It's not just Morocco by a long shot

The previous post looked into a pay-for-play arrangement involving the king of Morocco and the Clinton Foundation.

It was typical in its stickiness:

Saudi Arabian Influence: 

When Clinton first took office in 2008, the foundation disclosed that Saudi Arabia donated between $10 to $25 million, with some donations coming as recently as 2014 when Clinton prepared her run for the presidency. The foundation received an additional $1 to $5 million donation from the “Friends of Saudi Arabia,” which was cofounded by a Saudi prince. Critics question the ethics of taking such vast sums of money from individuals and a government with one of the worst human rights records in the world.

King Of Moroccan Meeting : 

Emails released by WikiLeaks, in a likely attempt to influence the U.S. election, also reveal Clinton arranged for her foundation to host a meeting in Morocco in return for a $12 million donation from the country’s king. The donation came from a Moroccan state-owned mining company, which later received a $92 million loan guarantee while Clinton served as secretary of state.

“This was HRC’s idea, our office approached the Moroccans and they 100 percent believe they are doing this at her request. The King has personally committed approx. $12 million both for the endowment and to support the meeting,” Clintons aide Huma Abedin wrote in a leaked email to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

Russian Uranium Ties: 

In another troubling instance, foundation donations were closely linked to a uranium mining company tied to the Kremlin. Canadian leaders of a mining company funneled millions of dollars to the foundation while Clinton was secretary of state, at the same time they needed Department of State approval for the sale of their company to Russia. The Clinton State Department-approved deal gave Russia control of one-fifth of the entire uranium supply in the U.S.

The chairman of the uranium mining company donated $2.35 million to the foundation, without any disclosure from the Clintons. After Russia announced its intention to make a bid for the uranium mining company, former President Bill Clinton was paid $500,000 to deliver a speech in Moscow.

Indonesian Tobacco Magnate:

The Clinton Foundation’s ties also extend to powerful individuals seeking assistance from the U.S. government, with the help of the Clinton network. Indonesian tobacco magnate Putera Sampoerna donated and worked with the foundation before he “got the U.S. government to underwrite millions in loans offered by the foundation and secured high-profile support for its activities from Sec. Clinton and other senior federal officials,” according to a report by The Washington Free Beacon.

Algeria, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman: 

The Clinton Foundation further accepted donations from several foreign governments while Clinton served as secretary of state, including Algeria, Kuwait, Qatar, and Oman.

In the instance of Algeria, the Clinton Foundation acknowledged to The Washington Post in 2015 it should have sought clearance from the Department of State’s ethics office before taking $500,000. After Clinton left office, the foundation received a large donation from the United Arab Emirates.

Clinton Foundation officials ignored nearly all “best practices” urged by good governance organizations, a July Daily Caller News Foundation investigation found. When Trump challenged Clinton to return donations from countries that abuse women and homosexuals, a DCNF investigation found it would amount to between $19.3 million and $55.7 million.

This one's especially grisly:

The Clinton Foundation invited the prime minister of Kosovo to the 2011 Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting knowing full well that he had been implicated in a human organ trafficking scheme as leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army in the late 1990s.

“What are USG views on WJC inviting former Kosovo PM [Hashim] Thaci and the current PM to CGI?” Clinton Foundation foreign policy adviser Amitabh Desai wrote in an Aug. 17, 2011 email to several top Hillary Clinton State Department officials.

“Is Thaci still embroiled in organ harvesting issues and is that of consequence?” Desai asked in the email, which the State Department recently released to Citizens United.

Desai clarified in a follow-up email that Thaci was actually prime minister at the time. He now serves as president of Kosovo.

Who within the Clinton machine knew this and when?

Thaci’s alleged atrocities, which have not led to prosecution for him or anyone in the KLA, have been laid out in detail in other news reports.

Vice News reported in 2014 that an American diplomat who was appointed in 2011 by the European Union to investigate the claims, found that the KLA murdered 10 Serbian and Albanian prisoners and sold their kidneys and livers on the black market.

Vice also reported that Thaci was known in his KLA days as “The Snake.”

But at this point, what difference does it make?

Madame BleachBit's own daughter didn't like the way things smelled at the Foundation

Were you aware of this?

Chelsea Clinton’s bold decision in 2011 to launch an “internal investigation” into the finances of the Clinton Foundation and Clinton Global Initiative was the equivalent of a declaration of war by the first daughter and a bombshell about the financial mess she discovered at the foundation.

The latest revelation came out Tuesday in a new batch of WikiLeaks emails sent to and from Clinton confidant John Podesta, who now is Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign chairman.

Two emails — one dated Nov. 12, 2011 and another dated Jan. 4, 2012 — show Chelsea was aggressively looking into the foundation’s money flows and talking to others about it.

Her actions worried President Bill Clinton’s long-time handler Doug Band, who complained to Podesta about Chelsea’s intervention into the internal operations of the foundation.

The disclosure suggests that Chelsea was shocked by what she found inside her parent’s organization that secured millions of dollars from despots, Eastern European tycoons, Arab Sheiks and foreign billionaires — all of whom also were seeking favors from her mom and dad.

