Unseemly in the extreme:
In the beforetime, in the long, long ago of 2015, a woman named Hillary Clintonwas about to launch her campaign for president. She was also trying really hard to secure $12 million for her family’s charitable foundation from King Mohammed VI of Morocco. And her campaign was freaking out about it.
Campaign manager Robby Mook and longtime Clinton confidant John Podesta thought the deal ― in which Clinton had committed to speak at an event for the king on the condition of his $12 million donation ― would look bad. Clinton aide Huma Abedin tried to explain that it was simply too late to back out.
“This was HRC’s idea,” Abedin wrote in an email to Podesta. “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. It will break a lot of china to back out now when we had so many opportunities to do it in the past few months.”
The team eventually reached a compromise. Hillary Clinton didn’t show up, but Bill Clinton and Chelsea Clinton did, and the money came through.
It is generally frowned upon for presidential candidates to be pumping foreign leaders for money, and her staff recognized it. And so they exchanged a series of contentious emails. On “Fox News Sunday,” host Chris Wallace pressed Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook on the controversy.
“Why wasn’t that classic pay-to-play?” Wallace asked.
“There’s nothing new here,” Mook replied, deflecting to Donald Trump’s sagging poll numbers.
“But, Robby, there is some new stuff,” Wallace responded. “Emails show ― and I’m going to go through some of them ― you were not happy at all the idea of this meeting and her going there.”
Mook maintained that it was all just a scheduling issue that had nothing to do with corruption or public perceptions of corruption.
“We didn’t want her going overseas,” Mook said. “I didn’t want her going overseas before the campaign was kicking off. Again, these are stolen documents.”
Well, yes, Robby, but the truth they reveal is a genie that's not going to go back into the bottle.
No comments:
Post a Comment