Killing the Messenger

by David Brock

  The former president’s 2005 heart-bypass surgery inspired a partnership with the American Heart Association to address the childhood obesity epidemic. Clinton’s own concern about global warming was at the heart of the Clinton Climate Initiative. And having devoted special attention to Haiti throughout his presidency, it’s no surprise that his Foundation rushed to the rescue after that nation experienced a horrific earthquake in 2010.

  In September 2005, the Clinton Foundation held its first Clinton Global Initiative—an annual meeting of world leaders, CEOs, philanthropists, and other prominent individuals at which each is encouraged not just to talk about pressing issues, but to commit to meaningful action. “Over the course of 10 Annual Meetings, members of the CGI community have made more than 3,200 commitments, which have improved the lives of over 430 million people in more than 180 countries,” according to the Clinton Foundation.

  Today, the Foundation—renamed the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation in order to recognize that philanthropy is a family venture for the Clintons—is focused on a variety of important programs. These include:

  Because of the Foundation’s work, more than 27,000 American schools are providing more than 16 million students with healthy meals in an effort to fight obesity.

  The Foundation has made lifesaving antiretroviral drugs more affordable and accessible for more than 9 million people—many of them babies born with the infection—fighting HIV/AIDS through the Clinton Health Access Initiative.

  The incomes of more than 85,000 farmers in places like Malawi, Rwanda, and Tanzania have been raised through training programs and improving market access.

  More than 33,500 tons of greenhouse gas emissions have been reduced annually in the United States—part of a carbon offset of 200,000 tons of CO2 globally through the Clinton Climate Initiatives’ Trees of Hope program.

  The Clinton Foundation helped lower the cost of malaria drugs by 80 to 90 percent in nine countries.

  Job One is connecting young people with employment opportunities through commitments by U.S. private sector businesses.

  Too Small to Fail focuses on improving the health and well-being of children in their first five years of life.

  And No Ceilings encourages and empowers women and girls to participate fully and equally in their communities.

  Over the years, political leaders from across the spectrum have heaped praise on the Clinton Foundation for making the world a better place. John McCain raved about “the good work you have done to relieve suffering across the earth, and to spread hope.” Mitt Romney described the Foundation’s “astounding impact” at a CGI Annual Meeting, telling the audience, “One of the best things that can happen to any cause, to any people, is to have Bill Clinton as its advocate.” Former First Lady Laura Bush, Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch, New Jersey governor Chris Christie, and former secretary of state Colin Powell have all appeared at Foundation events. Even Christopher Ruddy, CEO of NewsMax and a card-carrying anti-Clintonite from back in the day, pledged a seven-figure donation, saying, “This work is innovative in its scope and in its purpose. I have always found it nonpartisan.”

  In fact, the Foundation is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, which means that it is “absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.”

  But Hillary Clinton is running for president. And all that praise from conservatives who understood and supported the Foundation’s mission? It’s disappeared down the memory hole.

  Now a universally praised philanthropic organization, its noble work on behalf of the world’s neediest, supported by leaders and donors of both parties, has suddenly morphed into a crass political adjunct of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

  While it may seem difficult to complain too much about an organization that takes from the rich and gives to the poor, raising over $100 billion through CGI and direct foundation grants to combat social ills in more than 180 countries, the Clintons’ partisan opponents and some in the press roll their eyes at the Clinton Foundation’s work. They misportray it as an extension of their political reach—a way to keep their network of advisors together, maintain ties with wealthy donors, and continue to accumulate favors.

  In the eyes of critics, all those lives saved and changed were merely happy accidents; the Clinton Foundation is a front. And while it may state that its mission is “to bring people together to take on the biggest challenges of the twenty-first century,” Clinton antagonists claim that its real purpose is—as the real purpose of everything Bill and Hillary have ever done has been—to enrich and empower the Clintons.

  “The Clinton Foundation is not and never has been a charity,” as the Wall Street Journal editorial page charged. “Bill and Hillary created it in 2001 as a vehicle to assist their continuing political ambitions, in particular Mrs. Clinton’s run for the White House. Any good the foundation does is incidental to its bigger role as a fund-raising network and a jobs program for Clinton political operatives.”

  Kimberley Strassel, a columnist for the paper, renown for its trumpeting of the empty “Clinton Scandals” in the 1990s, wrote, “What’s clear by now is that this family enterprise was set up as a global shakedown operation, designed to finance and nurture the Clintons’ continued political ambitions. It’s a Hillary super PAC that throws in the occasional good deed.”

  It may be news to Rupert Murdoch, who owns the Journal and has contributed to the Foundation through his News Corporation, that he was actually funding Hillary’s presidential bid, but no matter.

  The idea of “Clinton, Inc.,” a vast and secretive empire devoted to the promotion of Bill and Hillary’s selfish interests, incorporates several of the narratives conservatives hold dear. And, as we’ll see, it is “Conservatives, Inc.” (Koch, et al.) funding this phony story line.

