Been a couple of weeks since I addressed the presidential campaign and I'm going to use this as the foundation for the next round:
"Not all Clinton charities bound by new set of rules" by Annie Linskey Globe Staff August 19, 2016
WASHINGTON — Big chunks of the Clinton family’s charitable network would be exempt from a self-imposed ban on foreign and corporate donations if Hillary Clinton wins the presidency, loopholes that highlight the complexity of disentangling her from the former first family’s myriad potential conflicts of interest.
The fact that it has been used as a $lu$h fund for family and friends that is full of corruption is already troublesome enough.
The most prominent of the exceptions applies to the Boston-based Clinton Health Access Initiative, which in 2014 accounted for 66 percent of spending by the Clinton network of charities.
No wonder the Globe is acting like such a shill for her and a real hater of Trump!
The initiative’s board plans to meet “soon” to discuss whether to participate in the planned restrictions. Adhering to the policy announced by Bill Clinton on Thursday would starve the organization of much of its operating cash and could gut its work of combating the spread of HIV infections and malaria around the world.
It's a nice thought, but I no longer believe the Clinton myth. This idea that that sexual deviant and the war criminal couple of political convenience mean the people and health of the world well has vanished.
So what pharmaceuticals are they working in conjunction with in using the populations of those areas as experimental guinea pigs for vaccines and what not?
At least two other Clinton-related charities also aren’t immediately affected by Thursday’s decision to limit donations.
So the previous days announcement was nothing but end-of-the-week public relations, 'eh?
They include the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, an entity cofounded by the American Heart Association and the Clinton Foundation, and the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership, a joint venture between Bill Clinton and Canadian mining billionaire Frank Giustra.
Gee, what's that all about?
A year later and the nothing regarding those hacked e-mails.
The attention is that "The New York Times reported that handwritten ledgers found in Ukraine that show undisclosed payments to Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager."
The first thing that came to my mind was yellowcake forgeries regarding Iraq, but whatever the case (I'm sure Manafort wasn't the only one making a lobbying buck there) it caused quite a stir and he resigned.
Of course, no big deal if Joe Biden's son joins a Ukraine gas company after getting kicked out of the Navy over a failed drug test.
Why are the BG and NYT so shy about that?
The alliance, a nonprofit that brought in $17.5 million in contributions including money from Nike and the Walmart Foundation, doesn’t have plans to change its fund-raising.
Giustra, in a statement to the Globe, said that his organization would “spin CGEP into an independent entity” to continue its work.
“President Clinton and I believe it is important that we continue the work of alleviating poverty around the world,” said Giustra.
He says that in the face of yawning inequality despite their best efforts.
Is the hypocrisy only lost on me?
That statement illustrates both the high-minded goals of the Clinton charitable works and the potential for undue political influence if Hillary Clinton occupies the Oval Office. A piecemeal approach to addressing such potential conflicts is the response so far to this challenging juxtaposition of interests.
If it's this complicated and complex then the whole things should be shut down, period!
The job of curbing contributions from particular sources is further complicated by the confusing and sprawling network of Clinton-branded charities, which have been collecting cash under an array of legal entities on behalf of the Clintons’ favored causes for roughly 15 years.
It's a MONEY-LAUNDERING network!
It is an unprecedented situation in American politics, and a major political hurdle en route to another unprecedented possibility: the first former first lady — and the first lady — with a real shot at the presidency.
The ma$$ media is trying to make that hurdle about an inch high.
Bill Clinton’s announcement Thursday also provided Republicans with a new attack line: If the Clinton Foundation could cause conflict of interest for a Hillary Clinton White House, why didn’t the same standard apply to the Hillary Clinton State Department?
The Clintons said when President Obama tapped her for the post in 2009 that the foundation’s interests would be walled off from her work at the State Department. In practice, that border proved porous and problematic and prime fodder for political attacks.
Or we were lied to.
