As Matt noted earlier, a fresh McClatchy/Marist national poll finds that fully 83 percent of US voters say Hillary Clinton has behaved illegally (51 percent) or unethically (32 percent). The good news for her is that despite a majority of Americans believing her to be a criminal, she still holds a lead over Donald Trump in the same survey. The bad news for her is that new evidence of her corruption continues to seep into the electorate's collective bloodstream, and her lead in the poll is well within the margin of error. On that note, remember when candidate Hillary claimed that the Clinton Foundation has operated with "complete transparency"? And when her husband said the same thing? They were already demonstrably wrong at the time, but these new details throw their serial dishonesty and appalling judgment into even starker relief. Reuters reports:
The Clinton Foundation has confirmed it accepted a $1 million gift from Qatar while Hillary Clinton was U.S. secretary of state without informing the State Department, even though she had promised to let the agency review new or significantly increased support from foreign governments. Qatari officials pledged the money in 2011 to mark the 65th birthday of Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton's husband, and sought to meet the former U.S. president in person the following year to present him the check, according to an email from a foundation official to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign chairman, John Podesta. The email, among thousands hacked from Podesta's account, was published last month by WikiLeaks. Clinton signed an ethics agreement governing her family's globe-straddling foundation in order to become secretary of state in 2009. The agreement was designed to increase transparency to avoid appearances that U.S. foreign policy could be swayed by wealthy donors. If a new foreign government wished to donate or if an existing foreign-government donor, such as Qatar, wanted to "increase materially" its support of ongoing programs, Clinton promised that the State Department's ethics official would be notified and given a chance to raise any concerns.
They pledged to allow State Department ethics officials to vet all foreign donations to their slush fund while she was running US foreign policy. That seems like a pretty ironclad and sensible agreement. What's their excuse for failing to disclose this big cash influx from a foreign government?
Clinton Foundation officials last month declined to confirm the Qatar donation. In response to additional questions, a foundation spokesman, Brian Cookstra, this week said that it accepted the $1 million gift from Qatar, but this did not amount to a "material increase" in the Gulf country's support for the charity. Cookstra declined to say whether Qatari officials received their requested meeting with Bill Clinton. Officials at Qatar's embassy in Washington and in its Council of Ministers in the capital, Doha, declined to discuss the donation.
Ah. In this case, they accepted a $1 million "birthday gift" for Bill from the Qatari government, hilariously arguing now that the seven-figure contribution didn't constitute a "material increase," and therefore wasn't worth mentioning. They also offer up a 'no comment' on whether the former president agreed to the requested meeting. This is an egregious violation of the promise they made to the Obama administration and the American people. Oh, and here's a fun reminder via Phil Kerpen:
According to a memo Hillary personally forwarded to Podesta, Qatar was also funding ISIS.https://t.co/OLdFP9bzEY
— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) November 5, 2016
Never fear, America. This is just your government's top diplomat breaching an ethics requirement to accept a cool million bucks from a repressive Middle Eastern regime that has funded ISIS...according to her own future assessment. I'll leave you with this:
Hillary Clinton is ethically unfit to be president.