Clinton Foundation Link in the Hillary Email Scandal: History of Wrecklessness with National Security

Hillary Clinton's email headache doesn't seem to be going away no matter how much she attempts to wave it off.

Federal investigators have reportedly determined more than 300 emails on the former secretary of state's private server could be classified information. The private server was discovered because of the House Benghazi committee. But don't forget about the infamous Clinton Foundation. 

(Credit:State.gov)

As I wrote about in Foundation Watch in May -- before we found out this server contained classified info -- Hillary Clinton has played fast and loose with national security information for some time.

From Foundation Watch:

As Hillary Clinton was in charge of running America’s foreign policy, Bill was giving high-dollar speeches in China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Central America, Turkey, Thailand, Taiwan, India, and the Cayman Islands, according to Judicial Watch. Certainly some of these should have raised eyebrows by reviewers at the State Department, considering tenuous U.S. relations with Russia and China. And the fact that the list of donors includes Muslim nations that are known for mistreating women, ought to set off the hypocrisy alarm bells because Mrs. Clinton has long positioned herself as a champion of women’s rights.

The New York Times also reports when she was at the State Department, Hillary okayed a financial transaction that handed control over 20 percent of America’s strategically important uranium resources to Russia after investors gave money to Bill and large donations to the Clinton Foundation. This matters because uranium is needed to make nuclear weapons and America only has an estimated 20 percent of the uranium it needs.

From 2005 through 2011 investors in Uranium One, a shady Canadian company, reportedly gave money to the Clinton Foundation. In 2010 Bill accepted $500,000 from an investment bank to give a single speech in Russia. Uranium One stock carried a “buy” rating with the bank, which had links to the Russian government. Eventually the Kremlin assumed 100 percent control over Uranium One through a subsidiary of Rosatom, a state corporation owned by the Russian government.

Then there are the massive financial institutions sponsoring the speeches that would certainly have an interest in currying favor with the Department of State. These sponsors included Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, and American Express. Other sectors sponsoring international speeches included major players in the energy, automotive, casino, hotel, real estate, technology, media, and health care industries, according to Judicial Watch.

Another sponsor was Renaissance Capital in June 2010, where the former president talked in Moscow about the theme of “Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States: Going Global.” This was in the middle of Hillary’s “reset button” approach to U.S.-Russia relations. The investment bank was focused on Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and sub-Saharan Africa, the Washington Examiner reported.

For Clinton’s speech to a UBS Wealth Management event in April 2012 in Chicago, the State Department characterized it as “approximately 300-400 ultra-high net worth clients, prospective clients, and UBS Financial Advisers.”

Two years earlier, Clinton spoke at the Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut, which the State Department review characterized as “a private speech of up to 350 friends and patrons of Mohegan Sun.… The event will not be open to the public. The event will not be publicly advertised.”

Another event reveals how in tune the Clintons are with the supposed plight of “income inequality” and the poor: Clinton spoke in October 2011 at a San Francisco event for the Wells Fargo Private Bank and the Wells Fargo Family Wealth Group, whose clients, State Department documents explain, “have at least $5 million and $50 million in assets respectively.”

The documents obtained by Judicial Watch show the State Department also approved a consulting gig for Clinton with Teneo Strategy, a company headed by Clinton Foundation adviser Doug Band, with offices in Dubai, London, Dublin, Hong Kong, Brussels, and Beijing. After taking some heat over Teneo’s ties to the failed investment firm MF Global, the Clintons ended the deal after just eight months.

Teneo Strategy brings up another aspect that complicates the whole Clinton Foundation-State Department nexus, which is Huma Abedin, better known to some as Mrs. Anthony Weiner. Abedin served under the Secretary of State as deputy chief of staff from January 2009 to June 2012, at which point she became a senior adviser and a “special government employee” that would be allowed to represent individual clients and have outside employment. She was a “special government employee” until February 2013. During that time, Abedin did not disclose what type of work she did for Teneo Strategy, the New York Times reported.