“You’re going to have every GOP candidate in America asking: ‘Do you believe that the Clinton Foundation should be shut down?’ ” said former House speaker Newt Gingrich.
Gingrich said he had a two-hour briefing from the Republican National Committee on the various pieces of the Clinton charitable enterprise. “It is staggering,” Gingrich said. “This is a corrupt institution, run for corrupt purposes.”
In financial terms, if not in visibility, the biggest piece of the Clinton charities is the Clinton Health Access Initiative, with offices on Dorchester Avenue. Bill Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, and longtime Clinton lawyer Bruce Lindsey sit on the board of directors for both CHAI and the Clinton Foundation.
“CHAI is a separate legal entity from the Clinton Foundation with its own board,” said CHAI spokesman Regan Lachapelle in a statement. “The CHAI board will be meeting soon to determine its next steps.”
Shutting off all access to foreign government grants would be potentially crippling to the charity, which relied on such funds for 60 percent of its revenue in 2015, according to the charity’s papers. Another 38 percent of funds came from private foundations, some of which are connected to large corporations, including the Ikea Foundation.
Do the math: 98% of the funding is from foreign governments and large corporations -- expecting nothing at all in return, of course.
I can $ee why the pre$$ would $hy away from that.
Though the CHAI organization is by far the largest piece of the Clintons’ network, it maintains a much lower profile and has a history of failing to follow the rules set up by the related Clinton Foundation to avoid conflicts of interest while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state.
EXCUSE ME?
This charity works in 32 countries and saw a huge increase in foreign donations while she helmed the State Department. But CHAI never reported those increases to the State Department as was required by an agreement hammered out between the charity and the Obama administration. It also failed to report new foreign donations, another requirement.
Those look like CRIMES to ME!
The Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership has been another flashpoint. It was founded to create “social enterprises that help people lift themselves out of poverty,” according to Clinton charity filings. The New York Times revealed that Giustra benefited when Clinton’s State Department signed off on a deal that helped Giustra’s uranium mining interests.
And by extension Russia!
Chelsea Clinton and Lindsey also serve on the board for the Alliance for a Healthier Generation. That group already bans funds from food or beverage companies but otherwise “welcomes everyone to the table,” said Megan Corey, a spokeswoman for the organization. “We will continue to follow our own separate fund-raising policies,” she said.
What kind of $alary comes with those board positions?
The broader ban on corporate and foreign donations also would affect charities under the more narrow auspices of the Clinton Foundation, including the Clinton Presidential Center, which houses the Clinton Library in Little Rock, Ark.
This creates a unique problem for the former president: The donation ban does extend to the sprawling library, according to Clinton Foundation spokesman Craig Minassian, and it would therefore be the only one of its kind starved of corporate donations.
Now he will know what it feels like to be one of the Haitians he and W. Bush looted.
The Clintons have been making some preparations for the big shift that her possible presidency entails: In 2013, after Hillary Clinton stepped down as secretary of state, the Clinton Foundation embarked on a massive fund-raising endeavour aimed at creating a $250 million endowment.
Donors to that cause included people who would now be barred from making contributions to the Clinton Foundation charities, including Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, who offered $1 million from his private charity. Irish billionaire Denis O’Brien also contributed.
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So who el$e has bought them off?
Related: Clinton Foundation should stop accepting funds
That's what the Globe advises, but that is not going to make the stench of pa$t corruption go away.
"Clinton Foundation to limit reach in event of election win" by Annie Linskey Globe Staff August 19, 2016
WASHINGTON — The sprawling Clinton Foundation will stop accepting money from corporations and foreign governments if Hillary Clinton is elected president, a move designed to ease concerns about conflicts of interest in a potential Clinton administration, the foundation confirmed Thursday evening.
Instead, the family’s organization would take funds only from American citizens and independent charities.
$ounds good, but there is the fine print above.