  They depict Bill Clinton, at his core, as a huckster, the charming Slick Willie who always manages to get away with whatever he wants, skating by with a wink and a rakish grin. They malign the Clinton Foundation as just his own personal slush fund, enabling him to jet around the world, hobnobbing with celebrities, backslapping with cronies.

  And with Hillary’s political ambitions taking center stage, the old caricatures of her have seeped into her enemies’ attack on the family’s philanthropy. The right-wing smears the Foundation as a favor bank to support her political career, digging for some kind of quid pro quo that can prove some less than altruistic intent—never finding the “quid” or the “quo.”

  For years after Hillary left the Obama cabinet and joined the Foundation, scores of right-wing researchers had been fishing for an angle on the Foundation—and in early 2015, it looked like they had found one.

  Before Hillary Clinton became secretary of state in 2009, the Clinton Foundation entered into an agreement with the Obama administration designed to eliminate potential conflicts of interest that could arise when Hillary was making policy decisions that could affect donors to the Foundation. As had been public record for years, the Clinton Foundation, a global philanthropy, relied in part on donations from abroad, including from foreign governments. The agreement allowed governments that had previously donated to the charity to continue giving and set up a review process for new contributor countries.

  A February 2015 article in the Wall Street Journal reported the breaking news that when Hillary left Foggy Bottom in 2013, the self-imposed agreement had been lifted. Ignoring the fact that the agreement was specifically focused on preventing conflicts of interest while she was in office—conflicts that were obviously no longer in play with Hillary a private citizen again—the Journal claimed that its sunset raised “ethical questions.”

  The game was afoot.

  The Washington Post’s resident neocon Jennifer Rubin burst into flames as soon as the “extraordinary report” was published, declaring that Hillary’s “egregious judgment and untrammeled greed
raise real questions about her priorities and ethics.” Rubin did her best to raise the stakes of the story, referring to former Virginia Republican governor Bob McDonnell, who was convicted on corruption charges after making calls to aid a donor. (There’s always a motive of payback for actual Republican scandals in the GOP-generated pseudoscandals). Rubin asked, “What would be the remedy if, once in office, Hillary Clinton extended her office not only to make calls but also to approve policy and financial arrangements worth billions back to these countries? How will the American people ever be satisfied we are getting her undivided loyalty?”

  Rubin was sure to specify that even if “she were now to give all the money back,” Hillary still would be suspect. “Republicans should and will, I predict, pummel her with this,” she wrote, warning, “If the [mainstream media] is not entirely in her pocket, they will as well.”

  Meanwhile, on Fox News, reporter John Roberts wondered if “governments that contributed to the Clinton Foundation [might] have a special in at the White House.” The Washington Free Beacon speculated that “these donations could be viewed as another way in to Clinton’s potential campaign.”

  How did the Wall Street Journal dig up this devastating information? By looking at the Clinton Foundation’s website. That was their “Deep Throat.” That’s right: The only reason the scandalmongering right wing, acting in concert with the mainstream press, was able to mount repeated attacks on the Clinton Foundation was the Foundation’s own commitment to transparency. Unlike most charities, the Clinton Foundation discloses all of its contributors’ names publicly and refuses to take anonymous contributions, even though such donations are permissible under law and welcomed by many other such groups. In fact, as the Washington Post reported, “In posting its donor data, the foundation goes beyond legal requirements, and experts say its transparency level exceeds that of most philanthropies.”

  The Wall Street Journal spent nine months digging through all that publicly available data, looking for some kind of impropriety, some kind of conflict of interest, only to report, “There is no evidence of that with the Clinton Foundation.”

  While Rubin and others trumpeted the fact that the Clinton Foundation had accepted donations to fund global programs to empower women from repressive governments like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar (which, as Rubin ominously warned, was “a prominent backer of Hamas”), no one produced any evidence to suggest that, as secretary of state, Hillary had gone easy on these countries—indeed, she aggressively contested their policies, including delivering a “scalding critique of Arab leaders” during a visit to Qatar.

  The Wall Street Journal never found any evidence of a quid pro quo, because there was none—nothing to suggest that any government ever got anything in exchange for contributing to the Clinton Foundation’s work.

  The only thing they found was that, once Hillary Clinton was no longer secretary of state, the agreement that the Foundation had voluntarily entered into while she was secretary of state was no longer in effect.

  Still, the National Journal’s Ron Fournier, a Clinton pseudoscandal obsessive, called the Foundation’s acceptance of foreign donations—or, as he termed them, “financial favors”—“stupid and sleazy.” So much for objective journalism. The Washington Post declared that her family’s philanthropy now posed a “unique political challenge” for Hillary, and that it “has already become a cause of concern among Democrats.” And Vox, eager to stoke Democrat panic over the burgeoning “scandal,” pointed out that despite the fact that nothing illegal or unethical had occurred, “having a husband who runs a non-profit foundation that’s soaking up foreign cash does not help her win.”

  By the way, nobody bothered to speculate that Jeb Bush might run into the same problems—even though he had a father who ran a nonprofit foundation that soaked up foreign cash. Like many presidential libraries and initiatives, the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library received seven-figure donations from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, and other countries.

  Indeed, drawing on the relationships a president builds during his time in office is a common and accepted way to build support for his postpresidential contributions to society.

