Why was Hillary Clinton still entertaining a lucrative face-to-face meeting with Morocco's king on behalf of the Clinton Foundation, even after she'd announced her presidential run last year? Because there was a lot of money at stake, hacked Wikileaks emails reveal. Fox News' Ed Henry reports:
Just hours after Hillary Clinton dodged a question at the final presidential debate about charges of "pay to play" at the Clinton Foundation, a new batch of WikiLeaks emails surfaced with stunning charges that the candidate herself was at the center of negotiating a $12 million commitment from King Mohammed VI of Morocco. One of the more remarkable parts of the charge is that the allegation came from Clinton's loyal aide, Huma Abedin, who described the connection in a January 2015 email exchange with two top advisers to the candidate, John Podesta and Robby Mook. Abedin wrote that "this was HRC's idea" for her to speak at a meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative in Morocco in May 2015 as an explicit condition for the $12 million commitment from the king. "She created this mess and she knows it," Abedin wrote to Podesta and Mook. The "mess" refers in part to the fact that the three Clinton advisers were discussing the possibility of the former secretary of state pulling out of speaking at the May 2015 event because it was happening one month after the official launch of her presidential campaign and could raise more questions about her role at the foundation.
In January 2015, Mook indicated Clinton was still considering whether to attend the event, even though her advisers clearly seemed to be concerned about the appearance of such heavy involvement in the foundation amid questions about its fundraising. With the subject line, "FYI CGI Africa," Mook sent an email to Podesta and Abedin on January 18, 2015. "Came up on our call with HRC," wrote Mook. "John flagged the same issues we discussed, Huma. HRC said she's sitll(sic)considering." Abedin wrote back later that day, and suggested the King would be furious if Clinton pulled out of the event. "Just to give you some context, the condition upon which the Moroccans agreed to host the meeting was her participation," Abedin wrote. "If hrc was not part if(sic) it, meeting was a non-starter." Abedin added that CGI had not even come up with the idea to hold the event in Morocco, instead it was generated by Clinton herself. "This was HRC's idea, our office approached the Moroccans and they 100 percent believe they are doing this at her request," wrote Abedin. "The King has personally committed approx $12 million both for the endowment and to support the meeting."...While Clinton was secretary of state, her department in 2011 charged that the Moroccan government was behind "arbitrary arrests and corruption in all branches of government."
The King of Morocco set up an elaborate visit for Hillary Clinton, apparently at her suggestion, and agreed to contribute $12 million to the foundation. Given his country's blemished corruption record -- according to Clinton's State Department -- what did the monarch believe he might receive in exchange for his generosity, one wonders? Surely something was worth $12 million to him, and it couldn't have been her mere presence. (In another questionable episode, the ISIS-funding Qatari regime offered a $1 million "birthday gift" to Bill Clinton, asking for five minutes of face time with the former president to present the check. This extreme generosity cannot realistically be viewed as purely altruistic). At Wednesday's debate, Mrs. Clinton side-stepped questions about pay-for-play allegations surrounding the Clinton Foundation -- whose high level donors have received preferential treatment in terms of access to Sec. Clinton, coveted invitations, contracts, and even appointments. It was one giant conflict of interest. She boasted of the organization's strong charity-to-overhead cost ratio, as well as its strong ratings from charity watchdogs. What she failed to mention was that the foundation's finances have looked much more profligate and wasteful in the recent past, and that the foundation was on a charity watch list -- getting removed under heavy political pressure in 2015. Mrs. Clinton has egregiously mischaracterized the level of transparency with which her family ran the organization while she was Secretary of State, during which time she repeatedly violated her ethics agreement with the Obama administration. Oh, and here's another curious little tidbit from new Wikileaks documents. I share Democrats' alarm about Russia clearly attempting to influence our election, but granting and setting those concerns aside, how can the Clinton campaign explain this?
Why was @HillaryClinton camp chair taking part in meeting about Hillary-backed Super Pacs? CLEARLY no coordination going on #PodestaEmails13 pic.twitter.com/wPLi4yNrVN
— Jordan (@JordanChariton) October 21, 2016
Political campaigns are legally barred from any coordination with SuperPACs. Via CBS News, I'll leave you with this delightful flashback video of Hillary admonishing her underlings at State to be vigilant about, er, cybersecurity:
Photo credit: PBS