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HRC would have to slip on a banana peel, or charges against her announced during the campaign, but it could happen.
I would expect a VERY strong third party candidate if it was Sanders vs. Trump. But that's not going to happen.
HRC would have to slip on a banana peel, or charges against her announced during the campaign, but it could happen.
like everything about the Clintons since 1992, it's fabricated and hyped by the rightwing hate media that denies even the legitimacy of anybody opposing the Repugs. Same with Obama, with the added feature of his skin color.
At Hillary Clinton’s confirmation hearing for secretary of state, she promised she would take “extraordinary steps…to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest.”
Later, more than two dozen companies and groups and one foreign government paid former President Bill Clinton a total of more than $8 million to give speeches around the time they also had matters before Mrs. Clinton’s State Department, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.
Fifteen of them also donated a total of between $5 million and $15 million to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, the family’s charity, according to foundation disclosures.
In several instances, State Department actions benefited those that paid Mr. Clinton. The Journal found no evidence that speaking fees were paid to the former president in exchange for any action by Mrs. Clinton, now the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Mrs. Clinton has come under fire from Republicans and some Democrats for potential conflicts of interest between her family’s work at the foundation and her duties as secretary of state between 2009 and February 2013. Her husband’s high-profile activities pose a unique challenge for Mrs. Clinton as she runs for president and he prepares to step up his role in her campaign.
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Mr. Clinton, for example, collected $1 million for two appearances sponsored by the Abu Dhabi government that were arranged while Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state. His speeches there came during and after the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security were involved in discussions about a plan to open a U.S. facility in the Abu Dhabi airport to ease visa processing for travel to the U.S. The State Department supported the facility in the face of substantial opposition from unions, members of Congress and others.
The Journal based its analysis on financial-disclosure forms, lobbying records and emails released by the State Department. It looked at speeches given or arranged while Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state.
Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said “no evidence exists” to link any actions taken by Mrs. Clinton’s State Department to organizations hosting Mr. Clinton’s speeches, and that all of her actions were in line with Obama administration policies and priorities.
Representatives of most of the companies and organizations involved said there was no connection between their lobbying efforts and the speaking fees they paid Mr. Clinton. Representatives of Abu Dhabi and several companies declined to comment.
The Clintons struck an agreement with the Obama administration to allow State Department ethics officers to check for conflicts between speech sponsors and Mrs. Clinton’s government work.
State Department spokesman Alec Gerlach said not all activity at the department personally or substantially involves the secretary of state. “Her commitments did not equate to an indiscriminate prohibition on former President Clinton from working with any en y that interacted with the State Department, which would have encompassed an excessively broad range of companies, governments and NGOs [nongovernmental organizations],” he said.
The ethics reviews, he noted, “were conducted by career civil servants who have served in both Republican and Democratic administrations.”
Mr. Clinton was paid for more than 200 speeches while Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state, according to his wife’s disclosure forms. Do ents released thus far by the State Department show the ethics office turned down five of his speech requests, including proposed talks sponsored by North Korea, China and the Republic of Congo.
Mr. Clinton has given mixed signals about whether he would abandon the paid-speaking circuit if his wife becomes president.
Asked by NBC in May if he would remain on the speech circuit while his wife was running for president, Mr. Clinton responded, “Oh, yeah. I gotta pay our bills.”
In June, Bloomberg TV asked Mr. Clinton if he would still give paid speeches if Mrs. Clinton gained the White House. “I don’t think so,” he replied, saying he didn’t want to make news that detracted from the presidency. Then he added: “I will still give speeches, though, on the subjects I’m interested in.”
A spokesman for Mr. Clinton, asked to clarify, pointed to the former president’s previous statements.
The State Department got involved in the Abu Dhabi matter after the capital of the United Arab Emirates asked for a facility to clear travelers for U.S. entry before they boarded planes so they could avoid delays when arriving in the U.S. Only five countries in the world at the time had such an arrangement: Canada, Ireland and three Caribbean countries.
According to two former State Department officials who worked on the matter, the U.S. wanted to help an important ally. Mrs. Clinton’s spokesman said it was “a continuation of a Bush administration initiative to expand preclearance conducted abroad,” and that the Department of Homeland Security led negotiations.
U.S.-based airlines, which have no direct flights between Abu Dhabi and the U.S., opposed the idea as a giveaway to the government-owned airline, Etihad Airways. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the AFL-CIO and unions for pilots and flight attendants opposed it. More than 150 lawmakers from both parties ultimately opposed it.