“So we know that the Obama administration’s judgment as to what constitutes a ‘conflict of interest’ is skewed, to put it nicely,” Judicial Watch said in a press release about its findings.

Apparently, some in the State Department may agree with Judicial Watch. On April 10, the department’s inspector general announced he was launching an investigation into Abedin’s irregular employment arrangements.

As evidence continues to accumulate that Clinton’s cavalier approach to state secrets may have put U.S. national security in jeopardy, the shady background of Abedin, who has known ties to the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood, is barely acknowledged on Capitol Hill. And it’s not clear that it will ever come up. After several Republican lawmakers publicly raised concerns about Abedin in 2012, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was enraged.

“These sinister accusations rest solely on a few unspecified and unsubstantiated associations of members of Huma’s family, none of which have been shown to harm or threaten the United States in any way,” the senator said. “These attacks on Huma have no logic, no basis and no merit. And they need to stop now.”

It is a matter of public record that Huma’s mother, Saleha Mahmood Abedin, is a co-founder of the Muslim Sisterhood, a pro-Sharia organization consisting of the wives of some of the highest-ranking leaders in the Muslim Brotherhood. Egyptian opposition newspaper Al-Liwa Al-Arabi reports that Muslim Sisterhood members: “smuggle secret documents”; “spread the Brotherhood’s ideology by infiltrating universities, schools and homes”; “fulfill the interests of the Brotherhood”; and “organiz[e] projects which will penetrate [the Brotherhood’s] prohibited ideology into the decision-making in the West … under the guise of ‘general needs of women.’” Nagla Ali Mahmoud, wife of Mohammed Morsi, the Islamist who was elected president of Egypt in June 2012 and then deposed, is a member of the Muslim Sisterhood. Mrs. Abedin is editor-in-chief of the notoriously pro-Islamist Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs. From 1996 to 2008, Abedin worked as assistant editor of the Journal, FrontPageMag.com reported.

And the Clinton Foundation has some explaining to do after one of its former employees received a sentence of life imprisonment in Egypt after being convicted of sedition. In 2012 Gehad el-Haddad, “divided his time between volunteering for the Muslim Brotherhood and heading the Cairo office of the Clinton Climate Initiative, but later that year began to work full time for the Muslim Brotherhood,” according to the Egypt Independent.

Appropriately, the name Gehad can also be spelled Jihad.

A month after Haddad left the Clinton Foundation job for a position with then-Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood standard-bearer, the Clinton Global Initiative invited Morsi to deliver a major address. Morsi calls Jews “bloodsuckers” and “the descendants of apes and pigs.” After Morsi was overthrown, in 2013 Haddad was arrested in Egypt for inciting violence. Haddad was given a life sentence on April 11 of this year, according to the Muslim Brotherhood’s official English language website.

Faith in Statism

Below is an excerpt from my piece in Organization Trends: 

The Wall Street Journal’s William McGurn pointed out, “Back when gay marriage was first proposed, advocates pitched it this way: What can it possibly matter to you if two men or two women wed?”  He continued: “Since then Americans have learned: It can mean an end to your small business, it can mean your church institutions—from schools to adoption agencies—can no longer run themselves according to their principles, and, if you are a Silicon Valley CEO, it can mean you lose your job.”

McGurn was referring to Mozilla co-founder and CEO Brendan Eich, who was forced from his job in 2014 for having donated to the 2008 campaign in California to recognize marriage as exclusively between one man and one woman.

Hillary Clinton (Credit: State.gov)

Gay journalist Andrew Sullivan wrote of the pizza controversy, “The whole episode disgusts me—as it should disgust anyone interested in a tolerant and diverse society. If this is the gay rights movement today—hounding our opponents with a fanaticism more like the religious right than anyone else—then count me out. If we are about intimidating the free speech of others, we are no better than the anti-gay bullies who came before us”

Government hysteria about the Indiana religious freedom law began from the top down, as the White House sounded off in April. “I do think in the mind of the president, the thought that we would have state legislatures in the 21st century in the United States of America passing laws that would use religion to try to justify discriminating against people for who they love is unthinkable,” said White House press secretary Josh Earnest.