And, regardless of the 2016 election outcome, the charity will end the Clinton Global Initiative meetings, glittering affairs that have attracted top politicians from both main political parties and are held around the world. The forums are intended to connect wealthy donors with worthy causes.
The changes would address one of Clinton’s biggest weaknesses on the campaign trail: the notion that she set up an apparatus to personally benefit from her government position. The questions around the Clinton Foundation, along with her tortured answers about her decision to use a private e-mail server as secretary of state, are two of the most potent talking points used to by Republicans to build a case that she’s not trustworthy.
The Clinton Foundation appears to rely heavily on both foreign and corporate donations, though it’s unclear exactly how much of the group’s revenue comes from these sources.
Since the foundation’s inception, it has collected as much as $25 million from Saudi Arabia, as much as $10 million from Kuwait, and up to $5 million a piece from the Citi Foundation, Barclays Capital, and Exxonmobil.
Twenty-nine of the 30 companies on the Dow Jones exchange contributed to the foundation in some manner, according to a 2014 Bloomberg News report.
During Clinton’s 2009 Senate confirmation hearings, she was repeatedly asked about how the country’s chief diplomat would avoid potential conflicts with foreign donors and promised that such gifts would be disclosed and reviewed by the department.
Since she’s left the post, it’s become clear that many gifts weren’t made public or reviewed internally, including ones made to the Boston-based Clinton Health Access Initiative, known as CHAI.
It was unclear on Thursday evening if the ban on donations would be extended to CHAI. The group accounts for almost 60 percent of spending in the Clinton charitable empire.
That was cleared up the next day.
The Globe reported last year that the Boston arm of the foundation saw grants from foreign governments nearly double in the years in which Clinton was running the State Department.
Bowing to pressure in April 2015, the group announced that it would restrict donations to only six Western nations and disclose its donors more frequently.
The change in foundation donation policy was first reported Thursday evening by the Associated Press, and confirmed to the Globe by Clinton Foundation spokesman Craig Minassian.
The foundation, founded by Bill Clinton after he left the White House, initially worked to provide people infected with HIV or AIDS in poor nations with access to affordable and life saving medications. It has since expanded to focus on other public health issues, including helping reduce malaria and tuberculosis infections around the world along with addressing climate change, expanding economic development, and increasing opportunities for women and girls.
It has steadily become a political liability as Hillary Clinton has become more and more prominent. Republicans and journalists have raised questions about whether the foundation donors, in particular foreign governments, gave money in exchange for access to Clinton as secretary of state.
Those concerns were highlighted this month when a batch of State Department e-mails were released that showed coziness between Bill Clinton’s top staff at the foundation and Hillary Clinton’s top staff at the State Department.
And there you go! There is the link inside the Foundation.
In one e-mail exchange, the Clinton Foundation’s Doug Band requested help from two top State Department official for somebody whose name was redacted. “Personnel has been sending him options,” replied Huma Abedin, then a top State Department official.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump launched a petition last week urging the Department of Justice to investigate the Clinton charity.
No, Obama didn't do that; he audited Trump instead!
How Nixonian!
“The Clinton Foundation has time and time again exposed itself as a culture of corruption, pay-to-play deals, and downright fraud,” according to the petition.
I don't think there is any doubt about that now.
The news about potential changes to the foundation’s donor base comes as Trump has signaled he would begin focusing more on the charity. This week in a campaign shake-up he installed conservative operative Stephen Bannon, who was chairman of the Breitbart News website and helped produce a documentary based on the 2015 book “Clinton Cash,” which sought to shed light on what they termed “nefarious relationships” between the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton State Department.
He better be careful. Guys like that have a way of turning up dead.
Several spokesmen from Clinton’s presidential campaign didn’t respond to e-mails requesting comment on whether Clinton personally approved the move, or whether they believe it will inoculate the campaign from Trump’s attacks.
I'm sure there is some irony there.
