Tom Fitton, President of Judicial Watch added, “These promises Hillary Clinton made in terms of her ethics agreement wasn’t just a pro forma. Democrats and Republicans were concerned about it and President Obama demanded it and it was the negotiations with the White House and her condition in being hired. So she scammed not only the American people but Democrats and Republicans and the Senate who voted for her and the President of the United States. We highlighted that we thought it was a scam back in 2009 and we were proven right, but President Obama didn’t listen to our ethics advice then.”
Peter Schweizer added, “John Kerry, who was Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee during Hillary Clinton’s appointment as Secretary of State, he raised this exact concerns about the conflicts of interest and about the flow of foreign influence. This was not a Republican witch hunt. People like John Kerry, Democrat, now the current Secretary of State had this very exact same concerns.”
The Efforts Clintons Took To Evade and Avoid Transparency: The individuals in this special panel have looked long and hard and studied the Clinton scandal for a long period of time. Who have done the painstaking work to assess and offer their unparallel expertise with the following findings on the Clinton’s Scandal to share with the American public.
Let us begin…
Peter Schweizer, Author of the “Clinton Cash” is with the Government Accountability Institute. First, a big thank you to Judicial Watch for the great work for investigating the Clintons before we knew about the servers and we had the FOIA information. Judicial Watch has performed an enormous public service by exposing this. People are much more interested and well versed on what the Clintons have been up to. The flow of money, the issues related to the email servers explains why I think this is a different scandal than the sort of traditional money scandals we have seen in American political history. The following is Peter Schweizer’s contribution to the panel discussion which is extremely informative for the American people in election 2016.
Second of all I don’t think we can trust the political process to, in a sense, to let the voters decide on this scandal. There are very important legal matters that need to be addressed. Finally, I want to make the point there are larger implications beyond simply the political future of the Bill and Hillary Clintons, as it relates to this particular scandal.
First of all, “Why is this a different scandal than others?” Because of the scale of it. The scale not only of the efforts the Clinton’s took to evade or avoid transparency by setting up these servers; but also, the scale of the flow of money, that were talking about. If you look back to some of the historical scandals whether it’s Abscam or others, the quantity of money that you are talking about flowing through the Clintons dwarfs it, on a magnitude of ten to one or hundred to one; your talking about the Clintons during Hillary Clinton’s public service took in around $250,000,000 (million) dollars, the Clinton Foundation itself took in $2,000,000,000 (Billion) dollars. So the amount of money we are talking about is much larger.
What the Clinton’s actions have represented, is their successful efforts so far, is to evade the financial controls we have had in place for half a century. To prevent foreign interests from influencing American politicians. The laws that we have on the books to prevent the influence of American political figures. We have caps on how much people can contribute to political campaigns. You can’t as an individual give much more than $5,000 dollars in a primary in a general election to a candidate. You can only give, a certain amount to a political action committee. But most specifically, even though there are those debates in politics, I haven’t found anyone who wants foreign entities influencing our political leaders. I haven’t run across anyone who thinks it is a good idea to have a African oligarch, Russian oligarch, a Latin American country influence our political figures.
Think about it in this context. If you are one of those individuals overseas that wants a favor from the Federal government in Washington DC, pretty much legal avenues are shut off to you. You can’t make political campaign contributions to Hillary Clinton to gain access. You can’t make a political action committee contribution legally to her campaign. But what the Clintons did by establishing the Clinton Foundation and by setting up the speaker fee apparatus, they essentially created an avenue whereby foreign entities could do just that. So, when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State she’s making decisions related to Africa policy, her husband was collecting $700,000 dollars in speaking fees from African entities that had interests sitting on her desk. That is unprecedented!
The dangerous implications of this are, that this will become widespread, if it is allowed to stand, what the Clintons have done. So to begin with, if people argue and say, “Well look they are all corrupted in Washington DC, they all do this.” That is simply not the case. This is a financial scandal and a secrecy scandal that goes beyond anything we have ever seen in American political history.
The second point, I want to make is, I don’t think we can just trust a political process to handle this. People say, “Well look, the Clintons have learned now from their mistakes they made in the past.” Bill Clinton has said that the Clinton Global Initiative is not going to take place anymore. Bill Clinton is stepping down from the board of the Clinton Foundation. The Clinton Foundation will now be run by his daughter Chelsea Clinton. So basically, the argument is that they have learned their lesson, and that this looks bad and is bad and we should allow the process to go forward.
Here’s the problem, those commitments that Bill Clinton is making now, unfortunately, they made similar commitments back in 2008. They signed a memorandum of understanding with Barack Obama where they committed to do a couple of very important things. One was complete transparency. So they were required as part of this agreement to disclose all of their donations to the Clinton Foundation. Second of all, they agreed that there be a clear bright line between the actions of the Clinton Foundation and the State Department. There would be no blurring between the two. As we all now know and everybody acknowledges, they completely violated those commitments. Any commitments that they now make going forward, we cannot have much faith, because they don’t have much of a track record in abiding by these principles. The issue is not just looking forward. We have to deal with her tenure as Secretary of State, we have to deal with her setting up the private servers, because we simply cannot trust going forward that these actions and activities will be self corrected.
And Finally the point I will make. Ultimately, this is about more than the Clintons. If they are to avoid legal jeopardy and the very real laws they have broken. But if they are to evade this, there’s a couple of things we know about the rules of politics in Washington, D.C. Entities are looking for favors. In this particular case foreign entities are going to continue to look for favors from our political leaders in Washington, D.C. and second of all, politicians, if you give them the opportunity to self enrich in a quasi legal way, they will take it. And mark my words, if the Clinton Foundation and the activities related to private server are not dealt with in a legal manner it’s going to be imitated. There is simply no reason why we could not have a Secretary of Defense, say ten years from now, a Republican or Democrat it does not matter, who is charting American defense policy, sets up a private foundation, takes donations from oversea entities, puts their spouse on the lectured circuit, taking foreign dollars and what are we going to say. Are we to say, The Clintons can do it, but you can’t?” The point becomes this creates an extremely dangerous precedent that if not dealt with, is going to have huge implications for the country, just not now during her tenure as Secretary of State but going forward.
