Who can conjure up money out of thin air? . . . Who can set our financial policy? Who decides our level of inflation? Who determines our loss of buying power? Do we have the right to explore the morality of one with so much power over all of our lives? What can we do about it? How do we take back control of our lives? These are spiritual questions that can be answered from within. There is an Authority that supersedes the ones we have been enduring here below. Money is a spiritual issue. This spiritual war involves money.
Fighting corruption and bribery in the developing world was an important focus during Hillary's tenure. As a State Department spokesman explained, she "elevated corruption as a major focus of U.S. foreign policy. She also has promoted the importance of international anti-corruption agreements, including the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention."
The OECD Working Group on Bribery specifically explains that "individuals and companies can also be prosecuted when third parties are involved in the bribe transaction, such as when someone other than the official who was bribed receives the illegal benefit, including a family member, business partner, or a favorite charity of the official."
How does she reconcile her anti-corruption stance with the many transactions involving her and her husband that arguably present serious conflicts of interest, even in the best possible light? How can she maintain that her decisions were unaffected by the millions given to her husband and their family foundation, even if there were no explicit agreements?
How does she not see herself as part of the problem? Based on the OECD's definition of bribery, there does not need to be an explicit quid pro quo. As the US Sixth Circuit Court noted in a 2009 corruption case, a quid pro quo does not require "a particular, identifiable act" when the funds were transferred.
"Instead, it is sufficient if the public official understood that he or she was expected to exercise some influence on the payor's behalf as opportunities arose." Friends, money, and politics are a dangerous cocktail. The Clintons should know to avoid this kind of drinking while driving US policy.
Large commitments have been made by foreign businessmen with records of making payments to government officials to gain influence.
Gilbert Chagoury, for example, who has sponsored speeches by Bill and committed $1 billion to the Clinton Global Initiative, has a long history of association with corrupt transactions in Nigeria.
Denis O'Brien, who has also arranged speeches and written checks to the Clinton Foundation, was implicated in enriching government bureaucrats in Ireland to help his cellular business.
The Clintons themselves have a history of questionable financial transactions. During their first presidential campaign in 1992, concerns were raised about their position in a real estate development in Arkansas known as Whitewater.
The link is here.
There was also the matter of Hillary's miraculous profit from cattle futures, which turned a $1,000 investment into $100,000. No one ever proved that these transactions were illegal. But a cloud hovered over their heads and, when Bill became president, he and Hillary brought it with them to Washington.
In Bill's first term as president, as both he and Hillary faced myriad allegations concerning unethical conduct, his legal defense fund accepted an anonymous donation of $450,000 through a Little Rock restaurateur named Charlie Trie.
Clinton and Trie were close friends. Shortly after the 1992 election, Trie began channeling money to the legal defense fund and into the DNC's so-called soft-money accounts for the president's reelection.
The DNC became so concerned that the money might be coming from China that it hired private investigator Terry Lenzner to investigate.
President Xi Jinping
As Lenzner later wrote, “I could see why they were concerned; red flags were obvious. For example, the money orders had different names on them, but the word 'presidential' was misspelled on all of them–in the exact same way and in the same handwriting."
Lenzner discovered that many of these donations were from people who were making only $20,000 to $30,000 a year and could not possibly be the source of these large contributions. Accordingly, Lenzner recommended the DNC return the donations. The DNC agreed. But Bill initially refused.
It was only after the cochairs of his legal defense fund (a former attorney general and a Catholic priest) both threatened to resign that the donations were sent back. Following the 1996 election, the DNC was forced to return some $2.8 million in illegal or improper donations, most of it from foreign sources.
Of that amount, almost 80 percent was raised or contributed by Trie and another Clinton friend, John Huang. Like Trie, Huang had known Clinton for years and worked for the Lippo Group, an Indonesian conglomerate. Huang took a post as a DNC fundraiser and quickly set about soliciting large sums of money from foreign sources.
Can you see that the same individuals migrate from media driven disaster to media driven disaster?
Huang arranged for South Korean businessman John H. K. Lee to have dinner with President Clinton-in return for a $250,000 donation.
These individuals require very careful examination.
He also arranged for Yogesh K. Gandhi, who claimed to be related to Mahatma Gandhi, to meet in the White House with the president and be photographed being presented with an award-in exchange for $325,000.
Both donations had to be returned after the stories became public. Meanwhile, more than one hundred "White House coffees" were held in 1995 and 1996 at which large-dollar contributors paid for face time with the president.
White House officials initially denied that these were fundraisers, but schedules from Harold Ickes, the deputy chief of staff in the White House, referred to them as "political/fundraising coffees."
White House officials even tracked the "projected revenue" of these events, including who paid and how much. Then there was the evidence that, for the right contribution, you could spend the night in the Lincoln Bedroom.
The Clintons aren't stupid people. They know the law and take pains to operate within it. Besides, corruption of the kind I have described in this book is very difficult to prove. We cannot ultimately know what goes on in their minds and ultimately prove the links between the money they took in and the benefits that subsequently accrued to themselves, their friends, and their associates.
That said, the pattern of behavior I have established is too blatant to ignore, and deserves legal scrutiny by those with investigative capabilities that go beyond journalism.