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More Records Releases Loom for Clinton

September 6, 2016 · 6:03 am ET · Leave a Comment

“Thousands of pages of Hillary Clinton’s official records are set to be released in coming weeks, testing the Democratic presidential candidate as she looks to maintain her advantage in the final two months of the campaign,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“On the heels of recently released Federal Bureau of Investigation documents on Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email account at the State Department, the coming disclosures are likely to provide fodder for Republican Donald Trump. While Mrs. Clinton has held a durable if narrower lead over her rival in polls, there are signs that recent records releases have raised issues of trust with voters.”

2016 Campaign, Clinton Legacy Hillary Clinton

Giuliani Says Clinton Acted with ‘Criminal Intent’

September 5, 2016 · 8:33 am ET · Leave a Comment

Rudy Giuliani claimed that Hillary Clinton “acted intentionally and with criminal intent” in regard to the private email server she used while secretary of state, Politico reports.

He said in a statement that Clinton’s “powerful evidence of criminal intent” was how she deleted 33,000 emails and erased them with “expensive BleachBit software” that he claims is “used by criminals seeking to hide evidence from law enforcement.”

Instant fact check: BleachBit is actually free to download.

2016 Campaign, Clinton Legacy Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani

Quote of the Day

September 2, 2016 · 2:19 pm ET · Leave a Comment

“Be very careful. I got around it all by not saying much and not using systems that captured the data.”

— Colin Powell, quoted by Politico, in an email to Hillary Clinton in 2009, warning that if she was using a BlackBerry to “do business,” the emails could become “official records and subject to the law.”

Clinton Legacy Colin Powell, Hillary Clinton

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Why Is Colin Powell’s Foundation Treated Differently?

August 30, 2016 · 8:48 am ET · Leave a Comment

Matthew Yglesias has a must-read piece on former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s charitable foundation and why it’s treated differently than the Clinton Foundation.

Because Colin Powell did not have the reputation in the mid- to late ’90s of being a corrupt or shady character, his decision to launch a charity in 1997 was considered laudable. Nobody would deny that the purpose of the charity was, in part, to keep his name in the spotlight and keep his options open for future political office. Nor would anybody deny that this wasn’t exactly a case of Powell having super-relevant expertise. What he had to offer was basically celebrity and his good name. By supporting Powell’s charity, your company could participate in Powell’s halo.

But when the press thinks of you as a good guy, leveraging your good reputation in this way is considered a good thing to do. And since the charity was considered a good thing to do, keeping the charity going when Powell was in office as secretary of state was also considered a good thing to do. And since Powell was presumed to be innocent — and since Democrats did not make attacks on Powell part of their partisan strategy — his charity was never the subject of a lengthy investigation.

Which is lucky for him, because as Clinton could tell you, once you are the subject of a lengthy investigation, the press doesn’t like to report, “Well, we looked into it and we didn’t find anything interesting.”

2016 Campaign, Clinton Legacy Colin Powell, Hillary Clinton

Clinton Foundation Requested Invites at State Function

August 28, 2016 · 9:39 am ET · Leave a Comment

“A series of newly released State Department emails obtained by ABC News offers fresh insight on direct contact between the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton’s inner circle while she was Secretary of State.”

“In one December 2010 email chain with Clinton’s closest aide Huma Abedin, then-top Clinton Foundation official Doug Band offers names for a State Department lunch with Chinese President Hu Jintao scheduled for January 2011. On the list were three executives from organizations that have donated millions to the Clinton Foundation: Bob McCann, the then-president of wealth management at UBS; Dr. Judith Rodin, the president of the Rockefeller Foundation; and Hikmet Ersek, the CEO of Western Union.”

Clinton Legacy Clinton Foundation

Chelsea Clinton Would Stay on at Clinton Foundation

August 25, 2016 · 6:01 am ET · Leave a Comment

“The Clinton Foundation is considering exceptions to its plan to stop accepting corporate and foreign donations and reduce family involvement as a way to insulate Hillary Clinton from potential conflicts of interest if elected president,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“As recently as this summer, the foundation was discussing with some allies plans for Chelsea Clinton to leave the board, along with former President Bill Clinton, if Mrs. Clinton should win. But on Wednesday, foundation spokesman Craig Minassian said Chelsea Clinton plans to stay on the board. Mr. Clinton told donors he still plans to leave.”