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee in waiting, Hillary Clinton, also weighed in on Twitter: “Sad this new Indiana law can happen in America today. We shouldn’t discriminate against [people because] of who they love #LGBT.”

Pointing out that Hillary opposed gay marriage until 2013, the Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf wrote, “she declares Indiana out of step with the times for making gay weddings legal, because refusing to bake cakes for them may be legal, too.”

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) and Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy (D) both announced they would ban publicly funded travel to the state of Indiana. San Francisco Mayor Edwin M. Lee (D) and Seattle Mayor Ed Murray (D) also banned city employees from traveling to Indiana for work-related trips.

In higher education, San Francisco State University banned work-related travel to Indiana. And even in Indiana, the presidents of the three major universities—Indiana, Depaw, and Butler—issued statements denouncing the law as discriminatory and harmful to the state’s reputation.
Friedersdorf expressed concern about the mob, prefacing his April 1 post with his view that bans on gay marriage in 13 states are “callous.” Nevertheless, he added, “When 13 states prohibit gay-marriage outright, what sense does it make for gay-rights supporters to boycott a different state where gay marriage is legal?”

“Being barred from marriage puts a significant burden on gay couples—a burden many orders of magnitude greater than the relatively small possibility of being refused by an atypically religious photographer or baker in the course of planning a same-sex wedding (the outcome the law’s opponents assert to be its true purpose).”

“Now that those who would discriminate against gays are a powerless cultural minority that focuses its objectionable behavior in a tiny niche of the economy, elites have suddenly decided that using state power to punish them is a moral imperative,” Friedersdorf continued.

“The timing suggests that this has as much to do with opportunism, tribalism, humanity’s love of bandwagons, and political positioning as it does with advancing gay rights, which have advanced thanks to persuasion, not coercion.”

If Joe Biden Makes Elizabeth Warren His VP Pick, She Will Have Powerful Friends to Boost Democrats 2016

Vice President Joe Biden, pondering shaking up the 2016 Democratic presidential primary by challenging Hillary Clinton, reportedly meeting with radical Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Credit:warren.senate.gov)

 This is fueling speculation that Biden might tap Warren to be his vice presidential running mate.

If so, Warren would bring in an immense infrastructure in the form of the nonprofit group Demos, as I wrote about last year in Organization Trends:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the freshman Massachusetts senator who pioneered the “you didn’t build that” philosophy, is using her new book, Fighting Chance, to throw red meat to the Left and position herself to the left of Democrats like Hillary Clinton, who are more comfortable with Wall Street donors. Warren’s book tour was well received among fawning liberal supporters across the country, many of whom are looking for an un-Hillary in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary.

“I’d spent nearly twenty years fighting to level the playing field for the middle class, and I’d seen millions of working families go over the economic cliff—and it was getting worse,” Warren writes in her book, explaining why she decided to run for Senate in 2012. “What kind of country would my grandchildren grow up in? What if the conservatives and the big banks and the big-time CEOs got their way and Washington kept helping the rich and powerful to get richer and more powerful? Could I really stand on the sidelines and stay out of this fight?”

The New Republic has called Warren “Hillary Clinton’s Worst Nightmare,” and much reporting since has followed similar themes, even as Warren feigns uninterest in presidential politics (just as she claims public clamor forced her to run for the Senate).

Still, many political observers claim former Secretary of State Clinton is invincible. Of course, similar claims were made in 2008. That year, in addition to her official campaign organization, Hillary had close allies in the nonprofit sector propping her up, such as the Center for American Progress (founded by a former Clinton White House chief of staff, John Podesta) and targeting her enemies, as Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) did.

How can Warren compete with that?

Should Warren run, she will likely have her own infrastructure in place with Demos, the research and advocacy group whose slogan is “An Equal Say and Equal Chance for All.” Notice the similarity to the title of Warren’s book.

Of course, the Left’s vision of equal opportunity is usually based on some absurd equality-of-outcome scheme, which is part of the core policy positions of Demos: to spend more, tax more, redistribute more, restrict political speech more, and convince the public that big government is good for them. The organization’s mission statement even calls for “rethinking American capitalism as it exists today as a system of political economy.”

The name Demos is actually an ancient Greek word meaning “people” or “the mob.” The Greek term is the root of the English word democracy—and also of demagogue.

Before she was a senator, Demos honored Warren at its 10th anniversary gala in 2010 with its “Transforming America” award, because Warren was the architect of the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation (New York Times, April 10, 2010). Demos aggressively advocated for the Dodd-Frank bill and has long supported Warren. In 2003 Demos helped promote Warren’s previous book, The Two Income Trap. But that’s understandable, given that the senator’s daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi, is a co-founder and currently chairman of the governing board for Demos.

Demos has a new president, Heather McGhee, who took the job in March when Miles Rapaport left to become president of Common Cause (see Organization Trends, May 2014). McGhee ascended to the presidency after serving as vice president of policy and outreach. She previously served as the deputy policy director for the ill-fated 2008 presidential campaign of former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards (D). There’s no reason to believe she was among the campaign aides involved in covering up Edwards’ extramarital affair or his questionable use of campaign funds that led to his indictment by a federal grand jury. (He was acquitted.)

But more importantly where Demos is concerned, Edwards sought to position himself far to the left of both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton during that primary, running a “two Americas” campaign based on class warfare themes that approximate most of the positions in policy papers and books that the organization publishes.

“I am honored that Demos’ board and staff have entrusted me with the leadership of this extraordinary organization at this moment,” McGhee said in a statement after her promotion. “It’s true that a future progressive majority is emerging, but deep change is needed to ensure that the next generation has a meaningful say in our democracy and a chance in our economy. At a time when more Americans are demanding solutions to the inequality crisis, there’s simply no place I’d rather be.”

Other top staff members have a history in left-wing activism.

Brenda Wright, the Demos vice president of legal strategies, is a former managing attorney for the National Voting Rights Institute in Boston, as well as a board member for Common Cause of Massachusetts—Warren’s state, coincidentally. She was also the director of the voting rights project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, where she remains a board member.

Clinton Foundation: No Model for Fiscal Responsibility

If Hillary Clinton wants to tout herself as a candidate for fiscal responsibility, that will be difficult to demonstrate, based on the financial mess of the Clinton Foundation, which has been little more than a cauldron or corruption and cronyism.

Bill Clinton never tires of reminding the public that he was the last president to sign a balanced federal budget. But the financial management of the foundation is less than exemplary, as the New York Times reported in August 2013.

The foundation ran deficits in 2007 and 2008 because it faced competition—Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. That may very well repeat itself over the next two years. The foundation had multi-million-dollar shortfalls several other years as well. The Times reported that in 2012, the Clinton Foundation raked in $214 million but still ran a shortfall of $8 million.

The Times reported that the organization staff was concerned it was too reliant on Bill Clinton for buck raking, and so pulled in Hillary and Chelsea with a goal of raising the endowment to $250 million.

As the latest Clinton campaign competes with the foundation for funds, it’s worth realizing how much duplication exists between the two. The headline of a recent column by the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberly Strassel summed it up: “The Clinton Foundation Super PAC. It’s past time to drop the fiction that the Clinton Foundation is a charity.”

“Most family charities exist to allow self-made Americans to disperse their good fortune to philanthropic causes,” Strassel wrote. “The Clinton Foundation exists to allow the nation’s most powerful couple to use their not-so-subtle persuasion to exact global tribute for a fund that promotes the Clintons.”

The Washington Post reported that Clinton fundraiser Susie Tompkins Buell, a member of George Soros’s shadowy billionaires’ club known as the Democracy Alliance, donated $10 million to the Clinton Foundation (for more on the Democracy Alliance, see Foundation Watch, October 2014). In February, the foundation’s chief development officer, Dennis Cheng, resigned to be a fundraiser for Hillary’s 2016 campaign. And in March of this year the Wall Street Journal reported that Donna Shalala, one of the more controversial members of Bill Clinton’s cabinet, will take over as CEO of the foundation later this year when her tenure as president of Miami University ends. When she served as Health and Human Services Secretary, Shalala, a longtime Clinton loyalist, “thought it was a mistake to run the effort to overhaul the U.S. health-care system from the White House, and she opposed Mr. Clinton’s decision to sign a sweeping welfare law.” After defending President Clinton when “allegations of an affair with intern Monica Lewinsky surfaced,” she later “dressed him down in front of the cabinet” after Clinton “admitted that he had had an improper relationship” with Lewinsky.

Not Just Foregin Donations: Other Shady Ties to the Clinton Foundation

 As bad as foreign donations are, it's not the only problem facing the Clinton Foundation, as explained in in Foundation Watch.
 

Foreign donors aren’t the only shady sources of funds for the organization. Denise Rich—ex-wife of billionaire fugitive Marc Rich charged with wire fraud, tax fraud, tax evasion, and other felonies—gave the foundation $450,000. Bill Clinton gave a presidential pardon to Marc Rich on his last day in office.

George Soros’s Soros Foundation, the European arm of the radical left-wing billionaire’s Open Society Institute, has also donated.

In December 2008, the Clinton Foundation reported it received between $1 million and $5 million from Issam Fares, the former deputy prime minister of Lebanon and now chairman of the Wedge Group, an investment firm in Houston. Fares was also a supporter of Hezbollah and of President Bashar Assad in Syria.

The foundation received between $1 million and $5 million from Friends of Saudi Arabia, a pro-Saudi advocacy group in the United States. The foundation also received between $1 million and $5 million from Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, who served as president of the United Arab Emirates from 1971-2004. In 1999, his family set up the Zayed Center for Coordination and Follow-Up, which became a haven for anti-Israel sentiment, terrorist sympathizers, and Holocaust deniers (DiscoverTheNetworks.org).

The Soros-funded Tides Foundation, which mostly acts as a pass-through organization that draws a curtain over ties between donors and various left-wing causes that receive their money, doled out $48,500 to the Clinton Foundation in 2013, another $12,000 to the Clinton Health Access Initiative, and another $3,000 to the foundation in 2012; as well as $19,000 to the Clinton Global Initiative in 2011 and $5,000 to the foundation in 2009 (WND, March 9, 2015; for more on the Tides Foundation, see Foundation Watch, October 2010).

Alarmingly, the Clinton Foundation worked with the now-defunct Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, better known as ACORN. The foundation in 2006 used ACORN to try to persuade residents of the Gulf Coast to sign up for the earned income tax credit (EITC) after Hurricane Katrina.

“For victims of Katrina, EITC is a powerful tool to help rebuild lives in the short-term and realize big dreams in the long-term,” Bill Clinton said in a statement announcing the partnership. “We can put more money in people’s pockets today, simply by spreading the word about this credit and helping families with tax preparation. We’re focusing on those who lost so much after Hurricane Katrina, because this credit can be the difference between financial hardship and rebuilding a better life.”

ACORN president Maude Hurd said in the same announcement: “EITC gives low income people in our communities what they need most—the resources to take care of their families and better their lives. This year, Katrina survivors are in special need of both good information about the EITC and the funds to help rebuild their lives. We are extremely pleased that we can work with the Clinton Foundation to help displaced families across the country.”

Could the Drip, Drip, Drip on Foundation Ultimately Topple Hillary Before the First Primary?

Martin O'Malley's formal entry into the 2016 presidential campaign, joining Bernie Sanders, could be a sign that at least some Democrats view Hillary Clinton as less of a forgone conclusion than much of the political class.

