The Clinton Foundation has been the subject of long-standing allegations of questionable donations and reporting. It is also viewed by many critics as a massive shadow campaign structure that employed aides and funded Clinton trips. However, the most serious allegation was a type of pay-to-play scheme where foreign and domestic donors gave money in the hopes of currying favor or gaining access to the State Department. Now, Judicial Watch has released dozens of emails that were deleted improperly by the Clinton staff, but contain non-personal communications. Among the recovered emails are communications showing interventions for donors at the State Department, including one on behalf of a convicted money launderer. The relative lack of coverage on both the proof of the improper deletion of such emails and the pay-for-play concerns is astonishing — and magnify concerns that mainstream media has been giving such controversies minimal coverage.
Clinton turned over 30,000 emails and repeatedly insisted that some 30,000 deleted emails were entirely and clearly personal in nature. That has been proven to be untrue. More importantly, the emails contain clear interventions for donors. Clinton just recently denied any such connection between the Foundation and State Department business. However, in one email exchange, Doug Band, an executive at the Clinton Foundation, intervened for Gilbert Chagoury — a convicted money launderer — with the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon. Band emphasizes that Chagoury is a “key guy there [Lebanon] and to us” and asks Clinton aide Huma Abedin call Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman on behalf of Chagoury. Chagoury was a major donor to both the Foundation and is a close friend of former President Bill Clinton. He also pledged $1 billion to the Clinton Global Initiative. He was convicted in 2000 in Switzerland for money laundering, but cut a deal to avoid jail time.
The Clinton campaign does not address the fact that this was one of many emails improperly deleted and only recovered through court orders. However, the campaign did insist that “Neither of these emails involve the Secretary or relate to the Foundation’s work. They are communications between her aides and the President’s personal aide, and indeed the recommendation was for one of the Secretary’s former staffers who was not employed by the Foundation.”
Another email showed the revolving door between the foundation and State with an effort by aides to find a position for a foundation associate. Clinton Foundation official Doug Band told Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin that it is “important to take care of (redacted).” Abedin then assured Band that “Personnel has been sending him options.”
Also deleted was an email from Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, on the effort of the National Security Agency and State Department officials to develop a modified blackberry for Clinton that might be used when she worked in a restricted State Department office that did not allow private phones. It was clearly a government-related email and one that bore directly on what the FBI Director later found to be careless handling of classified communications by Clinton and her aides.
It is hard to see how the Clinton aides could have read these emails and deleted them as purely personal matters. One would think that such clearly improper deletions would generate more media scrutiny of tens of thousands of emails unilaterally deleted by the Clinton staff.
@KCfleming
re: “Hillary could eat a live baby on TV, blood dripping from her lips, and they’d still vote for her.”
Yup, just like my bumper sticker: “I don’t care how many people she’s killed”
Hilbots are delusional.
@GaryT
Johnson is pro TPP – some libertarian!! The TPP will erode our sovereignity.
@Sandi
Women are too emotional to be leaders? And Thatcher was good for the UK? She was a nightmare – the UK is still recovering from reign of error. Merkel was a good leader until she decided Germany would take in a million refugees with no plan of what to do with them. If the DNC had not destroyed Bernie we were hoping that he would have run with Tulsi Gabbard.
Now she is a woman I admire – smart, accomplished, a combat vet, and strong.
Sorry, I apologize Karen. I meant to respond to Sandi.
slohrrs29,
I agree. This is a good idea for everyone. We need parallel institutions to the govt. and her ideas are a good way to go.
The govt. has set up its own institutions. It’s time that we the people did the same.
Karen,
I don’t know how you can look at history and call the male “leaders” we have “stable” and unemotional. That would only be true if anger, rage and impulsiveness are not emotions. (Many genocides have been committed by males for example.) Good governance does not have a gender, rather it has a set of qualities. Those qualities are distributed throughout the population without regard to gender, color, sexual orientation or class (to name a few).