Before Trump launched his presidential bid he was a donor to the foundation, giving it at least $100,000. He never attended the Clinton Global Initiative meetings, according to a Clinton Foundation spokesperson.
You can look of that one of two ways. He was buying access is all and wasn't invited to the parties.
The Globe reported last year that Clinton’s State Department shifted funds in Rwanda to a program championed by the Clinton Foundation, and a pet cause of Bill Clinton’s.
Hillary Clinton also stepped down from the Clinton Foundation as she ramped up her presidential campaign, but her husband and daughter remain on the board of directors. Both are expected to play key roles in the White House, should she prevail in her presidential bid.
Yeah, NAFTA and GATT Bill is going to bring back the jobs he helped ship overseas!
Bill Clinton made the announcement about the potential changes at a meeting Thursday afternoon with foundation staff members.
He said the foundation plans to continue its work, but intends to refocus its efforts in a process that will take up to a year to complete. He also said he will resign from the board.
What are you waiting for then?
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Related:
"A new batch of State Department e-mails released Tuesday showed the close and sometimes overlapping interests between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department when Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state. The documents raised new questions about whether the charitable foundation worked to reward its donors with access and influence at the State Department, a charge that Clinton has faced in the past and has always denied. Clinton’s presidential campaign, which has been shadowed for 17 months by the controversy over the private e-mail server she used exclusively while at the State Department, had no immediate comment on the documents. The State Department turned the new e-mails over to a conservative advocacy group, Judicial Watch, as part of a lawsuit that the group brought under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents included 44 e-mails that were not among some 55,000 pages of e-mails that Clinton had previously given to the State Department, which she said represented all her “work-related” e-mails. The document release centers on discussions between Clinton’s aides and Clinton Foundation executives about a number of donors and associates with interests before the State Department...."
What more do you need to know, other than they are now going after the leaker?
"Hack of Democrats’ accounts was wider than believed, officials say" by Eric Lichtblau and Eric Schmitt New York Times August 11, 2016
WASHINGTON — A Russian cyberattack that targeted Democratic politicians was bigger than it first appeared and breached the private e-mail accounts of more than 100 party officials and groups, officials with knowledge of the case said Wednesday.
The fact that the New York Times would repeat without question and as if fact a bogus charge by the Clinton campaign tells you were they are coming from. That, and the fact that the NSA outing has been buried.
The widening scope of the attack has prompted the FBI to broaden its investigation, and agents have begun notifying a long list of Democratic officials that the Russians may have breached their personal accounts.
The main targets appear to have been the personal e-mail accounts of Hillary Clinton’s campaign officials and party operatives, along with a number of party organizations.
Officials have acknowledged that the Russian hackers gained access to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which is the fund-raising arm for House Democrats, and to the Democratic National Committee, including a DNC voter analytics program used by Clinton’s presidential campaign.
But the hack now appears to have extended well beyond those groups, and organizations like the Democratic Governors Association may also have been affected, according to Democrats involved in the investigation.
Democrats say they are bracing for the possibility that more damaging or embarrassing internal material could become public before the November presidential election.
The attack has already proved politically damaging. On the eve of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia last month, Florida Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned as DNC chairwoman after WikiLeaks released a trove of hacked internal e-mails showing party officials eager for Clinton to win the nomination over Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
It's further come to light that trough vote fraud the nomination was in fact stolen from Sanders. That's why he looked so glum at the convention and had to be threatened with loss of Senate power if he doesn't support.
US intelligence agencies have said they have “high confidence” that the attack was the work of Russian intelligence agencies. It has injected a heavy dose of international intrigue into an already chaotic presidential campaign as Democrats have alleged that the Russians are trying to help tilt the election toward the Republican nominee, Donald Trump.
Their high degree of confidence is all the more reason to doubt them. They had "high confidence" regarding Iraq WMD, remember?
As for the Russians trying to help Trump.... doesn't make sense, and I'm sure they will deal with whoever is sent them.