  It’s also, frankly, a way to make personal income, a time-honored tradition going back in recent times to Gerald R. Ford, Ronald Reagan (who got $2 million for one speech in Japan back in 1989), George H. W. Bush, and continuing through Bill Clinton. But Clinton’s speeches appear to be the only ones the media finds newsworthy. On June 8, 2015, Politico Playbook—the widely read insider news report—ran the following item:

  “On talk circuit George W. Bush makes millions but few waves,” by Michael Kruse—Politico

  True to form, the piece, which noted that some of W.’s speaking fees came from foreign sources, landed with a dull thud inside the Beltway.

  But the rules are different for the Clintons: Business Insider reported that “an aide for one of the likely 2016 GOP candidates” e-mailed a quote hoping to pump up the Journal story and concluding, “Only the Clintons…”

  A follow-up story in the Washington Post gave the right another bite at the apple.

  In 2010, as the Clinton Foundation rushed to aid Haiti in the wake of the devastating earthquake, an unsolicited and unexpected donation of $500,000 arrived from the government of Algeria. It was quickly distributed as direct aid to help the people of Haiti and disclosed publicly on the Clinton Foundation website—but, as the Foundation acknowledged, it should have gone through an ethics review at State first.

  If conservatives could prove that the government of Algeria had somehow exacted a concession from the secretary of state in exchange for half a million dollars in earthquake relief aid, then this omission might indeed signal a real scandal, albeit a surprisingly low-budget one.

  But the record shows that, as secretary of state, Hillary aggressively challenged the government of Algeria. As the Washington Post reported in its initial story:

  A 2010 State Department report on human rights in Algeria noted that “principal human rights problems included restrictions on freedom of assembly and association” and cited reports of arbitrary killings, widespread corruption and a lack of transparency. Additionally, the report, issued in early 2011, discussed restrictions on labor and women’s rights.

  Hillary continued her criticism after leaving office, writing in Hard Choices that the nation had a “poor human rights record.”

  Then in March, the New York Times attempted to further the “scandal,” pointing to the Foundation’s “acceptance of millions of dollars in donations from Middle Eastern countries known for violence against women and for denying them many basic freedoms,” suggesting that this was at odds with Hillary’s long career as a champion for women and girls, and warning ominously, “This was not how she intended to reintroduce herself to American voters.”

  Again, though, a look at Hillary’s actual record shows that donations to the Clinton Foundation never stopped her from aggressively pursuing the cause of women’s rights, even when that meant directly criticizing governments that had given to the charity. For example, the Clinton Foundation accepted a donation from the government of Saudi Arabia—but Hillary was a strong supporter of women who were protesting against that nation’s ban on female drivers. And the Times itself had previously recorded her being the first U.S. secretary of state to issue a “scalding critique of Arab leaders” for repressing women during a trip to Qatar.

  Still, the Times article drew the absurd conclusion that these donations made Hillary “vulnerable on the subject” of gender, offering a variety of Republicans space to recite their talking points in addition to regurgitating them in the reporter’s voice.

  These stories in early spring were just a prelude of the onslaught to come. Though the stories proved nothing, they did signal to the right wing that the mainstream press was becoming invested in the story line that the Foundation was a shady enterprise. And that they’d chase any lead to prove
it.

  It was the perfect setup. And that’s when a Republican operative named Peter Schweizer stepped up to take a center-stage role in a carefully coordinated assault on the Clinton Foundation’s work.

  Reporters on the Clinton beat had been buzzing for weeks about a new book by Schweizer called Clinton Cash. Its thesis—that Hillary, as secretary of state, made favorable government decisions for donors to the Clinton Foundation—was one that many of these same reporters, egged on by the Republicans, had pursued for months. They were eager to see if Schweizer had the goods that so far had eluded them.

  News of the book first broke in a New York Times piece that hyped its charges and praised the author for “meticulous” research. The Times went on to trumpet the “focused reporting” of Clinton Cash as “the most anticipated and feared book of a presidential cycle still in its infancy,” and that it would prove to be both “problematic” and “unsettling” for the Clintons. The article provided only a small clue about Schweizer’s ideological leanings, noting that he had worked for both George W. Bush and Sarah Palin.

  The Times mentioned in passing that Schweizer ran an outfit called the Government Accountability Intitiative, but failed to tell readers this was a right-wing opposition research shop behind his book, bankrolled by a foundation associated with the main donor to Ted Cruz’s presidential SuperPAC and by a donor fund the Koch brothers use as a pass-through to hide their giving. Schweizer had also appeared as a featured speaker at Koch-sponsored political conferences and worked for archconservative North Carolina senator Jesse Helms.

  Nor did the Times explore the author’s long and seriously flawed journalistic record. A seven-thousand-word report on the author’s background by Media Matters—all sourced to public information—found he had a long history of issuing retractions and corrections, including a false allegation that a sitting Democratic senator had committed insider trading. The Washington Post had called a claim by Schweizer’s organization—that President Obama skipped more than half of his presidential daily briefings on intelligence matters—“bogus.”