Emotions are neither bad nor good, only actions can have those qualities. It’s important to have emotional responses to things. It’s also important to have insight.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/09/politics/hillary-clinton-emails-judicial-watch/index.html
Both of the major parties candidate offering to the American people are of the lowest of the low for public service.
They both are hugely lacking in quality in the service of America, but there are distinctions
Trump’s problems go skin deep, he is a blowhard and an expedient, but I don’t believe he is corrupt to the core and as a matter of course, at worst he is a buffoon and a figurehead whose deficits can easily be taken up and supplemented by the support people around him, most significantly Pence, who has governmental executive experience.
Trump’s projected corruption, if any, will be simplistic and out in the open, and just not sophisticated. Whatever he may do bad, will be obvious and thusly insignificant in scope.
Clinton however, puts on a good face, I believe a convincing mask of acceptability and respectability.
But, EVERYTHING we know about her, leads us to finding hidden agendas, corruption behind the scenes – that we are just lucky to find out about, manipulation of influence and power, and ineffectual administration and duplicity in even that. Her false outrage and practiced emotions only serve her in form, and cover an always scheming approach.
So, Trump would be awful, but Clinton would be dastardly and Golemesque. Once in power she would hold all the strings, and be able to more effectively hide the things she has been caught doing.
She would eat our Nation’s executive branch from the inside out, with a fine veneer still remaining, and we wouldn’t know about it until it was way too late.
Of course I personally don’t face a dilemma on who to vote for, as a card carrying Libertarian.
It is that much more of an easy choice this year, to vote Gary Johnson and Bill Weld.
https://www.facebook.com/govgaryjohnson/videos/10153265650874364/
I hope women who are going to vote for Hillary because she is a woman at least spend some time reading about this. They won’t. Women are too emotional to be President. Margaret Thatcher was able to ignore emotion and made decisions based on facts. Hillary proved time and time again that, as Secretary of State, she made bad decisions. A military response to the attacks in Benghazi should have been a ten-second decision. Instead we got no decision to help and many arguments against. We know how Hillary would respond to our being attacked. I don’t see Donald Trump doing nothing. Obama “we don’t leave people behind” listened to Valerie and Michelle and did nothing. That Hillary didn’t resign because of no response is a big reason not to vote for her. Panetta should have resigned also. I think we’ll see more of the survivors closer to the election. We’ve seen so many “iffy” stuff from the Clintons. I’d like to be rid of it.
@vinegart
That was a fantastic link! I tried to comment, but couldn’t get logged in. I was going to suggest that they change their font type to something more readable.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
It’s far too late to do anything about it.
Most of America has been taught to favor the Big Corrupt State running every inch of our lives (or we’ve let them immigrate from authoritarian/communist regions and they believe it already).
Saying ‘Hillary is corrupt’ is like saying she breathes.
Yea? So?
A huge number in the US will vote for her regardless.
Hillary could eat a live baby on TV, blood dripping from her lips, and they’d still vote for her.
The US is dead. Gone.
Might as well shout at some clouds.
http://i.imgur.com/91sn32Q.jpg
Karen S, it’s not our fault. Rather, it is the mainstream media, lying and covering up.
Intellectuals are freaks
WHy professors, pundints, and policy wonks misunderstand the world
http://thesmartset.com/intellectuals-are-freaks/
Karen makes the good point. As we know, learning can be a painful process. How much pain do we need to endure to actually pay attention and be objective without referring to our egocentric sense of self? Can we mess up here again, put in office a clearly bad person who will have to direct ability to start the downfall of civilization? We’re on a tripwire now, it wouldn’t take much. Do we really think she even considers the results of her actions? I don’t know if we can have the chance to work this one out. We may all be plowed under as history has to start again.