Trump stunned Democrats and Republicans when he said last month that he hoped Russian intelligence services had successfully hacked Clinton’s e-mail, and encouraged them to publish whatever they may have stolen, although he said later that he was being sarcastic.
That was the way I took it, but the pre$$ hopped on it.
Intelligence and law enforcement officials, however, are taking the issue seriously.
FBI officials briefed staff members of House and Senate intelligence committees last week on the investigation into the theft of e-mails and documents from the Democratic National Committee. Briefings for other congressional committees are expected soon.
They didn't delve into her e-mail server with such vigor, did they?
I think I suggested from the start that this was a self-inflicted false flag. It took all the attention away from the e-mail server.
Much of the briefing to the committee staff focused on the fact that US intelligence agencies have virtually no doubt that the Russian government was behind the theft, according to one staff member, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss elements of the confidential briefing.
They just cleared them of any involvement.
The extension of the hack’s scope beyond the DNC and the House Democratic committee added a troubling new element to the case, the staff member said.
US authorities remain uncertain whether the electronic break-in to the committee’s computer systems was intended as fairly routine cyberespionage or as part of an effort to manipulate the presidential election.
Like what, you know, the CIA has routinely does across the planet for decades now.
Russian motives are still an open question, said a federal law enforcement official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity.
There is no evidence so far that the theft penetrated the e-mails of lawmakers or staff members who serve on the intelligence committees, two staff members said.
The FBI says it has no direct evidence that Clinton’s private e-mail server was hacked by the Russians or anyone else. But in June, FBI Director James B. Comey said that intruders had tried, and that any successful intruders were probably far too skilled to leave evidence of their intrusion behind. Law enforcement officials said he had the Russians in mind.
I've got someone else, but I wouldn't discount Israel, either.
Clinton’s aides were concerned about the possibility of an outside breach after a hacker calling himself “Guccifer” got into the e-mail account in 2013 of Sidney Blumenthal, a longtime confidant of Clinton’s who often e-mailed her on her private server, according to new documents released Wednesday.
Blumenthal was a problem because Obama specifically forbade him from holding a post, and his involvement here indicates an attempt to run a shadow State Department over the wishes of the president (who, admittedly, cares more about the rough-and-tumble of domestic politics than foreign affairs. He turned it over to Clinton when he made her SecofState.
Cheryl D. Mills, a lawyer and adviser for Clinton, said she discussed the 2013 hack with the technician who ran Clinton’s private server and considered “whether this event might affect Secretary Clinton’s e-mail,” according to a written account Mills provided to Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group that is suing the State Department.
So far, it does not appear that the Russian hackers sought or gained access to any computer systems used by Trump, who is known to avoid e-mail, officials said.
SMART MOVE and very presidential!
Since news of the DNC hack broke in June, a number of Democratic organizations have been scrubbing their files to determine what internal information might have been compromised. They have also been shoring up their cybersecurity defenses to guard against another attack.
At lea$t $omeone is making a buck.
An official with the DNC, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the committee took the threat very seriously, but would not comment on specific security steps taken.
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"FBI has turned over documents to Congress regarding Clinton" by Karoun Demirjian Washington Post August 17, 2016
WASHINGTON — The FBI has handed over a ‘‘number of documents’’ to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, a spokesman said Tuesday afternoon.
The documents are expected to contain information about the FBI’s investigation into Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s e-mail server as secretary of state. The committee is currently reviewing the information in them, which was classified as ‘‘secret.’’
‘‘The FBI has turned over a ‘number of documents’ related to their investigation of former Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail server. Committee staff is currently reviewing the information that is classified SECRET. There are no further details at this time,’’ said a committee spokesman.
Republican and Democratic spokesmen for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence confirmed that that committee had also received the Clinton files. House minority leader Nancy Pelosi’s office said that the House Judiciary Committee had also received copies of the FBI information on Tuesday.
