In the past several weeks, not a day has passed without a new scandal surfacing revealing Clinton’s lack of judgment whether it involves her abuse of email protocol, or some previously undisclosed financial relation between either Hillary Clinton or the Clinton foundation and an outside donor. The most egregious revelation took place a few days ago when it emerged that the Democratic presidential candidate had breached her agreement with the White House to name all foundation donors during her tenure as secretary of state.
Specifically, as Reuters reported, Clinton had promised the federal government that the Clinton Foundation and its associated charities would name all donors annually while she was the nation’s top diplomat. “She also promised that the charities would let the State Department’s ethics office review beforehand any proposed new foreign governments donations.”
In March, the charities confirmed to Reuters for the first time that they had not complied with those pledges for most of Clinton’s four years at the State Department.
The implication is that foreigners banned from donating to U.S. political campaigns could and likely did curry favor with her by giving to the charity that bears her name. The charities accepted new donations from at least six foreign governments while Clinton was secretary of state: Switzerland, Papua New Guinea, Swaziland, Rwanda, Sweden and Algeria. And, of course, Ukraine.
Ā The charities never told the State Department about the new and increased donations. In two instances, the charities said this was the result of “oversights”; for the other six, they said those donations were exceptions to the agreement for various reasons.
The charities also stopped publishing full donor lists from 2010 onwards; the annually updated list omitted donors to the foundation’s flagship health initiative.
But the most shocking development took place yesterday when the US State Department, via spokesman Jeff Rathke, told reporters that while it “regrets” that it did not get to review the new foreign government funding, it does not plan to look into the matter further, spokesman Jeff Rathke said on Thursday.
“The State Department has not and does not intend to initiate a formal review or to make a retroactive judgment about items that were not submitted during Secretary Clinton’s tenure,” Rathke told reporters.
And while the objective, unbiased media would have been up in arms had this gross abuse of government privileges and clear pandering to foreign interests occurred under a Republican candidate, there has been barely a peep from said media as far as Hillary’s involvement is concerned.
One person, however, did speak up: that was AP’s Matt Lee who asked why the State Department wouldn’t investigate further to determine if the tens of millions of dollars in donations had influenced her, and thus the US State Department’s, decisions in the 2011-2013 period.
Rathke’s response: there is no evidence that these donations to the Clinton charities had any effect on Clinton’s decisions. āWeāre not going to make a retroactive review on these cases and we will not make a retroactive judgment,ā he said.
Of course, the circular logic involved is so twisted even hardened, conflicted government apparatchiks would not fail to recognize that there is no way to make a determination if said previously undisclosed donations had influenced her decisions without a further inquiry, an inquiry the State Department refuses to make because it assumes that it would find nothing.
Lee quickly noted this told Rathke that āthe reason you are not aware of anything is because the building is refusing to go back and look at it to see if there is anything that might raise a flag.”
What followed was 6 minutes of squirming that would make even the most hard-core Clinton supporter blush red with embarrassment at the farce and the corruption evident at every single level of government, especially when certain pre-approved (by Wall Street) candidates are involved.
The full exchange below.
