Prediction: If Hillary Clinton wins, within a year of her inauguration, she
will be under investigation by a special prosecutor on charges of political
corruption, thereby continuing a family tradition.
For consider what the Associated Press reported this week:
The surest way for a person with private interests to get a meeting with Secretary
of State Clinton, or a phone call returned by her, it seems, was to dump a bundle
of cash into the Clinton Foundation.
Of 154 outsiders whom Clinton phoned or met with in her first two years at
State, 85 had made contributions to the Clinton Foundation, and their contributions,
taken together, totaled $156 million.
Conclusion: Access to Secretary of State Clinton could be bought, but it was
not cheap. Forty of the 85 donors gave $100,000 or more. Twenty of those whom
Clinton met with or phoned dumped in $1 million or more.
To get to the seventh floor of the Clinton State Department for a hearing for
one’s plea, the cover charge was high.
Among those who got face time with Hillary Clinton were a Ukrainian oligarch
and steel magnate who shipped oil pipe to Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions
and a Bangladeshi economist who was under investigation by his government and
was eventually pressured to leave his own bank.
The stench is familiar, and all too Clintonian in character.
Recall. On his last day in office, Jan. 20, 2001, Bill Clinton issued a presidential
pardon to financier-crook and fugitive from justice Marc Rich, whose wife, Denise,
had contributed $450,000 to the Clinton Library.
The Clintons appear belatedly to have recognized their political peril.
Bill has promised that, if Hillary is elected, he will end his big dog days
at the foundation and stop taking checks from foreign regimes and entities,
and corporate donors. Cash contributions from wealthy Americans will still be
gratefully accepted.
One wonders: Will Bill be writing thank-you notes for the millions that will
roll in to the family foundation – on White House stationery?
By his actions, Bill is all but conceding that there is a serious conflict
of interest between his foundation raking in millions that enhance the family’s
prestige and sustain its travel and lifestyle, while providing its big donors
with privileged access to the secretary of state.
Yet if Hillary Clinton becomes president, the scheme is unsustainable. Even
the Obama-Clinton media might not be able to stomach this.
And even Clinton seems to be conceding the game is up. “I know there’s
a lot of smoke, and there’s no fire,” she said in self-defense this week.
She is certainly right about the smoke.
And if, as Democratic apparatchik Steve McMahon assures us that there is “no
smoking gun,” no quid-pro-quo, no open-and-shut case of Secretary Clinton
taking official action in gratitude to a donor of the family foundation, how
can we…