In the 2011 email, Band complained to Podesta about Chelsea’s activity within the foundation, accusing her efforts to reform the organization as the behavior of  a “spoiled brat.”

But in his January 2012 email Band discloses that Chelsea, “is conducting an internal investigation of money within the foundation from cgi to the foundation.”

“CGI” is the Clinton Global Initiative where the Clintons annually assemble the world’s richest people and connect them to U.S. and foreign government officials.

And now we have access to the investigation's findings:

An independent “governance review” conducted by a prominent law firm that specializes in philanthropic issues concluded in December 2010 that the Clinton Foundation had a weak, rubber stamp board of directors and that many of its donors had “an expectation of a quid pro quo benefits in return for gifts.”

The blistering review — made public Thursday by WikiLeaks — described a tax-exempt public foundation with none of the independent oversight required under federal charity law. The Clinton Foundation reported $187 million in net assets in 2011.

The investigation was carried out by a crack team:

The review was conducted by the New York law firm of Simpson Thacher and was requested by Chelsea Clinton who had profound misgivings about the operation of her parent’s foundation. Leading the review was Victoria Bjorklund, one of the nation’s top-ranked legal experts on good-governance practices for foundations and charities. She came out of retirement to lead the review.

Chelsea's been rather low-profile throughout this campaign, not much more than an occasional speech. What methods are being employed to keep her that way?

And then there's this . . .

Yesterday, we looked at Lebanese - Nigerian businessman Gilbert Chagoury and his donations to the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative and Hillioniare's communications to Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin telling them to put him in touch with the State Department's Lebanon point person.

It seems there's a pattern of this kind of thing. Now we learn about Pakistan and one Muhammed Yunus:

In today’s installment we learn that (1) Hillary Clinton, during an official visit to Bangladesh as Secretary of State, publicly defended the bank of a crooked long-time friend of her husband and major Clinton Foundation donor, (2) in response, the Clinton Foundation emailed top Hillary aide Cheryl Mills about accepting a donation from the bank and a giant Abu Dhabi oil company, (3) the Clinton Foundation accepted the donation, and (4) Bill Clinton ended up with a big speaking fee.

This information comes from a May 7, 2012, email chain between Mills and the Clinton Foundation’s foreign policy director, obtained through the legal efforts of Citizens United, and from the reporting of Richard Pollock of the Daily Caller.

As always with Clinton cash corruption, you can’t tell the players without a scorecard. The players here, in addition to the Clintons and Cheryl Mills, are:

Muhammad Yunnus — a longtime friend of Bill Clinton. He has often been a featured speaker at the annual Clinton Global Initiative celebrity galas in New York. His Grameen America foundation donated between $100,000 to $250,000, according to the Clinton Foundation website. During Hillary’s tenure at State, the U.S. Agency for International Development, a State Department division, awarded millions of grant dollars to Yunus and to his allies

The Grameen Bank — a Bangladesh bank run by Yunnus that was supposed to give out “micro-loans” to poor women in the country.

TAQA — a giant oil and gas company in Abu Dhabi, formally known as the Abu Dhabi National Energy Company. Owned mostly by the Abu Dhabi government, it operates in 11 countries, including Canada and the United States. In 2010, it won the first of three “blanket agreements” with the Obama administration to import billions of cubic feet of natural gas from Canada into the United States. 

Linda Andich — the Clinton Foundation’s development director.

Amitabh Desai — the Clinton Foundation’s foreign policy director.

The story begins when Yunus was charged by an official Bangladeshi commission with financial mismanagement of Grameen Bank. Eventually, he was forced to leave the bank. Hillary responded to the charges against Yunus by publicly urging the government of Bangladesh not to do anything to undermine his bank. She said this during an official visit to Bangladesh.

Then came the May 7, 2012 email chain that Citizens United recently pried loose. The chain kicks off when Linda Andich of the Clinton Foundation saw an Associated Press article about Clinton’s intervention on behalf of Yunus. Aldridge attached the AP article to an email to Desai (the Clinton Foundation’s foreign policy director) and wrote: 

Just reading about HRC’s support of the Grameen Bank, which prompted me to check in for any updates for the State Department, re: the Donation from TAQA.

She added: 

To refresh, they bought the ‘spend a day with President Clinton’ auction experience — donation to be split 50/50 with Grameen. The winners are top execs from their Scottish office, not Abu Dhabi.

Three hours later, Desai forwarded Andich’s email to Mills and wrote, “we’d welcome your guidance on accepting funds from TAQA.” Mills replied, “Will call to discuss.”

The donation of TAQA funds was being offered by TAQA’s managing director in Scotland. He had agreed to give $60,000 to the Foundation for Bill to speak at a Scotland charity and auction. 

Ultimately, the Foundation accepted the donation of $60,000. Bill went to Scotland where, in addition to collecting the donation to his Foundation, he received at least $250,000 for a speech before a group called “Business For Change,” according to the Foundation’s website. The black tie dinner raised funds for Yunus and his bank. 

