The income stream of the Clinton Foundation, which includes many millions of dollars from foreign governments and individuals with close links to foreign governments, has created a firestorm of controversy. A forthcoming book, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, by Peter Schweizer, contends that, during her tenure as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton granted favors and concessions to governments that were generous in their donations to the Foundation that bears her name.
More than that, reporting published prior to the book’s publication shows that enormous speaking fees were paid to both Hillary and Bill Clinton by entities closely tied to these same foreign interests. The Washington Post informs us that Bill Clinton alone collected $26 million in speaking fees in his work on behalf of the Foundation.
As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton was supposed to have filed full disclosure reports, and the Clinton Foundation was supposed to have forsworn donations from foreign governments during Mrs. Clinton’s tenure. The latter did not happen, and as for the former: there are huge loopholes in the disclosure rules, one of them being that, while sponsors of paid speaking engagements must be revealed, “sub-sponsors” are exempt. As the Washington Post tells it:
“[I]n 2012, Hillary Clinton’s disclosures show, Bill Clinton was paid $250,000 for a Boston speech to the Global Business Travel Association. But the documents filed by Bill Clinton’s office show that a proposed sub-sponsor was the aircraft manufacturing giant Boeing. During a 2009 trip to Russia, Hillary Clinton made a personal pitch for a state-owned airline to buy Boeing jets.”
Bill’s documentation was only made public because Judicial Watch, a conservative legal watchdog group, sued to obtain it. But Bill’s haul in that instance is just chump change compared to the big money that poured into Clinton Foundation coffers – and Bill and Hillary’s pockets – from foreign governments and companies owned or controlled by those governments.
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