, as they approach the presidency, if they are successful, will have to work with their attorneys to make certain that rules of the road are drawn up to give confidence to them and the American public that there will not be favoritism,” Lugar said.
Alas, it is far too late for that, because if the above confirms anything, it is that Hillary was the undipusted master of merging the US State Department – an organization tasked with helping all the people, not just those who donated to her personal charity – with the Hillary Foundation, and thus, with the “charitable organizations” ultra wealthy sponors. For her next act, she will repeat the same merger, only this time it will involve the US presidency.
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