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Clinton Cash and Washington Corruption

Barry MacDonald — Editorial

Clinton Cash, the Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, by Peter Schweizer. HarperCollins Publishers, 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007, ISBN 978-0-06-236929-1, pp. 243.

Politics has evolved into an elevated art of deception in America: the truth is often beyond the reach of law-abiding Americans, as the doings of the insiders in Washington, D.C., are concealed by layers of complexity.

The bureaucracies create rules and act politically, free from effective Congressional oversight. Even when the bureaucrats are caught in the act of abusing power, there is little Congress can do to control them.

The IRS was caught abusing Tea Party groups, preventing the Tea Party from organizing before the 2012 Presidential election. There were years of Congressional hearings to no effect. Lois Lerner was identified as one of the corrupt officials — she refused to testify before Congress, and was allowed to retire with her bonuses and benefits, without being justifiably prosecuted.

The complete story of the abuse of the Tea Party may never be discovered because the bureaucracy was impenetrable, the Democrats provided cover, the Justice Department wouldn’t investigate, and the media didn’t report the story. Consequently the American people are uninformed of how the IRS was politicized.

The media are mostly in sympathy with big government ideology and serve as effective partners in American politics by ignoring some stories and by promoting narratives in the service of big-government activism.

Through the years the media have become well trained by the left. Like a game of fetch between a spaniel and its owner, when a Democrat creates a talking point and tosses it onto the field of play, reporters exuberantly romp away fetching the narrative and bringing it back for another toss. This is a game of misdirection between the media and Democrats: it keeps the American people focused and agitated on certain issues and directs attention away from other issues.

Within days of the shootings of 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, the news narrative was shifted away from the admitted motives of the shooter, his expressed allegiance to ISIS and Islam’s well-established antipathy towards homosexuals, and onto his choice of weapon — the narrative became about the need for more gun control laws.

After the first Presidential debate the media was cued by Clinton’s closing remarks that Trump had verbally abused former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, and the media dutifully launched the takeaway narrative: Trump’s sexism is over-the-line.

Of course the narrative diverts public attention from Hillary Clinton’s scandalous behavior and her brutal complicity in her husband’s serial abuse of women.  

Americans who care about the goodness of America should take heart. We have people, like Peter Schweizer, who are dogged researchers, who use public records and financial statements to ferret out the truth about Washington insiders and corrupt government.

In his book, Clinton Cash, the Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, Peter Schweizer has revealed the Clinton’s lust for power and greed.

Schweizer writes:

"Any serious journalist or investigator will tell you that proving corruption by a political figure is extremely difficult. Short of someone involved coming forward to give sworn testimony, we don’t know what might or might not have been said in private conversations, the exact nature of a transaction or why people in power make the decisions they do."

Schweizer writes it’s been a “Washington parlor game” among insiders to speculate about the Clintons:

". . . either the Clintons are utterly shameless, cynically assuming they will survive whatever scandal comes their way, or they are so convinced of their own virtue and benevolence that they are able to excuse whatever they have to do in pursuit of their noble ends, no matter how low or unethical."

". . . who else in American politics would be so audacious as to have one spouse accept money from foreign governments and businesses while the other charted American foreign policy? Or would permit one spouse to conduct sensitive negotiations with foreign entities while in some instances the other collected large speaking fees from some of those same entities?"

Before she was appointed Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton signed a memorandum of understanding with the Obama administration.

". . . the Clintons agreed to submit all future paid speeches to the State Department ethics office for review. They also committed to disclose publicly on an annual basis the names of any major donors to the Clinton Foundation and its initiatives. Finally, the Clintons said they would seek preapproval from the Obama administration on direct contributions to the Clinton Foundation from foreign governments or governmental owned businesses."

". . . the claimed commitment to transparency was fleeting. The Clintons violated it almost immediately. As we will see, the Clinton Foundation failed to disclose gifts amounting to millions of dollars from foreign entities and businessmen who needed Hillary’s help as secretary of state to approve a transaction with serious national security implications. The Clinton Foundation also collected money from foreign government-owned businesses without getting prior Obama administration approval."

". . . How did the Clintons amass so much wealth in such a short period of time? The answer makes for fascinating reading."

". . . the Clintons have operated at the fringes of the developed world, often appearing to assist in facilitating huge resource-extraction deals that are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The era of globalization has opened up a Wild West bonanza where profits can be made on a scale not seen since the height of nineteenth-century colonialism. The Clintons’ most lucrative transactions originate not in places like Germany or Great Britain, where business and politics are kept separate by stringent ethical rules and procedures, but in despotic areas of the developing world where the rules are very different. Money also comes from foreign businessmen in Europe or Canada who have amassed their wealth in parts of the world where corruption and payoffs are simply a part of doing business."

How much money have the Clintons made? Schweizer writes:

"The Clinton’s confirmed income between 2001 and 2012 was a least $136.5 million according to the Washington Post. . . . According to financial disclosures, since leaving the White House, Bill has been paid an annual average of over $8 million for giving speeches around the world. The fees he collects are enormous and unprecedented, sometimes as much as $500,000 or even $750,000 per speech."

Which countries courted the Clintons and what did they want?

"The issues seemingly connected to these large transfers are arresting in their sweep and seriousness: the Russian government’s acquisition of American uranium assets; access to vital U.S. nuclear technology; matters related to Middle East policy; the approval of controversial energy projects; the overseas allocation of billions in taxpayer funds; and U.S. human rights policy, to name a few"

". . . tens of millions of dollars had flowed to the Clinton Foundation from the foreign governments of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as from dozens of foreign financiers."

Peter Schwiezer’s book is full of details about foreign financiers who created shell companies for the transversal of money and for the concealment of the sources of money. Schwiezer describes dozens of nefarious characters with whom the Clintons have dealt — some were charged and convicted of crimes, others remain high officials in adversarial nations, such as Russia, and others are African warlords accused of war crimes.

Apart from well-informed experts, Americans don’t knows with whom the Clintons have dealt with — and the American news media isn’t going to report the story with the emphasis it needs.

The Clintons’ operation is like a game of pick-up-sticks: it’s an intimidating pile of interconnected dealings too complex to untangle — except for the most determined truth-seekers like Schwiezer and his team of researchers.

This brief essay provides an overview and Clinton Cash conveys the details. As Schweizer writes, the Clintons are clever lawyers who know how evade the law, but the revealed pattern of behavior is damning.

Americans should take heart, because as long as Americans like Peter Schweizer are able to expose brazen behavior by people who believe they are above the law, law-abiding Americans will have a chance to become informed. There may come a time when such information is pivotal.

Schweizer focuses on the Clintons but he also exposes the government that allows corruption. Hillary and Bill Clinton were selling Hillary’s ability to influence laws while she was a senator, and her ability to implement policy while she was Secretary of State.

How could Americans who are busy with their lives have any idea what the Clintons were doing?

But the same cannot be said of Hillary’s colleagues: her fellow senators, fellow Democrats, fellow bureaucrats, and the journalists in Washington, D.C. The Washington insiders may not have known details, but, surely, they have a much better understanding of the Clintons than law abiding Americans do — and they have chosen to look the other way.     *