This morning, a bombshell exploded which could not only damage but actually destroy Hillary Clinton's chances of being president. The story came from Newsweek of all place, the self-proclaimed journal of liberal thought. Newsweek uncovered three simple facts:
1. The single biggest individual contributor to the Clinton Foundation over the last five years has been Victor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian businessman who owns Interpipe Group a manufacturer of pipe and other material used in the oil and gas industries.
2. The sanctions against Iran which are have been in place for the last five years apply to Interpipe Group because the company has a large American subsidiary. Those sanctions bar certain types of large transactions with the Iranian oil and gas industry. Newsweek, however, has seen invoices for large transactions in which Interpipe has engaged in trade with the Iranians that were prohibited by the sanctions. As a result, Interpipe should have been barred from access to American markets, American banks, and the like.
3. For most of the time when Interpipe was trading with Iran in apparent violation of the sanctions, the person in charge of enforcing those sanctions was secretary of state Hillary Clinton. She took no action against Interpipe.
That's not a hard story to understand. There's no speculation in it; it's hard news. There's no exaggeration in it; it's just a few damning facts. It surely looks like Hillary Clinton got tens of millions of dollars from someone violating American sanctions against Iran, sanctions she was supposedly enforcing, and Mrs. Clinton somehow took no action against this big donor.
Obviously, we don't have all the details yet about this story. There are questions that need to be answered. Here are two:
1. Did Hillary or Bill Clinton have communications with Victor Pinchuk during the period she was secretary of state? -- My guess is that any email between the two was something she called "personal" and destroyed recently.
2. Pinchuk has his own charitable foundation. Why did he give cash to the Clinton Foundation instead of his own?
One thing is certain: this is a terrible blow to Hillary. It certainly seems like she took a bribe in exchange for not enforcing the American sanctions laws. It is now up to her to prove she did not.
1. The single biggest individual contributor to the Clinton Foundation over the last five years has been Victor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian businessman who owns Interpipe Group a manufacturer of pipe and other material used in the oil and gas industries.
2. The sanctions against Iran which are have been in place for the last five years apply to Interpipe Group because the company has a large American subsidiary. Those sanctions bar certain types of large transactions with the Iranian oil and gas industry. Newsweek, however, has seen invoices for large transactions in which Interpipe has engaged in trade with the Iranians that were prohibited by the sanctions. As a result, Interpipe should have been barred from access to American markets, American banks, and the like.
3. For most of the time when Interpipe was trading with Iran in apparent violation of the sanctions, the person in charge of enforcing those sanctions was secretary of state Hillary Clinton. She took no action against Interpipe.
That's not a hard story to understand. There's no speculation in it; it's hard news. There's no exaggeration in it; it's just a few damning facts. It surely looks like Hillary Clinton got tens of millions of dollars from someone violating American sanctions against Iran, sanctions she was supposedly enforcing, and Mrs. Clinton somehow took no action against this big donor.
Obviously, we don't have all the details yet about this story. There are questions that need to be answered. Here are two:
1. Did Hillary or Bill Clinton have communications with Victor Pinchuk during the period she was secretary of state? -- My guess is that any email between the two was something she called "personal" and destroyed recently.
2. Pinchuk has his own charitable foundation. Why did he give cash to the Clinton Foundation instead of his own?
One thing is certain: this is a terrible blow to Hillary. It certainly seems like she took a bribe in exchange for not enforcing the American sanctions laws. It is now up to her to prove she did not.
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