by Roger Stone
The constitutional ban on foreign cash payments to U.S. officials is known as the Emoluments Clause and originated from Article VI of the Articles of Confederation. The text of the clause:
No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States:
And no Person holding Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.
(Article 1, Section 9 of the US Constitution)
These questionable contributions also come with the caveat that some of the countries they are accepting from are deplorable on human rights, an issue aligned with the “mission” of the foundation. The Wall Street Journal reported that from 1999 to 2014, the foundation received $7.3 million from Saudi Arabians.571 Saudi Arabia is a country known to deny freedoms of speech, religion, and political association to it citizens. It is also a country known for its restrictive social code, which suppresses women’s rights.
“In countries that stone people to death for adultery and imprison people for adultery, this is the kind of thing you would think someone for women’s rights would be standing up against, instead of accepting thinly veiled bribes,” said Rand Paul.572
Earlier this year, a government-owned Moroccan company donated one million dollars to the foundation.573 Former president Clinton heaped praise upon the country and its leadership. Unfortunately, as Kenneth Vogel wrote in Politico, the workers of OCP Corporate, the mining company that donated the money, “had seen a very different side of Morocco’s government and OCP. They say the company, formerly called the Office Chérifien des Phosphates, forced them to retire early and slashed their pensions, leaving them struggling to scrape by while hiring ethnic Moroccans for more senior jobs. The miners also told me how they had witnessed firsthand multiple examples of the ‘arbitrary and prolonged detention’ and ‘physical and verbal abuse’ that the US State Department says Moroccan authorities mete out to Sahrawis advocating for independence in Moroccan-occupied Western Saharas.”
“Hillary Clinton sold her soul when they accepted that money,” declared Mohamed Lahwaimed, “And now we are concerned that if Hillary Clinton wins the presidency of the United States of America, she will take the side of Moroccans even more,” Lahwaimed said through an interpreter.
Added fellow former miner Lahbib Salhi, “All the tainted money that Morocco has gathered from taking away our rights has been used to bribe the Clinton Foundation and the international community.”574
Yet another scandal involved a Clinton spinoff in Sweden that collected $26 million in donations while Sweden was trying to persuade Hillary Clinton’s State Department not to sanction major national firms doing business with Iran. The New York Post’s Michael Goodwin summed it up. “The Washington Times broke the story and says the spin-off was never disclosed to federal ethics officials, ‘even though one of its largest sources of donations was a Swedish government sanctioned lottery,’” Goodwin wrote.
“Two results: No Swedish firms were sanctioned, and one of them, telecommunications giant Ericsson AB, paid Bill Clinton $750,000 for a speech,” Goodwin continued. “The Times reports that Ericsson was trying to sell tracking technology to Iran that could be used by the mullah’s security services.”575
Indeed, it seems the Clinton Foundation will take money from anyone with pockets, regardless of purpose or ethical standards.
The issue of travel has also come up recently, as the figure of $8.4 million for travel costs incurred by the Clintons in 2013 gave rise to questions of overlapping travel: how much was legitimate for the foundation versus primarily for the benefit of Hillary’s political campaign. According to documents reviewed by America Rising, “The Clinton Foundation has raised hundreds of millions that it claims is for charitable causes, but clearly overlaps with Hillary Clinton’s political ambitions. The Foundation must be transparent in all spending so voters can see how it used charitable funds to subsidize expensive air travel, a lavish personal lifestyle, the courting of political donors, or other campaign related travel.” America Rising’s executive director, Tim Miller, went on to say, “With 10 percent of the Clinton Foundation spending going towards ‘travel,’ and the Foundation’s acknowledgment that it approves charted private jet flights for Bill and Hillary Clinton, it’s past the time for self-described ‘most transparent person in public life’ to provide a detailed accounting of how her family foundation spends the money that it raises.” The travel expenses were nearly double what they were a year ago.576
In its released IRS Form 990 for 2013, the Clintons’ travel bill showed the $8.4 million. Yet Clinton’s only political travel in 2013 was related to Terry McAuliffe, the Clintons’ longtime friend who won the West Virginia governorship that year. The rest of her travel was for paid speeches, which were covered by the entity she spoke for. In previously uncovered speaking contracts it is clear that the venues normally covered the cost of travel. So how did Hillary spend $8.4 million in that year for travel? The Clinton Foundation responded by charging that the accusations made by America Rising were false. “There was no overlap. Period.” Hillary’s spokesman charged that “The accusation is patently, but not surprisingly given its source, false.” According to the New York Post, “the Clintons have spent nearly $50 million in travel costs over the past decade.” Reports by the New York Post, based on internal tax documents, show the foundation logged a $4.2 million travel bill in 2011. We have yet to see how much Hillary will spend on travel in 2014. Money has been streaming in, but there are many cracks in the foundation.