Politico: Ethicists scoff at Clinton Foundation transition plan

2016 Campaign, Clinton Legacy Chelsea Clinton

The Clinton Foundation Becomes an Issue

August 24, 2016 · 9:11 am ET · Leave a Comment

First Read: “The latest controversy over the Clinton Foundation — the allegation that special access was given to Foundation donors when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state — follows a familiar pattern: The entire arrangement appears sloppy, careless, and seedy… But there’s another familiar pattern to the discussion, especially regarding the AP report showing that Foundation donors met with Clinton when she was secretary of state: This kind of behavior is standard operating procedure for any politician. If you’re a sitting congressman, senator, or governor — raise your hand if you’ve never granted meetings with big donors (either ones you’ve known before or after the donation). This is a practice that happens ALL of the time in American politics. And as a result, none of it is illegal or demands a special prosecutor. So two things can true at the same time: One, what the Clintons are doing can be sloppy, careless and seedy. And two, they’re not the only ones doing it.”

“Of course, the ‘they’re-not-the-only-ones-doing-it’ reasoning isn’t always sufficient in a political campaign, especially one for the highest office in the land. The Clinton Foundation was always going to be a target in this campaign. And if you’re scratching your head as to why the Clintons didn’t have a better plan for dealing with it — like having well-devised exit strategy months ago — remember that the decisions are usually coming from the principals rather than the political advisers.”

Rude Pundit: How is it different from anything else in our broken political system?

2016 Campaign, Clinton Legacy

FBI Recovers 15,000 More Clinton Emails

August 23, 2016 · 7:50 am ET · Leave a Comment

“The dispute over Hillary Clinton’s email practices now threatens to shadow her for the rest of the presidential campaign after the disclosure on Monday that the F.B.I. collected nearly 15,000 new emails in its investigation of her and a federal judge’s order that the State Department accelerate the documents’ release,” the New York Times reports.

“As a result, thousands of emails that Mrs. Clinton did not voluntarily turn over to the State Department last year could be released just weeks before the election in November.”

Washington Post: “The disclosures also cast new doubts on Clinton’s past claim that she turned over all her work-related email from her private server to the State Department for eventual release to the public.”

2016 Campaign, Clinton Legacy Hillary Clinton

Clinton Foundation Prepares to Scale Down

August 22, 2016 · 1:42 pm ET · Leave a Comment

“The Clinton Foundation is preparing to scale back operations and hand off nearly all the ongoing programs that make up the organization’s work around the world, following a months-long internal effort to plan for Hillary Clinton’s possible election,” BuzzFeed reports.

Bill Clinton and Chelsea Clinton “outlined plans underway to find new homes for existing programs, speaking at points in deeply personal terms about his work for the last 15 years, according to an account of the 30-minute meeting, provided by a participant.”

2016 Campaign, Clinton Legacy

Clinton Runs Against the ‘Vast Right Wing Conspiracy’

August 22, 2016 · 6:00 am ET · Leave a Comment

New York Times: “For the better part of two decades, the invocation of a ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’ against the Clintons — as Mrs. Clinton famously called it when allegations of sexual misconduct engulfed her husband’s administration — has elicited eye rolls even among some of the couple’s allies.”

“It was not worth amplifying such attacks by responding to them, advisers often reasoned. And any discussion of a secret plot to undercut the Clintons risked sounding like paranoia, peevishness or just an attempt to duck responsibility.”

“But with Mr. Trump’s appointment of Stephen K. Bannon, the executive chairman of the conservative website Breitbart News, as his new campaign chief, Mrs. Clinton and her extended orbit have sensed an unfamiliar opportunity: The so-called vast right-wing conspiracy might actually be lending her a hand.”

