By John Merline | Issues
& Insights
A quick review of the flagrantly corrupt
dealings of the Clinton Foundation is in order.
When Hillary took the job of secretary of state under
President Barack Obama, she promised that the foundation wouldn’t accept
foreign donations. It took in money from at least seven foreign governments.
Documents showed that 85 of the 154 private
interests who met with Clinton at the State Department had donated money to the
foundation.
Emails unearthed by Judicial Watch showed
that Clinton’s top aide, Huma Abedin – who worked for both the State Department
and the foundation – gave “special expedited access to the secretary of
state” for those who gave $25,000 to $10 million.
Peter Schweizer’s book “Clinton Cash” exposed other
unsavory entanglements between the foundation, government policy, and the
Clintons’ pocketbooks.
As the late great columnist Charles Krauthammer put it, the
foundation was “a massive family enterprise disguised as a charity” that was
intended to help restore the Clintons to power.
All the evidence you need that the Clinton Foundation was
a corrupt enterprise is contained in the nearby chart, which shows grants and
contributions each year, along with relevant developments in Hillary Clinton’s
career.
Donations hit $134 million in 2010, the year after she
became secretary of state. They stayed close to that level through 2016. The
moment Clinton lost the election, donations cratered. They went from $217
million in 2016 to $26 million in 2017. Just months after Clinton’s
loss, the foundation fired 22 staffers and shuttered the Clinton Global
Initiative part of the foundation.
As soon as political access to the Clintons
became worthless, so did the foundation.
The fact that Obama’s highly politicized
Justice Department and the partisan mainstream press didn’t aggressively
investigate the foundation on public corruption grounds is hardly
surprising.
When Trump took office, he pushed the Justice Department
to see why the probe of the foundation went nowhere.
The Washington Post described it as nothing more than an
attempt to “mollify conservatives clamoring for more investigations of Hillary
Clinton” about “vague corruption allegations” involving the Clinton Foundation.
Vague? There wasn’t anything vague about it. Compared
with the accusations against Trump, the corruption is crystal clear.
What is vague, however, is what the Post was reporting.
While it says that the inquiry by U.S. Attorney John Huber found nothing to
pursue, it adds, without explanation, that “the assignment has not formally
ended and no official notice has been sent to the Justice Department or to
lawmakers.”
Then, buried deep in the story, the Post reports that
Huber’s inquiry was limited by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to
determining “whether any matters not currently under investigation warrants the
opening of an investigation, whether any matters currently under
investigation require further resources or further investigation, and whether
any matters would merit the appointment of a special counsel.”
The fact that Huber apparently decided that neither a new
investigation nor a special counsel was needed, and that Justice didn’t require
additional resources for matters “currently under investigation” hardly
amounts to a vindication of Clinton.
Nor should it. Can anyone look at that chart and honestly
say that the foundation was nothing more than an influence-peddling machine?
Does anyone believe that the Clintons weren’t aware of this? Does anyone
want to argue that this isn’t a textbook case of public corruption?
Well, yes. Reporters do.
Immediately after the Post story ran, we saw headlines
such as:
“Surprise, Surprise: The DOJ’s Hillary Clinton
Investigation Has Been a Bust,” and “Clinton investigation was baseless from
beginning,” and “Another vindication for Clinton as probe reportedly hits dead
end.”
The mainstream press has become a less reliable dispenser
of facts and arbiter of truth than the public relations department of the
Democratic National Committee.
______________
IN
OTHER NEWS
BOOKER QUITS THE RACE
By PAUL
MIRENGOFF | POWERLINE
Cory Booker has just announced that he is dropping out of the presidential race. He explained:
I got in this race to win, and I’ve always
said I wouldn’t continue if there was no longer a path to victory. Our campaign
has reached the point where we need more money to scale up and continue
building a campaign that can win — money we don’t have, and money that is
harder to raise because I won’t be on the next debate stage and because the
urgent business of impeachment will rightly be keeping me in Washington.
With Booker and Kamala Harris out, the only
remaining African-American is Deval Patrick. His campaign is
so hopeless that some readers might not know he is running. Very few Americans
do.
Race mongers may be unhappy about the lack of
African-American candidates, but black Democrats probably
aren’t. Their candidate is Joe Biden, with Bernie Sanders as the second
choice.
I never expected Booker to be the nominee, but I thought
he’d make a stronger showing than he did. He’s an impressive speaker and, more
than anyone else in the field, seemed like an heir to Barack Obama.
This wasn’t just a matter of race, although that
certainly was part of it. Obama was a member of a state champion high school
basketball team and a president of the Harvard Law Review. Booker played
football for Stanford and was a Rhodes scholar.
Obama was a local activist in Chicago. Booker was an
activist in Newark, and became that city’s mayor.
Both served in the Senate. Both have real presence on the
stage. Both can weave a compelling yarn.
So why didn’t Booker gain traction? I’m not sure.
I have heard left-wing Democrats complain about his ties
to Wall Street. Maybe that was a factor.
Booker is also less adept than Obama at
faking sincerity. His trademark hand over heart doesn’t get
the job done. If anything, it seems like a “tell.”
Perhaps there is a sense of “been there, done
that” when it comes to Obama.
However, I have to think
that if Booker had fit the Obama bill better than he did, he would easily be in
the mix for the nomination.
Booker can now devote his full attention to the Senate
trial of President Trump. That’s unfortunate because Booker will undoubtedly
use that stage to grandstand and distort.
Indeed, unless we’re lucky, he will invent.
Booker excels
at that.
