Last Word on Clinton Foundation
If actions speak louder than words, it seems as though Bill, Hillary and even Chelsea Clinton and their chief employees want to be prosecuted for gross tax evasion, violation of dozens of U.S. and international charitable laws, as well as “insider trading” similar to the crime that sent Martha Stewart to federal prison.
Unlike a lot of people, I never said I wanted Hillary Clinton sent to jail, nor did I ever consider her more responsible than her husband for the horrible performance of the Clinton Foundation. I did not, personally, object strongly to the Foundation accepting funds from any random dictator or foreign company, provided they had made even moderately good use of the funds.
Vast “right wing conspiracists” focus on Clintons using this organization as a personal “slush fund.” No, it’s a “charity” as well operated as the cities of Chicago and Detroit. It has “original” ideas like Bill Clinton’s international “Chamber of Commerce” for pals, sycophants and paying guests, the Clinton Global Initiative masquerading as “charity.”
Its scammy non-programs have done so much damage, from trying to hook school districts and others on buying ultra-expensive emergency NARCAN packs while saying it “combats opioid addiction” to taking as much as $10 billion in charitable funding for Haiti and delivering less than 1 cent on the dollar to Haitians (and directing hundreds of millions to cronies — few are even Americans). Then there’s forcing Africa’s poorest nations to buy substandard HIV drugs at locked-in prices and forcing people to plant expensive GMO crop seeds or engage in pathetic “carbon sequestration” ripoff schemes. And setting up slave 25-cent an hour factories in Africa undercutting even Haiti’s poorest wages.
If they just went out of business quietly . . .
That said, they don’t know when to shut up and when to stop. I read enough Podesta emails to realize that Podesta and all the others were, as I commented to a social media friend,
The bad management from the job you hated at the place that went out of business, and a few weeks later, the building burned to the ground and they found bodies buried in the parking lot.
In a brief, ten day period, The Washington Post has reported that Russia “hacked” the U.S. election (presumably by having Wikileaks publish the #DNCLeak emails and the later 50,000 Podesta emails), then Russia “hacked” into the U.S. electrical power grid in Burlington, VT, and finally today, the publication’s “Fact Checker” went into excruciating detail regarding some made-up sounding reader statements that people voted for Trump because they believed a Wikileaks contention that the Clinton Foundation paid for Chelsea Clinton’s wedding in July, 2010, at the same time as her mother was serving as Secretary of State in the Obama White House.
Like all recent WaPo articles about these matters, the article has been edited and amended while I’ve been writing this (twice in two hours). It added a comment insulting to any reader’s intelligence about board and executive inurement. I covered inurement in my article about Bill Clinton accepting a speech fee from the Swiss fragrance company Firmenich, then “donating” the exact same fee back to the company’s “foundation” (some might call this “money laundering” for a foreign company seeking to do business in Haiti — the same process occurred with the “Haiti Coffee Academy,” a private business venture of reality TV star coffee mogul Todd Carmichael).
WaPo’s “Fact Checker” Kessler contacted Chelsea Clinton’s wedding planner, who confirmed he was paid directly for the entire event and paid all the subcontractors, other needs, lodging, logistics, etc.
This Wikileaks tweet is what WaPo was trying to disprove:
If you’re one of the approximately 10 million Americans diehard in favor of Hillary Clinton then you won’t care what WaPo or I say. We’re not dealing with public opinion any longer (the election is over) and public confidence in government is almost gone.
Clinton wrongdoing has occurred over the course of many years violating many different laws and statutes. All this foolish article accomplished was drawing attention back onto a petty side issue that most people likely would have forgotten about.
The Wikileaks email covering Chelsea Clinton’s “relationship” to the Foundation wasn’t “nasty gossip” or an infantile “spat” as the Washington Post alleged. It was Doug Band’s answer to questions raised in the course of a very friendly decade-end organizational review of the Clinton Foundation conducted by law firm Simpson-Thacher. It was part of correspondence with Cheryl Mills, who was legally trying to figure out how best to respond to the review. Mills was working as Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff and “Counselor” at the State Department, as well as for the Clinton Foundation and for Doug Band/Teneo at this same time — in and of itself, poor practice.
Mills and John Podesta, who’d been called in to assist the Foundation after Bill Clinton’s close friend Bruce Lindsay had suffered a stroke, were dealing with a recommendation the review had made. Notably: “Don’t co-mingle funds and management regarding the President.” Money, time and staff were all mixed together. So, the Foundation might not have paid straight-up for Chelsea’s wedding but the “new infrastructure options” written by Cheryl Mills make it clear that all of the below activities, staff and funds were totally mixed together and needed to be separated. [aka that “arcane” word ‘inurement’].
The group never worked any of this out very well, but Doug Band and Teneo did separate from the Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative was technically operated as a separate nonprofit corporation during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State (2009–2013).
