Let's see if we can contextualize this for you: You already know that the Clinton Foundation failed to report tens of millions in foreign donations in their tax documents, a revelation that has forced the organization to re-file at least five years' worth of returns. You also already knew that some of those many undisclosed donations (which violated Hillary's transparency pledge) were related to a troubling transaction in which (a) the Russian government obtained the rights to a large chunk of US uranium interests, (b) investors and magnates connected to the deal profited handsomely, (c) the Clinton Foundation (and the Clinton themselves) pocketed millions, and (d) Hillary's State Department signed off on the whole thing -- before "repeatedly breaking" promises to mitigate national security concerns. Bloomberg and Fox News are reporting that a Clinton Foundation-tied group led by a man at the center of the uranium deal didn't disclose more than 1,000 foreign donors:
There are in fact 1,100 undisclosed donors to the Clinton Foundation, Giustra says, most of them non-U.S. residents who donated to CGEP...The reason this is a politically explosive revelation is because the Clinton Foundation promised to disclose its donors as a condition of Hillary Clinton becoming secretary of state. Shortly after Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, the Clinton Foundation signed a “memorandum of understanding” with the Obama White House agreeing to reveal its contributors every year. The agreement stipulates that the “Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative” (as the charity was then known) is part of the Clinton Foundation and must follow “the same protocols.” It hasn’t. Giustra says that’s because Canada’s federal privacy law forbids CGEP, a Canadian-registered charity, from revealing its donors.
As we noted yesterday, a review by The Federalist exposed the 'Canadian law' excuse as inaccurate, an assessment confirmed by the Washington Post's fact-checker, which awarded Clinton, Inc. "three Pinocchios" for the claim. A Sunlight Foundation official has referred to the Clintons' network as a "slush fund," and a former Clinton Foundation official told a reporter in 2007 that the organization is "not charity -- it's all bankable." Sean Davis wonders, not without reason, if the whole thing amounts to an "international money laundering scheme:"
The Clinton Foundation’s deliberate misinterpretation of Canadian privacy law in order to rationalize its secrecy raises several questions, chief among them: why? Why go to all this effort to hide years’ worth of million-dollar donations from foreign citizens and foreign governments? Donations which were almost certainly being made while Hillary Clinton was serving as Secretary of State, and almost certainly with the intent to influence her decisions? The answer is an easy one, albeit one that is highly uncomfortable: for the past several years, the Clinton Foundation has basically been a foreign money-laundering operation. The scheme works like this: collect millions of dollars in foreign money, dump it into a foreign charity, pretend that the law prohibits you from ever disclosing the identities of those foreign donors to the foreign charity, then have the foreign charity bundle all the cash and send it to the Clinton Foundation. Then, when the time comes–whether it be a Clinton Foundation conference or a lavish Clinton Foundation trip overseas–make sure those individuals get some me-time with the Clintons.
What sorts of "lavish Clinton Foundation trips overseas," you ask? How about high-end safaris in Africa, on which rich Foundation donors are feted by Bill and Chelsea -- with Team Hillary waiting in the wings with open coffers. Hillary's campaign insists that this cross-pollination of donors and extraordinary access has "nothing to do with" her presidential run. Okay. Oh, by the way, The DC reports that that Uranium One -- the company in the middle of the Russia/uranium scheme -- hired John Podesta's firm to lobby Hillary Clinton's State Department in 2012. Podesta is now (ta da!) Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign chairman. So very cozy. And lucrative, for everyone involved. Before you go, here's Mrs. Clinton calling for criminal justice reform that entails requiring police to wear body cameras:
.@HillaryClinton to call for body cameras for all police http://t.co/ulDTvTI8Mp pic.twitter.com/bbI8oLjiYD
— NBC News (@NBCNews) April 29, 2015Not a terrible idea, necessarily -- but quite a rich one, coming from someone who deliberately bent over backwards to avoid accountability and transparency as America's top diplomat.
UPDATE - Mary Katharine Ham and I discussed these latest developments on Fox Business Network earlier. Melissa Francis and team were kind enough to plug our book and the new cover reveal: