With all the stories swirling around the Clintons cash machine, one of the most consistent parts of the tale is the ever present secrecy used by Bill and Hillary. Just think about all those methods used to keep the facts from the public, the media and even the Obama administration.
1. Hillary's private email server and system has to go first on any list of secrecy efforts. Federal law required Hillary to use the government email system but she did not. Instead, Hillary sent and received all her emails on her own personal system and she kept all those emails from the government during her entire time as Secretary of State. Only two years after she left office did she finally turn over about half of her emails. She destroyed the rest and claimed that they were personal. Of course, with the emails destroyed, we have no way of knowing what she actually destroyed. Score one for secrecy.
The Clintons have tried to mount a defense against those upset by Hillary's use of the secret system, but those attempts have been lame. Hillary told us that she used only the private system (rather than the government system and a private system) for convenience so that she would not have to carry more than one device with her to access emails. Only someone so stuck in the last century could make such an argument. Nearly anyone under 65 who uses a smartphone could have told Hillary that she could have access to both a government and a private email system on one device. Then there's the fact that Hillary herself also told us on a different occasion that she carries multiple devices with her wherever she goes. So much for that excuse.
Even the details that Hillary gave us about the email system have proven to be false. She told us that she just used on email address on that system. We already know of multiple addresses that she used. She told us that whenever she emailed any government employee, it would have been picked up in the government archive. The truth, however, is that Hillary's closest aides also had email addresses on the private Clinton server, so the most important emails were never picked up by the government archive.
2. The Clintons have told us again and again that contributions to the Clinton Foundation were all disclosed. This too is untrue and it shows a second major effort at secrecy. The Clintons set up subsidiaries for the Clinton Foundation and funneled some rather important contributions through those entities. For example, they had a Canadian entity which got thousands of contributions totaling millions of dollars (including from foreign governments and their agents), but none, NONE, of these contributions were disclosed. More secrecy!
The Clintons told us that Canadian law prohibited them from disclosing the contributors to the Canadian entity. One problem with that excuse, however, is that Canadian law does no such thing. It was another phony excuse for a secrecy ruse that was discovered.
Even the actual Clinton Foundation did not disclose all of its contributors. For example, millions of dollars from the Algerian government somehow slipped through and did not get disclosed. Of course, that contribution by Algeria violated the agreement that Hillary had made with the Obama administration when she took office at the State Department regarding foreign contributions. The contribution also came at a time when Algeria was seeking certain determinations from the State Department. No wonder it was "inadvertently" kept secret.
3. The Clinton Foundation also managed to keep secret the nature of its activities. The cover story is that the foundation raises money for charity and does good works around the world. The reality, however, is quite different. We now know that the Clintons used the foundation to keep their campaign staff together and to pay them over the long term. People like Sidney Blumenthal and Ira Magaziner got millions of dollars to act as political advisors. Those payments were kept secret, however. The ploy of using foundation cash for non-charitable purposes got so bad that we now find that roughly 88% of the expenditures by the foundation were not grants to actual groups doing good works. The lack of distributions to real charities was so bad that Charity Navigator, a group that rates the bona fides of various charities would not recommend any giving to the Clinton Foundation. That makes the foundation more like a scam than a charity.
4. Then there's the secrecy of Bill Clinton's shell company. Clinton has been supposedly doing "consulting" work for various clients over the last five years. We don't know for whom he did this work. We don't know what sort of "consulting" was done. Maybe Bill was advising Qatar on how to get its proposed arms purchases approved by Hillary at the State Department. We don't know.
But why don't we know? The answer is a company called WJC, LLC. It is a shell company created by the Clintons so that the information could remain secret. All that this company did was to collect the payments for Bill's "consulting" work and immediately pay it to Bill. That means that Hillary had to list WJC, LLC on her disclosure statements to state that Bill had gotten more than $1000 from that entity. She did not have to list WJC, however, as a company that she and Bill owned. If there was a payment of $750,000 from Qatar to Bill for "consulting", it never had to see the light of day. Unless there were someone who went over Hillary's disclosures with a fine tooth comb and then checked out who WJC LLC was, there would not even be any suspicion about Bill's undisclosed "consulting" work. There ought to be an immediate disclosure by the Clintons of the names of each of Bill's clients and a description of just what sort of consulting work was done for each of those clients.
By the way, is there anyone besides me who thinks it is tawdry that the ex president of the United States is selling his influence as a "consultant"?
5. There are more examples of secrecy like Hillary's refusal to even answer questions about these subject. You get the picture, however.
The reality is that the Clintons have been keeping a lot of tacky and, perhaps, illegal stuff hidden. Each time the secrecy gets breached, we seem to learn about yet another tawdry scheme by Bill and Hillary to get their hands on more cash. For them, no amount of wealth is enough. President Obama's campaign slogan was Hope and Change. Hillary's ought to be Secrecy and Greed.
1. Hillary's private email server and system has to go first on any list of secrecy efforts. Federal law required Hillary to use the government email system but she did not. Instead, Hillary sent and received all her emails on her own personal system and she kept all those emails from the government during her entire time as Secretary of State. Only two years after she left office did she finally turn over about half of her emails. She destroyed the rest and claimed that they were personal. Of course, with the emails destroyed, we have no way of knowing what she actually destroyed. Score one for secrecy.
The Clintons have tried to mount a defense against those upset by Hillary's use of the secret system, but those attempts have been lame. Hillary told us that she used only the private system (rather than the government system and a private system) for convenience so that she would not have to carry more than one device with her to access emails. Only someone so stuck in the last century could make such an argument. Nearly anyone under 65 who uses a smartphone could have told Hillary that she could have access to both a government and a private email system on one device. Then there's the fact that Hillary herself also told us on a different occasion that she carries multiple devices with her wherever she goes. So much for that excuse.
Even the details that Hillary gave us about the email system have proven to be false. She told us that she just used on email address on that system. We already know of multiple addresses that she used. She told us that whenever she emailed any government employee, it would have been picked up in the government archive. The truth, however, is that Hillary's closest aides also had email addresses on the private Clinton server, so the most important emails were never picked up by the government archive.
2. The Clintons have told us again and again that contributions to the Clinton Foundation were all disclosed. This too is untrue and it shows a second major effort at secrecy. The Clintons set up subsidiaries for the Clinton Foundation and funneled some rather important contributions through those entities. For example, they had a Canadian entity which got thousands of contributions totaling millions of dollars (including from foreign governments and their agents), but none, NONE, of these contributions were disclosed. More secrecy!
The Clintons told us that Canadian law prohibited them from disclosing the contributors to the Canadian entity. One problem with that excuse, however, is that Canadian law does no such thing. It was another phony excuse for a secrecy ruse that was discovered.
Even the actual Clinton Foundation did not disclose all of its contributors. For example, millions of dollars from the Algerian government somehow slipped through and did not get disclosed. Of course, that contribution by Algeria violated the agreement that Hillary had made with the Obama administration when she took office at the State Department regarding foreign contributions. The contribution also came at a time when Algeria was seeking certain determinations from the State Department. No wonder it was "inadvertently" kept secret.
3. The Clinton Foundation also managed to keep secret the nature of its activities. The cover story is that the foundation raises money for charity and does good works around the world. The reality, however, is quite different. We now know that the Clintons used the foundation to keep their campaign staff together and to pay them over the long term. People like Sidney Blumenthal and Ira Magaziner got millions of dollars to act as political advisors. Those payments were kept secret, however. The ploy of using foundation cash for non-charitable purposes got so bad that we now find that roughly 88% of the expenditures by the foundation were not grants to actual groups doing good works. The lack of distributions to real charities was so bad that Charity Navigator, a group that rates the bona fides of various charities would not recommend any giving to the Clinton Foundation. That makes the foundation more like a scam than a charity.
4. Then there's the secrecy of Bill Clinton's shell company. Clinton has been supposedly doing "consulting" work for various clients over the last five years. We don't know for whom he did this work. We don't know what sort of "consulting" was done. Maybe Bill was advising Qatar on how to get its proposed arms purchases approved by Hillary at the State Department. We don't know.
But why don't we know? The answer is a company called WJC, LLC. It is a shell company created by the Clintons so that the information could remain secret. All that this company did was to collect the payments for Bill's "consulting" work and immediately pay it to Bill. That means that Hillary had to list WJC, LLC on her disclosure statements to state that Bill had gotten more than $1000 from that entity. She did not have to list WJC, however, as a company that she and Bill owned. If there was a payment of $750,000 from Qatar to Bill for "consulting", it never had to see the light of day. Unless there were someone who went over Hillary's disclosures with a fine tooth comb and then checked out who WJC LLC was, there would not even be any suspicion about Bill's undisclosed "consulting" work. There ought to be an immediate disclosure by the Clintons of the names of each of Bill's clients and a description of just what sort of consulting work was done for each of those clients.
By the way, is there anyone besides me who thinks it is tawdry that the ex president of the United States is selling his influence as a "consultant"?
5. There are more examples of secrecy like Hillary's refusal to even answer questions about these subject. You get the picture, however.
The reality is that the Clintons have been keeping a lot of tacky and, perhaps, illegal stuff hidden. Each time the secrecy gets breached, we seem to learn about yet another tawdry scheme by Bill and Hillary to get their hands on more cash. For them, no amount of wealth is enough. President Obama's campaign slogan was Hope and Change. Hillary's ought to be Secrecy and Greed.
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