“I just work here. I don’t know.”
— Bill Clinton, quoted by the Weekly Standard, on why he isn’t spending more time defending the Clinton Foundation.
Huckabee Runs Against ‘Bill Clinton’s Arkansas’
Mike Huckabee targets “Bill Clinton’s Arkansas” in a new video which notes “all the apparatus of the Democratic Party” were “aligned against” Huckabee, and yet “all of a sudden this Republican comes out of nowhere and wins.”
Bill Clinton’s Fundraising Threatens Wife’s Campaign
Joe Klein: “The bottom line is that the Clinton Global Initiative was used not only to do great works around the world but also to enrich the Clintons. No doubt, there was a lot of self-delusion going on.”
“One of the most damning charges, if it turns out to be true—and I’ve not seen it disputed—is that since he left the presidency, Bill Clinton gave 13 speeches for $500,000 or more. He gave 11 of them while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State. He was, and is, her closest adviser. You would have to assume a high-mindedness that surpasses all understanding to argue that these speeches, and the generosity of their funders, had not even a subliminal impact on the mind of the Secretary.”
“There is more than the appearance of impropriety here. There is the appearance of plutocracy. There is the reality of platinum–level membership in the society of the rich and self-righteous, whose predatory business practices can be forgiven because they “give back” gazillions—call them the egregiously charitable.”
Clinton Charity Never Provided Foreign Donor Data
“An unprecedented ethics promise that played a pivotal role in helping Hillary Clinton win confirmation as secretary of state, soothing senators’ concerns about conflicts of interests with Clinton family charities, was uniformly bypassed by the biggest of the philanthropies involved,” the Boston Globe reports.
Politico: “A handful of deep-pocketed donors are reconsidering their gifts to the $2 billion Clinton Foundation amid mounting questions about how it’s spending their money and suggestions of influence peddling, according to donors and others familiar with the foundation’s fundraising.”
181 Clinton Foundation Donors Lobbied State Department
“The size and scope of the symbiotic relationship between the Clintons and their donors is striking. At least 181 companies, individuals, and foreign governments that have given to the Clinton Foundation also lobbied the State Department when Hillary Clinton ran the place,” according to a Vox analysis of foundation records and federal lobbying disclosures.
First Read: “Folks, this is after the safeguards/disclosures put in place after Clinton became Obama’s secretary of state to avoid conflicts of interest. This should be the question for Hillary going forward: If you become president, how do you create safeguards that you won’t be influenced by those who have given money to the Clinton Foundation or Bill Clinton (through his speaking fees)?”
Clinton Author Admits He Doesn’t Have Evidence
“In back-to-back interviews over the past 24 hours, conservative author Peter Schweizer admits he doesn’t have direct evidence that Hillary Clinton intervened to assist individuals and entities because they donated large sums of money to the Clinton Foundation,” NBC News reports.
Said Schweizer: “No, we don’t have direct evidence. But it warrants further investigation because, again… this is part of the broader pattern. You either have to come to the conclusion that these are all coincidences or something else is afoot.”
Schweizer is the author of the new book, Clinton Cash.
Clinton Foundation Admits Mistakes
The Clinton Foundation’s acting chief “acknowledged the organization had made missteps, but defended its transparency efforts amid Hillary Clinton’s nascent presidential campaign,” The Hill reports.
Quote of the Day
“I was stunned by it. I mean, it looks like bribery.”
— Mitt Romney, quoted by The Week, on donations made to the Clinton Foundation by foreign governments.
House May Subpoena Clinton’s Email Server
Speaker John Boehner told Bloomberg that the House of Representatives might subpoena Hillary Clinton’s personal e-mail server if she doesn’t voluntarily turn it over for examination by an independent party.
Said Boehner: “She violated the law, and the idea that she was going to use her own server and do official business on it goes against every transparency issue that the President likes to tout. At some point, they just can’t ignore the fact that there are a lot of public documents on this server that the American people have a right to see.”
Will Clinton’s Post-Presidency Derail a Future One?
Jonathan Chait: “The qualities of an effective presidency do not seem to transfer onto a post-presidency. Jimmy Carter was an ineffective president who became an exemplary post-president. Bill Clinton appears to be the reverse. All sorts of unproven worst-case-scenario questions float around the web of connections between Bill’s private work, Hillary Clinton’s public role as secretary of State, the Clintons’ quasi-public charity, and Hillary’s noncompliant email system. But the best-case scenario is bad enough: The Clintons have been disorganized and greedy.”
