• Scandal Without End: Is The Clinton Foundation A Fraud?

    From Nancy Pelosi Is Also Guilty@21:1/5 to All on Sat Jul 22 00:09:18 2017
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    Corruption: The Clinton Foundation's questionable money dealings
    have raised eyebrows for years. Now, a letter circulating in
    Congress alleges that the Clinton family's supposed do-gooder
    foundation is in fact a "lawless, 'pay-to-play' enterprise that
    has been operating under a cloak of philanthropy for years."

    Those are pretty tough words for a former president and his
    wife, who happens to be the leading candidate to be our next
    president. But the congressional letter, which the Daily Caller
    News Foundation got its hands on, was written by Republican Rep.
    Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., who plans on asking the FBI, IRS and
    Federal Trade Commission to launch a "public corruption"
    investigation.

    Is it warranted, or just politics? It sure looks like the
    former. As Blackburn's letter says, there is a "pattern of
    dealing that personally enriched the Clintons at the expense of
    American foreign policy."

    Blackburn cites the for-profit education business Laureate
    Education, which paid Bill Clinton some $16.5 million to serve
    part-time as "honorary chancellor" starting in 2010, a year
    after Hillary became secretary of state. Laureate, for its part,
    gave the Clinton Foundation some $1 million to $5 million.
    Nothing illegal about that, per se.

    However, the Daily Tennesseean reports that Blackburn's letter
    also details how "the International Youth Fund, whose board
    members include Laureate's founder, Douglas Baker, received more
    than $55 million in grants from the U.S. Agency for
    International Development while Hillary Clinton was secretary of
    state." AID is a part of the State Department.

    Then there's Uranium One. Hillary Clinton, the Daily Tennesseean
    notes, "was one of several Obama administration officials who
    approved the sale of uranium to the Russian-operated company,
    whose chairman also has donated $2.35 million to the Clinton
    Foundation." A number of other people involved in the deal also
    gave money to the Clintons.
    "The appearance of 'pay-to-play' transactions involving Laureate
    and Uranium One also raises serious allegations of criminal
    conduct requiring further examination," Blackburn's letter says.

    That's not all of the questionable activities.

    As we noted back in May, the Clinton Foundation took in some
    $100 million in donations from a variety of Gulf sheikhs and
    billionaires who no doubt expected to reap political benefits
    from a future Hillary Clinton presidency, with Bill serving not
    just as first gentleman in the White House but also possibly as
    bagman. Among donors dumping bags of cash on the Clintons
    include Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab
    Emirates.

    Lost in the shuffle is Bill Clinton's special "business
    partnership" from 2003 to 2008 with Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid
    al-Maktoum, the strongman ruler of Dubai. That deal netted
    Clinton some $15 million in "guaranteed payments," tax records
    show. And then there's the $30 million delivered to the Clintons
    by two Mideast foundations and four billionaire Saudis. For the
    betterment of humankind, no doubt.

    As national security analyst and writer Patrick Poole said in
    May, "These regimes are buying access. ... There are massive
    conflicts of interest. It's beyond comprehension."

    It took Wall Street financial analyst and investment advisor
    Charles Ortel -- whom the Sunday Times of London once described
    as "one of the finest analysts of financial statements on the
    planet" -- to untangle the mess in a series of ongoing reports.
    Ortel alleges that contribution disclosures by the foundation
    often don't fit with what donors' own records say -- big red
    flag.

    "This," Ortel summed up, "is a charity fraud."

    As a reminder, this isn't just some political vendetta. As far
    back as 2013, an alarmed New York Times warned that the
    foundation had become "a sprawling concern, supervised by a
    rotating board of old Clinton hands, vulnerable to distraction
    and threatened by conflicts of interest."

    It turns out that's a gross understatement.

    Testifying last week to Congress, FBI chief James Comey called
    Hillary Clinton "extremely careless" about her use of a private
    email server while secretary of state. But, curiously, he
    refused additional comment "on the existence or nonexistence of
    any other ongoing investigations." This needs to be disclosed.
    Americans deserve to know whether the person they're likely to
    put into the White House this November is merely a misunderstood
    career public servant -- or a pocket-lining career criminal.

    http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/scandal-without-end- is-the-clinton-foundation-a-fraud/
     

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