According to credible sources, many “operators” associated with the Clinton Foundation have either been charged or convicted of financial crimes, including bribery and fraud.577
One such scoundrel, now serving a lengthy (twelve-year) federal prison sentence, is Florida’s own Claudio Osorio. Clinton’s pal Osorio is a sociopathic conman of such guile and greed that he was featured for a full hour on CNBC’s exposé show American Greed. Osorio, like the Clintons, exploited ostensibly charitable vehicles to line his own pockets. A good chunk of Osorio’s ill-gotten money managed to make its way into both the Hillary 2008 campaign coffers and the Clinton Global Initiative.
The earthquake-ravaged Haitians were a particularly disturbing target for Osorio’s frauds. Osorio had acquired federally backed money after the 2010 earthquake there, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars to build hundreds of homes for the displaced and homeless. Osorio never constructed a thing and simply pocketed the money to support his lavish lifestyle.
Vinod Gupta, the founder and chairman of the database firm InfoUSA and a major Clinton financial supporter was charged in 2008 with fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for using company funds to support his lavish lifestyle. Allegedly he spent more than $9.5 million in corporate funds to pay for personal jet travel, his yacht, personal credit card expenses, and the twenty or more cars he owns. Eventually he settled with the SEC for around $4 million. Bill Clinton managed to get some of that money for himself to the tune of $3 million for consulting fees.578
A foundation trustee named Sant Chatwal, has convictions for illegal campaign financing, obstruction of justice, and other related charges. The Clintons pocketed millions from Chatwal in supposed speaking fees and in donations to the foundation. Chatwal was convicted in federal district court in 2014 for giving almost $200,000 in various illegal campaign donations to candidates for U.S. federal offices, one of whom was none other than Hillary Clinton. Chatwal also pled guilty to tampering with witnesses in the course of the investigation into his illegal campaign activities. Chatwal’s convictions earned him no jail time, only fines, probation, and community service. Indian officials arrested Chatwal in 2001 on charges that he defrauded the Bank of India in a $9 million loan he obtained in the early 1990’s. Chatwal skipped town (skipped the country, really) to avoid this prosecution. Indeed, a trustworthy “trustee” worthy of Clinton-style et
hics.
Another Indian, a politician named Amar Singh, got hooked up with the Clinton graft machine starting with his sponsorship of a Bill Clinton visit to India in late 2005. Singh was rewarded with personal access to the Clintons at their private dinner table that same year, in recognition of millions of dollars Singh gave to the Clinton Foundation. Singh met disgrace in India in late 2011, driven from the country’s political scene after being charged with corruption for trying to bribe members of India’s parliament during proceedings involving U.S.-Indian nuclear secrets.