“The Clintons’ charitable initiatives were a kind of quasi-government run by themselves, which was staffed by their own loyalists and made up the rules as it went along. Their experience running the actual government, with its formal accountability and disclosure, went reasonably well. Their experience running their own privatized mini-state has been a fiasco.”
Clinton Cash Author Is Targeting Bush Next
Peter Schweizer, author of Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, tells Businessweek he’s turning his focus to Jeb Bush.
Said Schweizer: “What we’re doing is a drill-down investigation of Jeb’s finances similar to what we did with the Clintons in terms of looking at financial dealings, cronyism, who he’s been involved with. We’ve found some interesting things.”
Clinton Wealth Intertwined with Foundation
Washington Post: “Bill Clinton was paid at least $26 million in speaking fees by companies and organizations that are also major donors to the foundation he created after leaving the White House, according to a Washington Post analysis of public records and foundation data. The amount, about one-quarter of Clinton’s overall speaking income between 2001 and 2013, demonstrates how closely intertwined Bill and Hillary Clinton’s charitable work has become with their growing personal wealth.”
“The multiple avenues through which the Clintons and their causes have accepted financial support have provided a variety of ways for wealthy interests in the United States and abroad to build friendly relations with a potential future president. The flow of money also gives political opponents an opportunity to argue that Hillary Clinton would face potential conflicts of interest should she win the White House.”
Meanwhile, the Clinton Foundation is refiling “at least five annual tax returns after a Reuters review found errors in how they reported donations from governments.”
Graham Says Clinton Friendship Shouldn’t Disqualify Him
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) “says his friendliness with the Clintons should not deter Republicans from considering him for the Republican presidential nomination,” Politico reports.
Said Graham: “Well, that would disqualify Jeb, because apparently Bill is like his illegitimate brother.”
New Book Questions Donations to Clinton Foundation
Coming next month: Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich by Peter Schweizer
The New York Times says 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. The book… 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.”
Clinton Was Asked About Private Email Two Years Ago
Hillary Clinton “was directly asked by congressional investigators in a December 2012 letter whether she had used a private email account while serving as secretary of state,” according to letters obtained by The New York Times.
“But Mrs. Clinton did not reply to the letter. And when the State Department answered in March 2013, nearly two months after she left office, it ignored the question and provided no response.”
A Clinton Never Makes the Same Mistake Twice
New York Times: “An almost otherworldly resilience has characterized the 40-year arc of the Clintons’ political lives, a well-documented pattern of dazzling success, shattering setback and inevitable recovery. But what their admirers call grit and critics deem shamelessness can overshadow another essential element of the Clinton school: a willingness to put on the hair shirt of humility to regain power.”
“Just as Mr. Clinton began a comeback with a down-home plea for forgiveness, Mrs. Clinton now seems determined to prove — perhaps to the point of overcompensation — that she will not repeat the mistakes that plagued her 2008 campaign.”
White House Staff Spills Secrets on Clintons
“A new book on life inside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue offers a grim portrait of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s dealings with each other coming off disclosures of the ex-president’s affair with Monica Lewinsky in 1998,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The book by Kate Andersen Brower, The Residence, relies on interviews with an extensive roster of butlers, ushers and other professional staff who’ve kept the White House up and running through the years. These aren’t the sorts of folks who typically spill secrets, but Ms. Brower, a former White House reporter for Bloomberg News, pried out some nuggets that add to our historical understanding of first families from the Kennedys to the Obamas.”
Advantage Clinton
Rick Klein: “Ex-presidents aren’t created equal. Or, at least, they’re not equal by the time history gets to judge. George W. Bush fans are likely to be Jeb Bush fans, just as Bill Clinton fans overwhelmingly favor Hillary Clinton in 2016, according to the new ABC News/Washington Post poll. But Hillary has a deeper pool to draw from than W.: Bill Clinton has a 73 percent approval rate, while George W. Bush’s is at 47 percent. Enough said? Unless you also say … Barack Obama has an identical 47 percent approval rating in the poll. Hillary Clinton’s is down to 49 percent – 18 points below her high point, which came as she was leaving office as Secretary of State.”
“In a race with echoes of history, it looks like which history major candidates are able to tap into could be determinative. As for now, Clinton leads her major possible rivals in head-to-head matchups. She would beat Jeb Bush by 12 points; Scott Walker by 14, Marco Rubio by 15, and Ted Cruz by 17.”
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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.
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