Clintons: Former President Bill Clinton took home nearly $18 million over five years as the face man of a for-profit university that wanted to use Hillary Clinton's State Department, the Washington Post reports. Funny, seems we've heard this one before.
In an editorial back on June 14, we asked the question: "Why Isn't The Press Covering Clinton For-Profit University Scheme?" In it, we detailed what was then known about Clinton's "job" as honorary chancellor for Laureate International Universities, a for-profit business that leveraged students' ability to get federally backed loans to attend Laureate's "universities."
Recall that, at the time of our piece, the media were full of outraged articles about the defunct, for-profit "Trump University" and what a blatant fraud it appeared to be. Trump was derided as a huckster, solely in it for the money.
But the extraordinarily lucrative ties of Bill and Hillary Clinton to Laureate, also a for-profit university that has been challenged by former students as a diploma factory living off federal loans? Crickets.
To its credit, the Post has looked further into the scheme. Turns out, in August 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton explicitly asked those making up the guest list of an official State Department dinner to include Doug Becker of Laureate. Why? Laureate was "the fastest growing college network in the world" and Becker was someone that "Bill likes a lot," Hillary wrote.
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Nothing criminal or suspicious there. Except that nine months later, former President Clinton signed a big-money deal to be a "consultant" and "honorary chancellor" for Laureate. His take over the five years: $17.6 million. He stepped down from his honorary post in April 2015, just as Hillary was beginning her candidacy.
No, these two events are not coincidental. As Sam Pitroda, an expert on higher education who also attended the 2009 dinner told the Post, such an invitation "gets you very high-level contacts, and it gets you to the right people." In short, it was potentially extraordinarily lucrative for Laureate.
Far from following her pledge to keep an "arms length" between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department, it sure looks like Hillary used her official office to solicit money for her hubby Bill — and, of course, by extension, herself. It looks, smells and feels like felony malfeasance. Yet the media let this fester for months with nary a peep. Curious.
Oh, and by the way, did we say that Laureate was backed by billionaire self-described socialist George Soros? It is. And it's not a tiny enterprise, with $4.3 billion in revenue in 2015, 800,000 students worldwide with some 70 schools in 30 countries, including its flagship school, U.S.-based Walden University, which is accredited.
In our June piece on the scandal, we noted that Clinton worked as a "glorified pitchman" for the university. We quoted George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, who wrote that "many have alleged (Walden) is a scam designed to bilk students of tens of thousands of dollars for degrees."
We can't exactly call it irony that Hillary Clinton this year has vowed to "crack down on predatory schools" that "load students up with debt for programs that don't lead to good-paying jobs," leaving students and taxpayers "holding the bag."
No, that's chutzpah. Especially when, as NBC News reports, Walden had one of the highest debt loads of any school in the U.S., according to a 2015 study.
This is just one part of the dirty business of the Clinton Foundation. Just ask Wall Street analyst Charles Ortel, whom the Sunday Times of London once called "one of the finest analysts of financial statements on the planet." After more than a year of study of the Clinton Foundation, Ortel this week published a stunning conclusion: "To informed analysts, the Clinton Foundation appears to be a rogue charity that has neither been organized nor operated lawfully from inception in October 1997 to date ... it is a case study in international charity fraud, of mammoth proportions."
Add this to the continually growing list of money-related scandals that plague the Clinton family, their foundation and their connection to the U.S. government. Bill Clinton was able to parlay his time in office into hundreds of millions of dollars of personal wealth through the auspices of the family-run Clinton Foundation.
In 2009, he got another trip through the revolving doors when Hillary became the nation's top diplomat, and Bill and his "charitable" foundation again cashed in.
One has to wonder what novel way Bill and Hillary will again find to enrich themselves if, and when, she wins the U.S. presidency.
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