Recent coverage of the Clinton scandals will hopefully put an end to the conservative myth of a liberal media which will lie and twist the news to promote Democratic candidates at the expense of Republicans. Much of the “liberal” media is demonstrating that they are just as likely to cover evidence of unethical behavior among political leaders regardless of party. The New York Times looked at how Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation as Russians Pressed for Control of Uranium Company.
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.
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.
At the time, both Rosatom and the United States government made promises intended to ease concerns about ceding control of the company’s assets to the Russians. Those promises have been repeatedly broken, records show.
The New York Times’s examination of the Uranium One deal is based on dozens of interviews, as well as a review of public records and securities filings in Canada, Russia and the United States. Some of the connections between Uranium One and the Clinton Foundation were unearthed by Peter Schweizer, a former fellow at the right-leaning Hoover Institution and author of the forthcoming book “Clinton Cash.” Mr. Schweizer provided a preview of material in the book to The Times, which scrutinized his information and built upon it with its own reporting.
Whether the donations played any role in the approval of the uranium deal is unknown. But the episode underscores the special ethical challenges presented by the Clinton Foundation, headed by a former president who relied heavily on foreign cash to accumulate $250 million in assets even as his wife helped steer American foreign policy as secretary of state, presiding over decisions with the potential to benefit the foundation’s donors.
There is certainly no smoking gun to absolutely prove that actions by the Clintons were in response to the money they received, but as just one part of a pattern is is unlikely that few beyond Clinton partisans will believe they were innocent of unethical behavior. This, and other similar stories, look far worse for the Clintons by the manner in which Hillary Clinton failed to abide by two Obama policies designed to reduce the risk of such corruption in his administration–increased transparency, including the use of government email, and an agreement, which Clinton violated, to disclose all contributions to the Foundation while Clinton was Secretary of State. While discussing The Disastrous Clinton Post-Presidency, Jonathan Chait wrote:
The Obama administration wanted Hillary Clinton to use official government email. She didn’t. The Obama administration also demanded that the Clinton Foundation disclose all its donors while she served as Secretary of State. It didn’t comply with that request, either. The Clintons’ charitable initiatives were a kind of quasi-government run by themselves, which was staffed by their own loyalists and made up the rules as it went along. Their experience running the actual government, with its formal accountability and disclosure, went reasonably well. Their experience running their own privatized mini-state has been a fiasco.
It has been an unusual experience, limited to the Clinton and Bush families, for an ex-president to have the opportunity to continue to exert influence due to having other family members in major positions of power. ABC News looked at how Bill Clinton Cashed In When Hillary Became Secretary of State.
After his wife became Secretary of State, former President Bill Clinton began to collect speaking fees that often doubled or tripled what he had been charging earlier in his post White House years, bringing in millions of dollars from groups that included several with interests pending before the State Department, an ABC News review of financial disclosure records shows.
Where he once had drawn $150,000 for a typical address in the years following his presidency, Clinton saw a succession of staggering paydays for speeches in 2010 and 2011, including $500,000 paid by a Russian investment bank and $750,000 to address a telecom conference in China.
“It’s unusual to see a former president’s speaking fee go up over time,” said Richard Painter, who served as chief ethics lawyer in the White House Counsel’s office under President George W. Bush. “I must say I’m surprised that he raised his fees. There’s no prohibition on his raising it. But it does create some appearance problems if he raises his fee after she becomes Secretary of State.”
Public speaking became a natural and lucrative source of income for Clinton when he returned to private life in 2001. Records from disclosure forms filed by Hillary Clinton during her tenures in the U.S. Senate and then in the Obama Administration indicate he took in more than $105 million in speech fees during that 14 year period.
The article also noted that ABC News found some errors in an advanced copy of Peter Schweizer upcoming book Clinton Cash. This is why it is so important that reliable journalistic outlets such as The New York Times are evaluating his data, and that others, including liberal investigative journalists such as David Sirota, are uncovering the same issues while working independently.
While Schweizer has previously written conservative books, he is branching out to a Republican family which has the same ethics issues as the Clinton family. Bloomberg Business reports that Schweizer is targeting Jeb Bush next.
In related news, Reuters reports “Hillary Clinton’s family’s charities are refiling at least five annual tax returns after a Reuters review found errors in how they reported donations from governments, and said they may audit other Clinton Foundation returns in case of other errors.” One question here is whether these were innocent errors or yet another attempt to prevent disclosure of foreign contributions.
The New York Times noted this report from Reuters, along with Clinton’s failure to disclose relevant contributions per her agreement with Obama, in their editorial on this matter the following day:
The messiness of her connection with the foundation has been shown in a report by The Times on a complex business deal involving Canadian mining entrepreneurs who made donations to the foundation and were at the time selling their uranium company to the Russian state-owned nuclear energy company. That deal, which included uranium mining stakes in the United States, required approval by the federal government, including the State Department.
The donations, which included $2.35 million from a principal in the deal, were not publicly disclosed by the foundation, even though Mrs. Clinton had signed an agreement with the Obama administration requiring the foundation to disclose all donors as a condition of her becoming secretary of state. This failure is an inexcusable violation of her pledge. The donations were discovered through Canadian tax records by Times reporters. Media scrutiny is continuing, with Reuters reporting that the foundation is refiling some returns found to be erroneous.
Hilary Clinton continues to have a huge lead for the Democratic nomination but there was one development of interest earlier this week when one ex-Clinton backer has switched his support to Martin O’Malley. Clinton’s lead in the national polls has grown increasingly narrow in recent weeks with the most recent Quinnipiac poll showing Clinton leading her closest Republican opponent, Marco Rubio, by only two points. Of particular concern, the poll found that “American voters say 54 – 38 percent that Clinton is not honest and trustworthy, a lower score than top Republicans.” These polling numbers, which have worsened since the start of the email scandal, very well might get even worse for Clinton as further information comes out over the course of the campaign. At some point those Democrats who are in denial of the seriousness of the accusations against Hillary Clinton may have to consider how their defense of Clinton may be serving to bring about the election of Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Rand Paul, or some other Republican as the next president.
Updated from a post at Liberal Values