2016 Campaign, Clinton Legacy Hillary Clinton

Powell Says Clinton Trying to Pin Email Scandal on Him

August 21, 2016 · 9:00 pm ET · Leave a Comment

Referring to Hillary Clinton’s personal email troubles, former Secretary of State Colin Powell told People that Clinton’s staff is “trying to pin it on me.”

Said Powell: “The truth is, she was using the private email server for a year before I sent her a memo telling her what I did.”

Clinton Legacy

Clinton Foundation Will Restrict Donors If Clinton Wins

August 18, 2016 · 9:51 pm ET · Leave a Comment

“Facing criticism for some of the donations given to his family’s philanthropy, Bill Clinton said on Thursday that the Clinton Foundation would no longer accept foreign or corporate funds should Hillary Clinton win the presidency in November,” the New York Times reports.

Clinton Legacy

Man of the World

August 16, 2016 · 12:00 pm ET · Leave a Comment

Coming soon: Man of the World: The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton by Joe Conason.

Clinton Legacy, Political Books

Clinton Says Email Rules are Different for Hillary

August 13, 2016 · 7:43 am ET · Leave a Comment

“Bill Clinton says it was a mistake for Hillary Clinton to maintain a personal email server even though her predecessors and her successor at the State Department did it,” the AP reports.

“But the former president says his wife should have known that there would be a different set of rules applied to her if she ran for the presidency.”

2016 Campaign, Clinton Legacy

What Happens to the Clinton Foundation If Hillary Wins?

August 11, 2016 · 12:30 pm ET · Leave a Comment

First Read: “Maybe the Clinton Foundation doesn’t have to close its doors if Hillary wins in November, but it will be unsustainable — for the Clintons and for the foundation — if it’s viewed as a conflict of interest. As former GOP Sen. Dick Lugar (R-IN) noted in 2009 during Hillary Clinton’s confirmation hearing to become secretary of state back, ‘The core of the problem is that foreign governments and entities may perceive the Clinton Foundation as a means to gain favor with the secretary of state. Although neither Senator Clinton nor President Clinton has a personal financial stake in the foundation, obviously its work benefits their legacy and their public service priorities.'”

“And as we found out, any safeguards that the Clintons and Foundation established to eliminate perceptions problems while Hillary was secretary of state didn’t exactly do the trick.”

2016 Campaign, Clinton Legacy Clinton Foundation, Hillary Clinton

New Emails Show Clinton Foundation Overlap

August 10, 2016 · 6:02 am ET · Leave a Comment

“A new batch of State Department emails released Tuesday showed the close and sometimes overlapping interests between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department when Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state,” the New York Times reports.

“The documents raised new questions about whether the charitable foundation worked to reward its donors with access and influence at the State Department, a charge that Mrs. Clinton has faced in the past and has always denied.”

2016 Campaign, Clinton Legacy Hillary Clinton

JFK Jr Sent Clinton a Note During Lewinsky Scandal

July 19, 2016 · 1:59 pm ET · Leave a Comment

Paul Begala told People magazine that John F. Kennedy Jr. sent Bill Clinton a fax during the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

It read: “Dear Mr. President, I sat under that desk – there’s barely room for a 3-year-old, much less a 21-year-old intern. Cheers, J.K.”

Said Begala: “I showed the President and he laughed his butt off. It was so gutsy. And he was the perfect person to bring a little levity.”

Clinton Legacy, Scandal Bill Clinton, Monical Lewinsky, Paul Begala

Issa Wants to Shut Down Government Over Clinton

July 15, 2016 · 10:47 pm ET · Leave a Comment

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) told Brietbart News Daily that now might be a good time for the Republican leadership to shut down the federal government, in protest of what he called “an imperial president” who will not “enforce criminal charges against a criminal.”

Issa was referring to the lack of charges filed against Hillary Clinton for her private email server.

Said Issa: “We should be willing to shut down the government if the president won’t limit his power.”

Clinton Legacy Darrell Issa, Hillary Clinton

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Taegan Goddard

Taegan Goddard

Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.

More about Taegan Goddard →

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