And a good time was had by all.

This, folks, is the track record of the Freedom-Haters' candidate for dictator of post-America  president of the United States.

Clinton friends generally have the stench of corruption wafting off them

I Was rather concerned when Terry McAuliffe was elected governor of Virginia. Given his track record, I had a feeling this kind of thing might happen:

The FBI is investigating whether Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe's 2013 campaign accepted illegal contributions, law enforcement officials confirmed to NBC News. 

Federal officials say for the past several months, the FBI has been looking at whether McAuliffe's 2013 campaign for governor of Virginia accepted political contributions that were forbidden by federal law. 

McAuliffe is a one-time board member of the Clinton Global Initiative, the foundation set up by former President Bill Clinton and likely Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. 

The former chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 2000 to 2005, McAuliffe was also a co-chairman of Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign. 

Records show more than 100 donors contributed to both the foundation and McAuliffe's campaign. 

Federal officials say investigators are looking at those overlaps and are especially interested in contributions from Wang Wenliang, a Chinese politician. The investigation was first reported by CNN.

Contributions by foreign nationals in U.S. elections are barred, but Wang's spokesperson says he has permanent U.S. resident status.

This is how these people roll.

An important book and film

Roger Kimball of PJ Media got a preview look at Clinton Cash, the documentary film based on Peter Schweitzer's book of the same name. I've heard Schweitzer, a Hoover Institution scholar, interviewed a few times, but haven't read the book yet.

But it's clear the movie is going to be a must-see. Kimball teases us with one example of the pay-for-play empire the Clintons have built, and it's a doozy. You think the classified info on the private server endangered national security? How about this?

Last year, following up with independent investigative research based on revelations in Clinton Cash, the Times published a long and devastating story about the how the Clintons sold out some twenty percent of American uranium assets to a Russian company controlled by Vladimir Putin. “At the heart of the tale,” the Times reported:

... are several men, leaders of the Canadian mining industry, who have been major donors to the charitable endeavors of former President Bill Clinton and his family. Members of that group built, financed and eventually sold off to the Russians a company that would become known as Uranium One.

Beyond mines in Kazakhstan that are among the most lucrative in the world, the sale gave the Russians control of one-fifth of all uranium production capacity in the United States. Since uranium is considered a strategic asset, with implications for national security, the deal had to be approved by a committee composed of representatives from a number of United States government agencies. Among the agencies that eventually signed off was the State Department, then headed by Mr. Clinton’s wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Worried yet? It gets worse:

And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.
It gets still worse, much worse. Read the book. But then watch the documentary, coming to a television screen near you much sooner than the announced release date of July 24.
It gives a detailed analysis of how the Clintons hypocritically mouth progressive pieties while selling out those values to multinational corporate interests on the one hand, and some of world’s creepiest political actors on the other.

As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One’s chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.

Wicked, wicked people.

 

The curious tale of Billy Jeff the Zipper and the Energizer

A web of intrigue involving the Clinton Global Initiative, a, "energy-savings" company, and a "fit blonde."

Bill Clinton’s foundation arranged a $2 million pledge to a power company partly owned by a wealthy blond divorcée — who some say is the frequent visitor to his home nicknamed “Energizer.”

The “commitment” to Julie Tauber McMahon’s firm from the Clinton Global Initiative was placed on its 2010 conference agenda at Clinton’s urging, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

The initiative “commits $2 million to support the work of Energy Pioneer Solutions, a company founded to deliver energy savings to communities in rural America,” said a 2010 statement from the charity.

Clinton even went to bat for the company when it came to lobbying for federal funds. He helped steer an $812,000 federal grant to it by endorsing the funds via then-Energy Secretary Steven Chu, the Journal said.

McMahon owns 29 percent of Energy Pioneer Solutions, which was given the money to make people’s homes more energy-efficient.

The fit, blond mother of three, who lives just minutes from Bill and Hillary Clinton’s home in Chappaqua, West­chester, is the daughter of Joel Tauber, a millionaire donor to the Democratic Party.
McMahon, 54, is rumored to be the woman dubbed “Energizer” by the Secret Service at the Clinton home because of her frequent visits, according to RadarOnline.

Secret Service agents were even given special instructions to abandon usual protocol when the woman came by, according to journalist Ronald Kessler’s tell-all book, “The First Family Detail.” 

“You don’t stop her, you don’t approach her, you just let her go in,” says the book, based on agents’ accounts.
“Energizer” is described in the book as a charming visitor who sometimes brought cookies to the agents.
The book describes one sun-drenched afternoon when agents took notice of the woman’s revealing attire.
“It was a warm day, and she was wearing a low-cut tank top, and as she leaned over, her breasts were very exposed,” an agent is quoted in the book as saying.
“They appeared to be very perky and very new and full … There was no doubt in my mind they were enhanced.”

“Energizer” reportedly timed her arrivals and departures around Hillary Clinton’s schedule. 

Whooeee, I'll bet there'll be some ash trays sailing though the air next time Billy Jeff and Hillionaire are both at Chappaqua.