While Mrs. Clinton’s State Department and the Department of Homeland Security were working out a “letter of intent” with Abu Dhabi for the facility, Mr. Clinton sought permission to give a paid speech in Abu Dhabi. The invitation came from the Abu Dhabi Global Environmental Data Initiative, a group created by Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, president of the United Arab Emirates and emir of Abu Dhabi, according to Mr. Clinton’s request to the State Department.
Requests for comment from the U.A.E. embassy in Washington were referred to a public-relations firm, which declined to comment on behalf of the government.
State Department ethics officer Katy Youel Page, in an August 2011 email, inquired about Mr. Clinton’s potential involvement with “high-level officials” from Abu Dhabi. She asked the State Department’s United Arab Emirates desk officer, “Would it be any harm to foreign policy to associate with this?” He replied: “No concerns here.”
On Dec. 6, 2011, U.S. officials signed the letter of intent. One week later, Mr. Clinton gave a 20-minute talk on climate change to the Abu Dhabi government environmental gathering. He collected $500,000, his wife’s disclosure report shows.
In December 2012, Mr. Clinton sought approval for another speech in Abu Dhabi before the World Travel and Tourism Council, State Department emails show. The request said the speech was sponsored by three Abu Dhabi tourism agencies, all owned by the government. A conference sponsor was Etihad Airways, the chief beneficiary of the inspection facility, the group’s promotional materials said. An Etihad spokeswoman referred questions about the facility to the government of Abu Dhabi.
Mr. Clinton gave a keynote address on the value of tourism. He was paid $500,000, his wife’s disclosure filings say.
One week later, the U.S. and Abu Dhabi signed the final agreement for the facility. Etihad Airways operated its first flight from it last year.
Mrs. Clinton’s spokesman said it was “farcical” to suggest any connection between the speeches and the facility’s opening.
Mr. Clinton also had a large payday from Oracle Corp.: a total of $500,000 for two talks given or approved while Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state. He gave one in October 2012 as the company was urging the State Department to increase the number of skilled-worker visas being issued, lobbying reports show.
Oracle, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and Microsoft Corp., whose co-founder Bill Gates has suggested eliminating the visa cap altogether, paid Mr. Clinton a total of more than $1.1 million for speeches during Mrs. Clinton’s tenure.
Mrs. Clinton has long supported increasing skilled-worker visas, known as H-1B visas, as did her husband when he was president. The issue has remained mired in the broader congressional debate about immigration.
In 2009, the Biotechnology Industry Organization lobbied the State Department to get diplomats to oppose rules against genetically modified foods. In December, Mrs. Clinton sent a cable to diplomats telling them to “pay particular attention” to countries considering biotech regulation and to push an “active biotech agenda” that would “protect the interests of U.S. farmers and exporters,” according to a copy released by WikiLeaks.
Five months later, the biotechnology group paid Mr. Clinton $175,000 to appear at its convention. After Mrs. Clinton left the State Department, she also spoke at the trade group’s convention, earning $335,000.
A spokesman for the trade group said the speeches were unrelated to the company’s lobbying and Mr. Clinton was invited in part because he supported the group’s issues. Mrs. Clinton’s spokesman said a similar diplomatic cable was sent under the Bush administration.
Mr. Clinton also received a substantial payout in 2010 from Renaissance Capital, a Russian investment bank whose executives were at risk of being hurt by possible U.S. sanctions tied to a complex and controversial case of alleged corruption in Russia.
Members of Congress wrote to Mrs. Clinton in 2010 seeking to deny visas to people who had been implicated by Russian accountant Sergei Magnitsky, who was jailed and died in prison after he uncovered evidence of a large tax-refund fraud. William Browder, a foreign investor in Russia who had hired Mr. Magnitsky, alleged that the accountant had turned up evidence that Renaissance officials, among others, participated in the fraud.
The Russian government was opposed to sanctions. At the time, the Obama administration was attempting to reset relations with Russia. The State Department rebuffed the request from Congress. “We…do not support such a measure at this time,” a department official wrote to one senator.
A few weeks later, Bill Clinton participated in a question-and-answer session at a Renaissance Capital investors conference. He was paid $500,000. After the appearance, Mr. Clinton received a personal thank-you call from Vladimir Putin, then the Russian prime minister, the government news agency TASS reported.
Mrs. Clinton’s spokesman said she took aggressive steps on human-rights abuses in Russia and “personally acted to impose a ban on travel to the U.S. by several dozen officials believed to have been involved in Magnitsky’s death.” Sponsors of the congressional legislation said the move, coming in 2011, was a major step, but that it didn’t go far enough.