Jill, I find your article of interest; however, I don’t think it applies just to the black community. I think it is the foundation of how most communities came to be in the first place. This system that develops over time, kind of like the stages of forest development, really is the heart of civilization. It could be argued that government, in an attempt to control this process, ultimately damages it, by attempting to correct problems that are actually just signs of transition. But we know humans are demanding and impatient, and do not want to wait years, or lifetimes to benefit from this process. My point is that we should reject the divisive propaganda (as you point out), and the economic process described in the article should be for everyone, and not a subset of a population. I do not see how competing economies work in the long run. Interestingly, Squeeky posted an alarming paper a couple of weeks ago about how municipalities are gambling away future tax revenue to pay for current projects. I am watching that unfold in my community once again. This demonstrates the egotistical and self-serving nature of government at the outset; the bottom, starter levels. Somehow, we have to make government not as powerful, and not to be perceived to ever need be as powerful as it is now. However, I don’t have a solution to offer. One idea would be to make furious examples of people like Hillary Clinton by prosecuting her for every possible charge that has basis.
IS Trump really running for President???
@al
re”As Bernie has said: Enough of the damn emails already!”
That was his mistake as he was so focused on issues. Bernie did not realize he was debating with a craven serpent. However, he was/is a catalyst for radical change.
Get it through your head – we are never, ever going to vote for HRC
And there are millions of us out there. then combine us with the Trumpsters.
This is an absolutely heartbreaking testament to our own culpability in the corruption of our government. This is not Hillary Clinton’s fault. This is our fault. Voters did not take the trouble to check her. They kept voting for her, excusing her, and enabling her. She is like that grownup that is totally out of control, without good values and character, and a criminal because Mom and Dad checked out of parenting.
@Jill
You said, “The intellectual class is easily manipulated because they are most likely to believe they cannot be manipulated. It takes only an appeal to their vanity and they are off and running with the talking points, cheering murder and torture all the way!”
Absolutely! But there is also the “you are good!” element. It is not just that liberals convince themselves they are smart, in spite of all objective evidence to the contrary, but that they are morally superior to conservatives. That liberals have empathy and pity, even though Somersault Maugham said pity was a hostile emotion. This is where you pick up all the “Republicans are racisssst! racebaiting silliness.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
So true Ralph!
When Dick Cheney had his “private” energy taskforce set up in the WH, I knew he was avoiding public disclosure of his dirty deeds. But once this happened: “It is reported that CREW’s request followed the news that Lisa Jackson, Obama’s former top EPA official, used an alias email account for government business named after her dog.” I was fine with it because I love Obama. And now I’m totally fine with Clinton because I know she is great, just like Obama!
You know, a funny thing happened to me this morning. I woke up to a whole new world and I no longer despise Hillary Clinton. In fact, I like everything about her, and now firmly believe that she will be the best person to lead the great United States of America. I also believe that everyone else should now feel exactly the same way. It is useless to resist. We must all fall in line. I think my complete metamorphosis may have something to do with these strange pods that I saw in my basement before I retired. But, of course, we all know that these things never really happen; not even in a metaphoric sense.
slohrrs29,
The govt./corporate amalgam has broken us down into micro groups which they target using specific techniques geared towards each subset of the population. I don’t think Goebbels was less intelligent than these manipulators are, probably he was more so. But he didn’t have Fmri and tracking software that today’s oligarchy deploys against us. And I agree, it has been very effective.
The intellectual class is easily manipulated because they are most likely to believe they cannot be manipulated. It takes only an appeal to their vanity and they are off and running with the talking points, cheering murder and torture all the way!
It is hard to know how to confront this. I feel cultivating intellectual land ethical integrity is a must. Altruism is important as well. Right now the govt./corporate amalgam is promoting extreme narcissism. They create empTy lives which are filled only by the hope of being a “celebrity”.
i ran into an interesting idea that makes a lot of sense to me (not all of it, but most). I wanted to share it with you.
http://www.vice.com/read/how-black-co-ops-can-fight-institutional-racism