Victor Dahdaleh, another foundation trustee was charged by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) in Great Britain with paying more than 25 million pounds in bribes to executives in Bahrain to win contracts worth more than 2 billion pounds. Then there’s Rolando Gonzales Bunster, another trustee who has been named in a fraud case in the Dominican Republic.579
Rounding out this sordid summary of a few top Clinton crony-funders is Gilbert Chagoury, another Clinton/Democratic Party fundraiser with a bad reputation. During Bill Clinton’s presidential re-election bid, Chagoury has been accused of funneling nearly half a million dollars to a supposed Democrat voter-registration outfit in Florida. Chagoury is a million-dollar donor to both the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative, which even honored Chagoury and his “Group” for supposed efforts in “sustainable development.” Chagoury has been linked to trying to take advantage of a third-world military dictatorship to line his pockets, specifically the Abacha regime in Nigeria. That regime raped the Nigerian people for billions. Chagoury, and the Clintons, reaped the benefits. Topping it off, Chagoury could be found on the U.S. terrorism no-fly list as recently as five years ago.
Many of those who haven’t broken with the foundation due to their criminality, have left due to the increasingly difficult and demanding Chelsea, who came aboard as vice chairman in 2011.
“A lot of people left because she was there. A lot of people left because she didn’t want them there,” said a foundation insider. “She is very difficult.”580
This follows a familiar pattern for the entitled Chelsea. Coworkers at her previous places of employment, NBC News and McKinsey, were told they were not to approach her.
“If someone wanted to talk to Chelsea about something, they had to go through a producer,” a source claimed.581
Indeed, the next generation of Clinton doesn’t seem to be any better than the last.
CHAPTER 27
THE COVER-UP QUEEN
Can the Clintons seize power for four more years? Will the 2016 election offer us a “heads we win, tails you lose” election between Hillary and Jeb Bush?
One thing to take into consideration is the advanced age of the Clintons. Senator Mitch McConnell recently quipped that Hillary’s prospective run would be a “rerun of The Golden Girls.”582 Political commentator Matt Drudge speculated that Hillary was holding onto a walker for her 2014 People magazine cover photo.583 When Hillary tried to tap into the youth vote by announcing her candidacy on social media, the decision was greeted with derision by many in the Twitterverse. @faughtd tweeted “@ReadyForHillary we don’t let Grandma touch the TV remote. Why would we let Hillary have access to our nuclear armament? She’s too OLD.” @libertynowUSA joined the masses asking “Why is Hillary wasting everyone’s time with trust worthy ratings below 35%. She needs to go away. We need leadership not an old bag that lies.”584
Given the trail of intimidation, lies, campaign finance manipulation, self-dealing, perjury, and the use of violence to beat witnesses, the Clintons have dodged many bullets. One would think they would take their riches, public esteem, and money and ride off into the sunset.
Had Lance Armstrong retired he would have kept his money, fame, and reputation intact. Like the Clintons, when his involvement with drugs began to leak, he used heavy-handed detectives to silence those who could give him up. Lance reached for the gold one time too many. And so it is with Hillary Clinton.
In fact Bill himself may be the driving force behind the 2016 bid that Hillary herself has reservations about. “He says he can roll her,” a longtime Clinton advisor told me. “What do you mean?” I asked. “Run the government, take over,” he said.
So what drives the Clintons comeback attempt to win the White House for a sixty-seven-year-old grandmother? The answer is greed and power lust. They can’t resist another grab for the trappings and opportunities of power, and Hillary feels that the prize that eluded her in 2012 is rightfully hers. Hillary is the inspiration for Claire Underwood, the bloodless and ambitious wife of President Frank Underwood in Netflix’s original series House of Cards. It has always been her intention to succeed her husband in the White House. Kevin Spacey’s character is mostly based on Lyndon Johnson, and the directors use vivid LBJ imageries in paintings and signed photos in the background of the Underwood White House to telegraph this fact.
Even Bill, always sharp-witted and quick to parry a point or stance, has stumbled and shown his age recently.
The former president attacked Peter Schweizer’s exposé, exclaiming there was “not a shred of evidence” of unscrupulous dealings in the Clinton Foundation when malfeasance and corruption was evident. Clinton’s ill-timed parry was quickly pointed out as such by the media. When Bill was questioned about his unprecedented speaking fees, he unwisely stated that he needed to keep making speeches “to pay the bills.” This from a man who with his wife has earned $25 million from speeches in the last year and a half.