With the drip, drip, drip, it's worth pondering: What happens if it all becomes too much? O'Malley might be in a good position with his organization already in place. But expect Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden and other bigger names to enter the Democratic field if Hillary does implode.

Here's an excerpt from my Capital Research Center piece on the Clinton Foundation, which is bound to cause more problems for Hillary.
 

While Hillary Clinton served as Secretary of State, the governments of Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Australia, Norway, Algeria, and the Dominican Republic all lavished millions of dollars on the Clinton Foundation. While acting coy when questioned about most of these, the Clinton Foundation has admitted it should have sought approval from the State Department before accepting $500,000 from the government of Algeria. Whoops.

For the entirety of the Clinton Foundation’s existence, foreign donors made up one-third of all donors giving more than $1 million and made up more than half of donors who gave $5 million or more

In fact, Bill Clinton even saw the foreign donations from shady countries as a positive. “I think it is a good thing—for example, the U.A.E. gave us money,” the former president said of the United Arab Emirates. “Do we agree with everything they do? No. But they are helping us fight ISIS, and they built a great university with NYU, open to people around the world. And they have helped us support the work that this foundation does. … Do I agree with all the foreign policy of Saudi Arabia? No.”

In late March, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus sent a letter to Jarrett, now a White House Senior Adviser. Among the questions in the letter were (1) “At what point did the Administration become aware that the MOU and the process of vetting Clinton Foundation donors were flawed?” (2) “What did the White House do, if anything, to mitigate issues with the Clinton Foundation’s donors?” (3) “Was the White House aware that the MOU was insufficient while Clinton was serving as Secretary of State? If so, were any addendums added to supplement the MOU?” (4) “Was there any independent audit or verification that the Clinton Foundation was abiding by the MOU’s Donor Disclosure provisions?” (5) “Were foreign governments that contributed to the Clinton Foundation given special treatment or consideration by the White House?” (6) “If the White House had been aware of the violations, would the Clinton Foundation or Secretary Clinton have been reprimanded in some fashion for their actions?”

“The public deserves detailed answers to these questions. I request a response to each in writing,” the RNC chairman continued. “The MOU was billed to the public and Congress as a pledge toward transparency and the avoidance of conflicts of interest. The American people deserve to know whether it was nothing more than a memorandum between parties that had no real interest in either of these goals.”

For its part, the White House had little to say when asked whether the foundation was getting money from foreign governments. “I’m certainly not going to have a response to them from here, but I think that was a letter that they sent to the State Department?” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told the press. “You mentioned both the contents of the letter describing the Clinton Foundation and the actions of the Secretary of State at the State Department. So, I wouldn’t anticipate a response from here.”

When a journalist responded, “But it was the White House that was supposed to have the agreement overseeing it,” Earnest said, “Well again, for questions about actions by the Clinton Foundation I’d direct you to the foundation that does very important work around the world, but I don’t have a reaction to the letter.”

It’s no surprise that a Democratic administration would not be eager to criticize the party’s presumptive presidential nominee. But what’s clear is that typical Clinton corruption became an Obama administration problem thanks to a family that prefers to explain things after the fact rather than ask permission before acting.

And much more potentially damning evidence is on its way.

As the New York Times reported last month, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why

Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, by acclaimed best-selling author Peter Schweizer is scheduled to be published May 5. The book, “a 186-page investigation of donations made to the Clinton Foundation by foreign entities — is proving the most anticipated and feared book of a presidential cycle still in its infancy,” according to the newspaper.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), now a declared presidential candidate, said the book contains “big news” that will “shock people” and make voters “question” Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy. The volume “asserts that foreign entities who made payments to the Clinton Foundation and to Mr. Clinton through high speaking fees received favors from Mrs. Clinton’s State Department in return,” the Times reports.