Mrs. Clinton’s spokesman said she opposed congressional attempts to link broad sanctions to a bill to normalize trade relations with Russia, believing the two matters should be handled separately. Nevertheless, the Magnitsky Act passed in late 2012 with bipartisan support as a part of a trade-normalization bill. The law calls for sanctions on unnamed individuals whose alleged fraudulent schemes were uncovered by Mr. Magnitsky, including several linked to Renaissance Capital, according to congressional aides who helped draft the bill.
A spokeswoman for Renaissance declined to comment other than to say the bank is under new management since Mr. Magnitsky’s original investigation.
Mrs. Clinton’s spokesman said there was no connection between her husband’s speech and the State Department’s handling of the matter.
After his wife became Secretary of State, former President Bill Clinton began to collect speaking fees that often doubled or tripled what he had been charging earlier in his post White House years, bringing in millions of dollars from groups that included several with interests pending before the State Department, an ABC News review of financial disclosure records shows.
Where he once had drawn $150,000 for a typical address in the years following his presidency, Clinton saw a succession of staggering paydays for speeches in 2010 and 2011, including $500,000 paid by a Russian investment bank and $750,000 to address a telecom conference in China.
“It’s unusual to see a former president’s speaking fee go up over time,” said Richard Painter, who served as chief ethics lawyer in the White House Counsel’s office under President George W. Bush. “I must say I’m surprised that he raised his fees. There’s no prohibition on his raising it. But it does create some appearance problems if he raises his fee after she becomes Secretary of State.”
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Public speaking became a natural and lucrative source of income for Clinton when he returned to private life in 2001. Records from disclosure forms filed by Hillary Clinton during her tenures in the U.S. Senate and then in the Obama Administration indicate he took in more than $105 million in speech fees during that 14 year period.
That steady flow of income has come under scrutiny in recent days, as it formed an element of a book by author and conservative think tank fellow Peter Schweizer called “Clinton Cash,” due for release in coming days. ABC News received an advanced copy of the book, which highlights instances where domestic and foreign companies with pending interests before the State Department made large donations to the Clinton’s charitable enterprises or, in some cases, helped underwrite the former president’s speeches. The book offers no proof that Hillary Clinton took any direct action to benefit the groups and interests that were paying her husband.
An independent review of source material by ABC News uncovered errors in the book, including an instance where paid and unpaid speaking appearances were conflated. Schweizer said the errors would be corrected. But those same records supported the premise that former President Clinton accepted speaking fees from numerous companies and individuals with interests pending before the State Department.
A spokesman for Hillary Clinton’s campaign did not respond Wednesday to requests for comment from ABC News, but the campaign’s leadership has been very aggressive in attacking the premise and content of the book. John Podesta, the campaign chairman, told PBS, "He's cherry-picked information that's been disclosed and woven a bunch of conspiracy theories about it.”
During her first visit to New Hampshire as a presidential candidate Monday, Hillary Clinton brushed off other finance-related allegations referenced in "Clinton Cash" about the Clinton Foundation's acceptance of donations from foreign governments, dismissing them as being a "distraction" from the issues of her campaign.
"Well, we're back into the political season and therefore we will be subjected to all kinds of distractions and attacks and I'm ready for that. I know that that comes unfortunately with the territory," Clinton told reporters.
When Hillary Clinton took over as Secretary of State, Bill Clinton's attorney, David E. Kendall, drafted guidelines intended to help him avoid conflicts as he continued to accept payment for speeches.
“l am writing to describe the voluntary steps, above and beyond the requirements of law and ethics regulations, that President Clinton intends to take to assist Senator Clinton to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest with her duties as Secretary of State,” Kendall wrote.
The rules required the State Department’s ethics officials to review and approve speaking requests.
In practice, there were few if any instances where ethics officials inside the State Department asked the former president to refuse to accept payment for a speech. Hundreds of pages of emails, first obtained through a Freedom of Information request by the right-leaning group Judicial Watch, show that requests from Clinton’s personal office to the State Department for approval of speaking engagements were almost always granted.
In October 2010, for instance, Clinton accepted $225,000 to give a speech in Jamaica sponsored in part by the Irish telecom firm Digicel. Just weeks earlier, Digicel had submitted an application to USAID, an agency overseen by the State Department, for millions of dollars in grant money to fund a mobile-phone money transfer service in Haiti. Two months after the speech, Digicel received the first installment of grant money. The company’s chairman, Irish billionaire Denis O'Brien, was also a major contributor to the Clintons' charitable enterprises.