‘‘The FBI already determined unanimously that there is insufficient evidence of criminal wrongdoing,’’ said Maryland Representative Elijah Cummings, Oversight’s top Democrat. ‘‘Republicans are now investigating the investigator in a desperate attempt to resuscitate this issue, keep it in the headlines, and distract from Donald Trump’s sagging poll numbers.’’
Pennsylvania Democrat Matt Cartwright, a member of the House’s Oversight Committee, suggested Tuesday that Republican leaders were focusing on the FBI documents as an ‘‘unreasonable’’ political diversion from the campaign trail, particularly GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.
‘‘They may be willing to risk appearing completely unreasonable, if that helps distract people from the next utterly insane or un-American thing that Donald Trump says,’’ Cartwright said.
I can't take these party hacks anymore.
The e-mail server has become a thorn in the side of Clinton’s presidential campaign as she has repeatedly tried to explain why she used a private server for her e-mails. Clinton has said it was a ‘‘mistake’’ to use the server and that she is ‘‘sorry’’ she did so.
That's not good enough for breaking the law -- unless you are above it.
Maybe one of you brothers can use such a thing before the cops shoot you dead.
Further controversy, however, was sparked when Clinton said FBI Director James Comey testified she spoke truthfully in public about the private server. Clinton had to clarify her remarks, saying she had “short-circuited.”
That either means she lied or has health problems.
Clinton maintains she told the truth both publicly and to the FBI about the e-mail server....
I'm tired of delusional presidents, so we will just have to take Trump at his word until proven otherwise.
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Also see: "Christie ‘flat out lied’ in George Washington Bridge case, aide texted
Yes, he "lied to reporters" and if certain e-mails were discovered, “it could be bad.”
"The political dust-up over the FBI handing documents about the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation to Congress is intensifying, with Republicans complaining the materials were turned over in such a way that assessing them is difficult and Democrats contending they should not have been given to legislators. On Tuesday, the FBI delivered to Congress an overview of the investigation along with summaries of more than a dozen interviews with senior Clinton staffers, other State Department officials, former secretary of state Colin Powell, and at least one other person, according to an e-mail from an aide to Republican Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa that was sent to congressional offices. The tussle centers over whether the FBI has the authority to impose sharp restrictions on the material, which co-mingled classified and nonclassified documents. The FBI required Congress to maintain the materials in a secure area accessible only by those who have clearances. Also at issue is the aim of Grassley and other Republicans to publicly release the summaries, which include new, unclassified details about the FBI’s server investigation. In announcing the agency’s findings last month, FBI Director James Comey said the investigation was untainted by political influence. Comey has said he wants to release more details than normal about the agents’ work to underscore the nonpartisan nature of the probe. But the unusual delivery of the records, and the restriction imposed by the FBI, have fueled the partisan squabble. The FBI declined to comment for this article. Ron Hosko, a former assistant director at the FBI, said Comey has ‘‘spoken repeatedly on his respect and understanding’’ of congressional oversight, and that is probably why the director was so responsive to legislators’ inquiries."
To me it is beyond that. It is whether the government of this country was corrupted and whether its national security was compromised.
"A federal judge on Friday ordered Hillary Clinton to provide written testimony under oath about why she set up a private computer server to send and receive e-mails while secretary of state, ensuring that the issue will continue to dog her presidential campaign. In a brief ruling issued on Friday afternoon, the judge, Emmet G. Sullivan of federal district court in Washington, approved a motion by the conservative advocacy organization Judicial Watch to pursue its vigorous campaign to investigate Clinton’s use of the private server. In addition to requiring her testimony in writing, the judge allowed the group to depose a senior State Department aide who had warned two subordinates not to question her e-mail practices. The ruling opened another front in a fight Clinton’s campaign certainly hoped to put behind her."
Related(?): Trump suggests Clinton’s e-mails may have led to Iranian’s execution
See: Iran says it executed nuclear scientist who went to US
A very convoluted and confusing tale.