“We will see a pattern of financial transactions involving the Clintons that occurred contemporaneous with favorable U.S. policy decisions benefiting those providing the funds,” Schweizer writes.
Paid by radical billionaire George Soros, the leftists at the Center for American Progress and Media Matters for America are doing their best to smear Schweizer, who serves as president of the Government Accountability Institute. That nonprofit declares on its website that its mission is “to investigate and expose crony capitalism, misuse of taxpayer monies, and other governmental corruption or malfeasance.” Schweizer was previously a consultant to NBC News and the William J. Casey Research Fellow at the prestigious Hoover Institution.

After admitting he hadn’t read the book, Media Matters founder David Brock, a former Clinton detractor turned Clinton booster, slammed Clinton Cash on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show. “I think this is a political put-up job, and I can smell it from a mile away,” Brock said. That was too much for the show’s co-hosts, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who then cross-examined Brock on whether it’s fair to consider if the book might contain information about the alleged reciprocal relationship between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department. Brock said it’s a non-issue because Mrs. Clinton handed over 55,000 pages of her emails from her time in the Obama administration.

Brzezinski interjected, “That’s not the question,” indicating she was referring to the 30,000 emails Clinton admitted were deleted. “There’s no answer, is there?” Brzezinski asked. Brock was dismissive of the female journalist, replying that the pages of emails that the State Department will eventually release will throw light on Clinton’s official duties.

“No, David,” Brzezinski said. “That’s the way the law works, Mika,” Brock replied, saying that individual government agencies are allowed to decide how their records should be archived.
Brzezinski bristled at that answer and said angrily, “No, actually, David, you don’t have to give me a lesson on the regulations of the State Department.”

The Center for American Progress, founded by Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign manager John Podesta (who was also White House Chief of Staff for President Bill Clinton), attacked the book in a ThinkProgress blog post by Aviva Shen. Shen doesn’t write much worth reading but she does point out that the evidence in the book wouldn’t be enough to convict the Clintons in court, a fact conceded by the book’s author.

Hillary's War on Women

In late April, Vice President Joe Biden correctly condemned law enforcement or university and college officials that are accusatory of rape victims. It could very easily be aimed at former Secretary of State, former First Lady and former Arkansas public defender.

State.gov

And if Biden is really upset about it, it could be a great issue to take against Hillary Clinton in a hypothetical 2016 Democratic primary. In his April 29 speech, Biden was specifically talking about college age adults. So actions by Ms. Clinton as a young attorney were even worse – accusing a 12-year-old of bringing it upon herself.

From ABC News:

In 2008, during the height of her presidential primary campaign, Newsday published an in-depth story about Clinton's involvement with the trial. Newsday argued that Clinton's account in "Living History" left out "a significant aspect of her defense strategy - attempting to impugn the credibility of the victim." She reportedly sent an affidavit during the trial requesting the girl undergo a psychiatric examination at the university's clinic, and without offering any source, alleged that the victim had often sought older men. The case, Newsday claimed, "offers a glimpse into the way Clinton deals with crisis. Her approach, then and now, was to immerse herself in even unpleasant tasks with a will to win."

The victim, now 52, first believed Clinton was just doing her job as an attorney, but became enraged upon hearing that Clinton openly laughed about how clever she was as a lawyer in getting a light sentence for someone she knew was guilty.

"Hillary Clinton took me through hell," the victim told the Daily Beast in an emotional interview published today. The woman said that if she saw Clinton today she would say, "I realize the truth now, the heart of what you've done to me. And you are supposed to be for women? You call that [being] for women, what you done to me? And I heard you on tape laughing."

Don’t expect a court case from the 1970s to define a presidential contest. But, it should give Hillary – and her supporters – pause before presume she represents all women.

Hillary has Plenty of Explaining for 2016

As Americans rally for the 250 kidnapped Nigerian girls, State Department Deputy Secretary for African Affairs Robert Jackson told a Senate subcommittee that it was Nigeria’s fault the U.S. never designated Boko Haram as a terrorist organization.