A spokeswoman for Digicel told ABC News that its sponsorship of the Jamaica speech had nothing to do with the company’s other projects. To imply otherwise, said spokeswoman Gillian Power, “suggests an association of unrelated events which create a misleading representation of Digicel and its founder, Denis O’Brien in relation to their collaboration with President Clinton in developing Haiti.”
“This sponsorship is just one of many that Digicel supports and falls under a large investment in a significant number of activities across the areas of sports, culture and the community – all of which are designed to foster development,” Power said. “President Clinton and Denis O’Brien’s relationship was founded on their common interest in developing Haiti – a goal which they continue to work together to achieve.”
The former president collected large payments from companies with global interests such Canada’s TD Bank, which had an interest in the Keystone Pipeline, a subject of intense lobbying in Washington. In just one week in March of 2011, Clinton collected $1.3 million giving speeches in Nigeria, Brazil and Grand Cayman.
One instance where the State Department did raise questions about a speech recipient came in 2012, when President Clinton requested to speak at an aviation conference sponsored in part by an organization called the Shanghai Airport Authority. The audience was billed as “6,000 business leaders, government officials, and high net worth individuals.” The State Department ethics officer, Kathryn Youel Page, flagged the request in an email back to the former president’s office indicating the sponsor had ties to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) government.
“I don't believe we've previously cleared acceptance of fees from PRC-linked en ies, but could consider this variation,” she wrote.
Clinton did not accept the fee.
^ what's your take on that CC? I think everyone knows she's a career politician... although only the GOP seems to have a hardon for 'outsiders', IMO
If that ex-us attorney can be believed 150 fbi agents are on the case.
If there are even 50 that is a massive undertaking.
And if (big if) the FBI actually brought a case they would have her dead to rights. That's how they roll.
That said, I'll believe it when I see it.
I knew she was a s bag from the moment I saw her up the Secretary of State position. Sh ruined it for the rest of history. They need to rename that position imo
She being president would mean the end of th e US of A imo.
Impeach her now and throw her in jail so she doesn't get to be even 1 second in the white house
The smoking gun seems to be Bills speaking fees immediately jumping from the $100,000 range to the half million range when she became sec of state. $500,000 for a 20 minute talk sure looks and smells like a bribe.
that's not a smoking gun, but it might be smoke.
the WSJ said they had no evidence HRC performed any actions in exchange for Bill Clinton's fees.
what evidence do you see?
the entire area of what is classifiable or not is mushy, controversial, open to challenge.
My guess is Congressional Repugs are putting enormous pressure on FBI, just as head put enormous pressure on CIA to lie about Saddam, WMD.
Congress isn't the FBI's boss, Obama is.
One theory has it the FBI is still pissed about the kid glove treatment David Petraeus got.
So you think only the WH can influence the FBI/CIA?
there was no way the NYT could prove cause and effect so it was only smart to say "here are the facts we see but we can't prove the payments were directly linked to results".
Do you not think it's cir stantially strange that Bills speaking fees increased enormously as soon as Hillary became SOS?
CC, do you think it's cir stantially strange that Repug politicians who receive NRA/BigGun contributions ALWAYS block any gun regs and research?
Does anyone not think it's strange that Boo is so stupid that he doesn't understand the legal distinction between political contributions and personal bribes?
political contributions aren't bribes?
Boo conveniently ignored "legal distinction".political contributions aren't bribes?
How Boorish.
No. I would call it predictable.
Who wouldn't want to curry favor with a possible future president?
Sucking up to people in power isn't a crime, and taking the money in and of itself isn't corruption.
CC is so corruptly naive thinking that because the CORRUPT Repug/VRWC SCOTUS legalized massive, secretive "dark" bribery, that it's moral, ethical, and just wonderful.
Politicians, esp Federal politicians, are totally corrupted by BigMoney. They run for office exclusively to become (more) wealthy.
True, but the quid pro quo is if the FBI proves it.
remember, smart money says they have recovered the 30,000 emails Hillary deleted.
All it takes is one mistake.
your threadbare surmise that Congress has pressured the FBI to investigate HRC about this is just that.So you think only the WH can influence the FBI/CIA?
dumb
I didn't say it was good.
I said one was legal, the other one isn't.
try to keep up.
The FBI's favorite case to make is public corruption, even more than bank robbers.
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