A recent article revealed that the odd missteps by the notoriously slick discourser are a result of dementia. “The truth is Bill has lost it,” a longtime Clinton family friend told the Globe. “There are days when he believes he’s still President and gives his aides orders to place calls to leaders around the world—then he completely forgets doing it. Other days, he can’t remember ever being President! He frequently asks his driver to take him home to the White House, but Hillary has issued explicit orders to ignore him and just take him to their house in Chappaqua. On his last visit to his presidential library in Little Rock where he has a luxury apartment, he couldn’t remember that he was once the governor of Arkansas. It’s all very sad.”585
The magazine also exposed one of Hillary’s dark secrets in another recent edition: her thirst for the bottle.
“Hillary’s drinking got totally out of control,” said one of Hillary’s friends, whom the presidential hopeful turned to for help. “The stress of her high-pressure political career, never-ending scandals and her worsening health have sent her into life-threatening booze hell. She turned to drink to drown her fears. Hillary tries to hide her problem like she lies about so many things. But she has repeatedly suffered blackouts. When she comes around, she has no idea where she has been or what she has said or done. She’s not fit to be President.”
These are not the nimble liars of the '90s. Yet they are still crafty.
Hillary is the queen of the cover-up and her experience hiding evidence, destroying documents, and lying almost defies belief. The erasure of the hard evidence that she was granting governmental favors, trade agreements, and multi-million dollar defense contracts to the big donors of the Clinton Foundation are undeniable. Unlike Richard Nixon, she has destroyed the evidence.
Let’s review Hillary’s game of “keep away” when it comes to covering up her misdeeds.
Hillary’s “Thwarted Record Requests.” The Times reported that Clinton used her private email address to avoid turning over documents to Congressional committees investigating the Benghazi, Libya, terror attack of September 11, 2012. According to the Times, “It was one of several instances in which records requests sent to the State Department, which had no access to Mrs. Clinton’s emails, came up empty.” The State Department did the same routine with regard to a Freedom of Information Act request asking for correspondence between Hillary and former political hit man Sidney Blumenthal; in 2010, the AP said its FOIA requests had gone unanswered by the State Department on the same grounds; the same
holds true with regard to FOIA requests from conservative group Citizens United.
Hillary’s First Emailgate. According to Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch, Hillary’s top woman, Cheryl Mills—you remember her from Benghazi—“helped orchestrate the cover-up of a major scandal, often referred to as ‘Email-gate.’” Over the course of years, the Clinton Administration allegedly withheld some 1.8 million email communications from Judicial Watch’s attorneys, as well as federal investigators and Congress. Judicial Watch says that when a White House computer contractor attempted to reveal the emails, White House officials “instructed her to keep her mouth shut about the hidden email or face dismissal and jail time.”
Hillary’s Missing Whitewater Documents. In 1996, a special Senate Whitewater committee released a report from the FBI demonstrating that documents sought in the Whitewater investigation had been found in the personal Clinton quarters of the White House. The First Lady’s fingerprints were on them. The documents had gone mysteriously missing for two years. Mark Fabiani, special White House counsel, immediately stated that there was no problem, according to the Times: “He added that she had testified under oath that she had nothing to do with the documents during the two years they were missing and did not know how they ended up in the family quarters.” Hillary remains the only First Lady in American history to be fingerprinted by the FBI. Those weren’t the only missing Whitewater documents later found in the Clinton White House. Rose Law billing records were found years after being sought “in the storage area in the third-floor private residence at the White House where unsolicited gifts to the President and First Lady are stored before being sorted and catalogued.”
Hillary’s Missing Travelgate Documents. In 1996, just before the Whitewater documents emerged—literally the day before—a two-year-old memo emerged, according to the New York Times, showing that Hillary “had played a far greater role in the dismissal of employees of the White House travel office than the Administration has acknowledged.” Oops.586