“The government of Nigeria feared that designating these individuals and the organizations would bring them more attention, more publicity and be counter productive,” said Jackson. “For some time we accepted that point of view.”

Tell that to the girls and other victims of Boko Haram, which seems to be enjoying attention now. Jackson called the abductions of the girls a top U.S. priority, according to CNN.

Would such a designation by the State Department have prevented the kidnapping? Maybe not. But it would without dispute have focused greater international attention on this wretched group before this crime.

That’s why it’s perfectly reasonable to hold former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accountable for opting against designating it a terrorist group. As a select House committee prepares to investigate Benghazi, it’s a reminder of how her State Department had ample warnings about the dangers facing the compound.

CNN points out: 

Some in Congress, the Justice Department and others called for the State Department to apply a terror label to Boko Haram in 2012 following a bombing in Abujat and amid growing concerns that it had al Qaeda links. … A letter to Clinton at the time by the 24 academics, including former U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria John Campbell of the Council on Foreign Relations, also said such a move would raise the group's profile and possibly link the United States to abuses by Nigerian forces cracking down on the group.

Most other presidential candidates are – or at least should be – judged for their record. As White House Dossier points out, the five things Hillary is known for are bad. It’s a worthwhile read, but those five are:

1. Benghazi                                                  

2. The Russia Reset

3. Monica Lewinsky

4. Hillarycare

5. Boko Haram

On point 5, Keith Koffler writes: 

Despite urging from serious people within the Obama’s own administration, Hillary’s State Department failed to label Boko Haram a terrorist outfit. There were real reasons for this based in policy, but we may never know the extent to which the political exigency of minimizing the existence of terrorists as Obama sought reelection was the true driving factor. No matter, the decision looks bad today and is irrevocably associated with Hillary.

Biden Throw Down with Hillary as he Came Clean on his Class War Rhetoric

It looks like the Veep is ready to play the Huey Long class warrior that President Obama was so effective at in 2012.

"Come on you two, knock it off now."
(Photo credit: Blogs.America.gov)

Parts of Joe Biden’s private speech Friday in Columbia, S.C., a key early primary state for 2016, was spent attacking the Clintons – and a little bit of it came from being fact checked by The Washington Post.

From The Hill:

Biden, a potential 2016 candidate, said the unraveling of middle-class financial security began in "the later years of the Clinton administration," not under George W. Bush, CNN reported Saturday … In recent months, the vice president has focused on revving up liberals on issues of income inequality, as he prepares for a possible run against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, though many Democrats don't think he'd run against her. … One attendee said it was an “Elizabeth Warren-type speech” blasting income inequality.

Biden gave a similar red meat speech at George Washington University last month about income inequality, where he said that when he first became a U.S. Senator in 1973, “The discrepancy between the salary of the average CEO in America and the lowest-paid worker in that company was 22 to 1 … Now, today, the average CEO in America makes 273 times as much as a person working on a line. What happened?”

ThePost pointed out however that during the Clinton administration, the disparity was 400 to 1 for the CEO to lowest paid worker.

 

“A large part of the reason for the growth in the gap during the Clinton presidency is a soaring stock market and the increasing practice of awarding stock options to corporate executives. Recessions — and the subsequent decline in stocks — made those options less valuable, so the disparity declined a bit,” the Post said in correcting Biden.

So “what happened” was economic growth, which there was plenty of during the Clinton years. Biden’s skewed presentation of CEO to lowest paid worker was a clever way to rile a crowd, but it’s in no way the same as saying the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. 

Typically when an economy expands, CEOs get much wealthier than before and in expanding their companies most workers earn more. So a larger gap between a CEO and worker could still mean everyone is doing better, while a smaller gap could indicate an economic downturn, bad for everyone. 

What we’re seeing in the Obama administration – or for 2016, let’s call it the Obama/Biden administration – is only the wealthy doing well enough because they’re insulated from this economic downturn and fewer and fewer opportunities for the poor and middle class.