This might be one of those scandals that's really bad if you think it through and understand its implications, but could appear on first glance to be too esoteric to really make an impression on the electorate. Don't let that happen. This is very big and very bad.
In essence: When Hillary became Secretary of State, she agreed to a policy insisted upon by the Obama Administration that before the Clinton Foundation would accept major gifts from foreign governments, she would give the State Department a heads-up and an opportunity to raise any concerns they might have.
Clinton Foundation was trying to pretend it had never happened
It a blatant violation of that promise, she hid a $1 million gift from Qatar. And as recently as a month ago, the Clinton Foundation was trying to pretend it had never happened. Only after a recent WikiLeaks release were they forced to admit that it had, in fact, happened.
I'm citing Reuters here precisely because it is Reuters, and not a media source that can be portrayed by Hillary's supporters as some sort of right-wing propaganda site.
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.
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.
The State Department has said it has no record of the foundation submitting the Qatar gift for review, and that it was incumbent on the foundation to notify the department about donations that needed attention. A department spokeswoman did not respond to additional questions about the donation.
That business about the $1 million not representing a "material increase" is a classic Clinton dodge. OK, sure, we accepted the money, but it wasn't really a big deal, so . . .
No. You were supposed to report it. You didn't. That's all there is to it.
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Secretary of State who's connected to a "foundation" that's accepting money from foreign governments
Now why is this a big deal and not just a simple matter of an I not dotted or a T not crossed? It's because of the reason this policy existed in the first place. For one thing, it's bad enough that you've got a Secretary of State who's connected to a "foundation" that's accepting money from foreign governments. That should never have been allowed under any circumstances - ethics rules or not. But the rules were put in place precisely because everyone knows these "gifts" are made without strings attached. Foreign governments expect to get something in return, and with Hillary running the State Department we now know they were usually not disappointed.
That's why the openness and transparency of who was giving and how much was so crucially important. If Hillary hid the money coming in to the Clinton Foundation from foreign governments, there was absolutely no way for anyone to impose accountability or to recognize when a State Department decision or policy was influenced by these gifts.
And she knew that, of course, which is exactly why she chose not to report certain gifts. As the story goes on to report, there were at least eight other gifts from foreign governments that the Clinton Foundation also did not report to the State Department, blaming "oversights." Now that is just an astounding excuse. How do you accept millions of dollars from a foreign government and overlook your responsibility to inform the State Department about it? You don't. You don't report it because Hillary doesn't want you to report it.
Anyone who thinks this behavior would change if Hillary becomes president is insane. This has been the Clinton method of operation for their entire lives. If she is elected president even after all this, it will only confirm in her mind that she can do this sort of thing with impunity, and that she can employ the full power of the presidency in the pursuit of this sort of corruption.
And voters should be asking themselves: What does Hillary owe Qatar? And if she becomes president, how might her obligation to pay off that debt represent a conflict with the interests of the United States? This is why you don't vote for the crook. Crooks are owned by the people who have financed their corruption. And when they have to decide between your interests and the interests of their benefactors, they're not going to choose you.
