Corruption: Newly released documents reveal part of what Hillary Clinton was hoping to hide by using a personal email account for official government business. With the Clintons, it’s all about building an empire.
Judicial Watch released 276 documents Tuesday that had been obtained through one of its Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. Among the material are emails that show the State Department under Clinton was coordinating with the Clinton Foundation staff and how foreign governments sought favor through the intertwined State Department-Clinton Foundation link.
As we’ve said before, it looks as if Clinton used her job at the State Department to funnel cashinto her family’s nonprofit organization.
The latest batch of emails shows that foreign interests in Libya and Syria were among the many that took advantage of the State’s close ties to the Clinton Foundation. It was previously discovered that governments in Algeria, Kuwait, Qatar and Oman made donations to the foundation in return for, as far as we can tell, favorable treatment by the State Department.
Judicial Watch reminds us that the Clinton Foundation has “accepted millions of dollars from at least seven foreign governments while Mrs. Clinton served as secretary of state,” including “a $500,000 donation it received from the government of Algeria while Mrs. Clinton served as secretary of state (that) violated a 2008 ethics agreement between the foundation and the Obama administration.”
In all, nearly 200 Clinton Foundation donors have played politics with Clinton’s State Department, and it’s known, as we’ve reported, that at least 60 companies that lobbied the State Department while Clinton was there donated more than $26 million to the Foundation.
The Libya connection, by the way, was made just two days after the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorists attacks on U.S. personnel and grounds in Benghazi. The message was focused on the wish of Mohamed Yusuf al-Magariaf, president of Libya’s National Congress, “to meet President Clinton and to participate at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting for New York.” It was forwarded to Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, by the Clinton Foundation’s director of foreign policy, Amitabh Desai.
It seems to us the conversation should have been about the Benghazi attacks instead. Four Americans were killed, including the first U.S. ambassador killed by hostiles since 1979, and the murderers were running loose. Shouldn’t their capture have been a higher-priority topic? But at that point, Clinton was probably in her what-difference-does-it-make stage of grief.
The Clintons like to talk about their commitment to public service. Their commitment, however, is to the Clintons. Power (eight more years in the White House, if Hillary is elected in November), money and celebrity are their obsessions. The Clintons are, of course, free to pursue money and celebrity. But the American people shouldn’t have to pay for their ambitions.