{"id":264962,"date":"2016-09-01T06:10:55","date_gmt":"2016-09-01T06:10:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/hillary-clinton-the-podesta-group-and-the-saudi-regime-a-fatal-menage-a-trois-2\/"},"modified":"2016-09-01T21:15:14","modified_gmt":"2016-09-01T21:15:14","slug":"hillary-clinton-the-podesta-group-and-the-saudi-regime-a-fatal-menage-a-trois-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/hillary-clinton-the-podesta-group-and-the-saudi-regime-a-fatal-menage-a-trois-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Hillary Clinton, the Podesta Group and the Saudi Regime: A Fatal M\u00e9nage \u00e0 Trois"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

If I told you that Democratic Party lobbyist Tony Podesta, whose brother John
\n Podesta chairs Hillary Clinton\u2019s presidential campaign, is a registered foreign
\n agent on the Saudi government\u2019s payroll, you\u2019d probably think I was a Trump-thumping,
\n conspiratorial nutcase. But it\u2019s true.<\/p>\n

The lobby firm created by both Tony and John Podesta in 1988 receives $140,000
\n a month from the Saudi government, a government that beheads nonviolent dissidents,
\n uses torture to extract forced confessions, doesn\u2019t allow women to drive, and
\n bombs schools, hospitals and residential neighborhoods in neighboring Yemen.<\/p>\n

The Podesta Group\u2019s March 2016
\n filing<\/a>, required under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, shows
\n that Tony Podesta himself oversees the Saudi account. At the same time, Tony
\n Podesta is also a top campaign contributor and bundler for Hillary Clinton.
\n So while one brother runs the campaign, the other brother funds it with earnings
\n that come, in part, from the Saudis.<\/p>\n

John and Tony Podesta have been heavyweights in DC insider politics for decades.
\n John Podesta served as President Bill Clinton\u2019s chief of staff, founded the
\n influential DC think tank Center for American Progress (which regularly touts
\n Saudi \u201creforms<\/a>\u201d), and was counselor to President Obama. Tony Podesta was
\n dubbed by The New York Times<\/em> as \u201cone of Washington\u2019s biggest players<\/a>\u201d
\n whose clients \u201care going to get a blueprint for how to succeed in official Washington.\u201d<\/p>\n

The brothers seem to have no problem mixing their roles into the same pot.
\n Tony Podesta held a Clinton campaign fundraiser<\/a>
\n at his home featuring gourmet Italian food cooked by himself and his brother,
\n the campaign chairman. The fundraiser, by the way, came just days after Tony
\n Podesta filed his Saudi contract with the Justice Department, a contract that
\n included an initial \u201cproject fee\u201d payment of $200,000.<\/p>\n

The Saudis hired the Podesta Group in 2015 because it was getting hammered
\n in the press over civilian casualties from its airstrikes in Yemen and its crackdown
\n on political dissidents at home, including sentencing blogger Raif Badawi to
\n ten years in prison and 1,000 lashes for \u201cinsulting Islam.\u201d Since then, Tony
\n Podesta\u2019s fingerprints have been all over Saudi Arabia\u2019s advocacy efforts in
\n Washington DC. When Saudi Arabia executed the prominent nonviolent Shia dissident
\n Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, causing protests throughout the Shia world and inflaming
\n sectarian divisions, The New York Times noted<\/a>
\n that the Podesta Group provided the newspaper with a Saudi commentator who defended
\n the execution.<\/p>\n

The Podesta-Clinton-Saudi connection should be seen in light of the recent
\n media exposes revealing the tawdry pay-to-play nature of the Clinton Foundation.
\n Top on the list of foreign donors to the foundation is Saudi Arabia, which contributed
\n …<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If I told you that Democratic Party lobbyist Tony Podesta, whose brother John Podesta chairs Hillary Clinton\u2019s presidential campaign, is a registered foreign agent on the Saudi government\u2019s payroll, you\u2019d probably think I was a Trump-thumping, conspiratorial nutcase. But it\u2019s true. The lobby firm created by both Tony and John Podesta in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-264962","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire","7":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264962\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}