In Doug Band’s defense, he was not “in a feud” with Chelsea Clinton as if he was a gibbon throwing feces at her through his zoo cage. The Foundation and Mrs. Clinton had already undergone a lot of scrutiny and rather than being “well-operated” they were horribly-run, something that even an outsider like myself reviewing non-Wikileaks documents and their own website can discern. Well-run organizations don’t re-file 3 years of Federal tax returns twice because they “forgot” to note they got over $400 million in international government contributions.
Look at the main picture for this article, today’s landing page for their organization. Well-run organizations don’t have to use photos from unnamed youth taken by separate corporations located 2,500 miles away as their main web page pictures.
Band was seeking to work professionally with the others. He went into excruciating detail regarding all the money he and Justin Cooper (in addition to Declan Kelly, the other Teneo founder) had raised for Bill Clinton’s personal needs over more than a decade. This detail, since not too much was done to rectify the situation, is fine grounds for a huge indictment of tax evasion (maybe $36 million?).
In this effort, Mr. Band wasn’t concerned with charitable law (or charitable purposes). He was taking care of his boss’s financial needs and keeping his own company, Teneo, going. Every single person in these email exchanges is — by the way — an attorney — Band, Podesta, Mills, Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton.
So, for whatever reason, Washington Post “Fact Checker” Kessler was requested or inspired to write this article concluding there was “no evidence” the Clinton Foundation paid for Chelsea Clinton’s wedding [they are not anywhere near as smart as they think they are, but the Clintons and their helpers aren’t even close to that stupid]. The article by its nature had to mention and show a Wikileaks Podesta email. So if the emails are “fake” or “hacked” — why bother writing such an article?
I’ve read about 300 of the emails, almost all pertaining to the Clinton Foundation. The emails are stone cold real. No one could forge this level of back-stabbing, lack of focus, repeated evidences of horrible character, and legalistic nit-picking.
As a side note, I recently featured something I’d casually noticed from industry reports (not Wikileaks emails): the Rockefeller Foundation had been paying tidy sums to Teneo through its recently retired President Judy Rodin. According to Doug Band’s fundraising memo, here’s why they were sending cash to Teneo and Clinton Foundation [thanks Doug!]:
The problematic relationship with Laureate International Universities has been exhaustively covered. Andrew Liveris, mentioned as the close friend of Rockefeller’s Judith Rodin, is the CEO of Dow Chemical (also a major donor to Clinton Foundation/CGI).
You can see from what is written here (and the remainder of the document — direct link to email here) that there is no division between “business relationships,” charitable purposes, or any specific part of the Clinton Foundation’s activities. Money is just changing hands and Doug Band is facilitating it.
At the end of the line, there simply have to be some type of outcomes, even for these handshake deals. And those are completely non-existent. The “work” of the Clinton Foundation falls apart at the slightest scrutiny. Anybody can say on paper or via a website or in a television interview that they do anything (and certainly the Clinton Foundation does do that). But when a reporting team flies to Colombia and hears that there are no “job programs” and entrepreneurs were asked to buy expensive products or take out high-interest loans benefiting Clinton cronies like Frank Giustra, a Ph.D. from Haiti has devoted her life to covering the extensive, grotesque lack of performance Clinton Foundation has had in that country, or someone like me picks up the phone and calls the number the Foundation lists for its “staff member” in a local “Health Matters Initiative” and gets a University of California staff member who doesn’t know and has never heard of the Clinton Foundation doing “any work” in the area —
There is a problem.
They need to stop trying to destroy a newspaper like the Washington Post with their nonsense. There’s enough in just a few of the Wikileaks emails pertaining to the Simpson-Thacher review, 35+ contradictory “bi-weekly reports to WJC” and their own consistent, persistent and unceasing lies to newspapers and television, on video and in print over the past decade
to put every single one of them away for years and bill them all for many tens, and perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid taxes.
At a certain point, petty becomes ridiculous.
In addition to ruining the work processes and reputation in-field of the few charity “watchdog” or rating organizations out there, and destroying the intrinsic value of formerly entertaining publications like Snopes, or reliable organizations like Politifact —they are so petty they’ll screw up a small, highly-valued company like Twitter Audit.
Last February, Hillary Clinton had a lot of “fake” Twitter followers, according to Twitter Audit.
As of November, 2016?
Yeah, Clinton Foundation has top ratings from Charity Watchdog, Charity Navigator and even Guidestar Platinum! Yeah!
Hillary Clinton has more real Twitter Followers than Justin Bieber, Rihanna or . . .
If they would just stop.
No, #Hillbots —
All this means is that neither Trump nor Obama had the poor judgment to lean on Twitter Audit [or charity rating organizations, “fact checkers” or the Washington Post] to change their policies and provide “special treatment.”
I’m sure Clinton Foundation did not directly pay the cash to Chelsea Clinton’s wedding planner. But that’s like saying that one time, serial killer John Wayne Gacy really did give a kid a balloon instead of slaughtering him.
