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Showing posts with label Clinton Cash. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Clinton Cash. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

The Truth Forces Clinton Global Initiative To Close Their Doors. No Power, No Contributions! Pay To Play Ends



Controversial Clinton Global Initiative closing its doors for good

 



Controversial Clinton Global Initiative closing its doors for good
LAS VEGAS, NV - FEBRUARY 19: (L-R) Democratic presidential candidate former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her husband, former U.S. president Bill Clinton look on during a "Get Out The Caucus" at the Clark County Government Center on February 19, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada. With one day to go before the Democratic caucuses in Nevada, Hillary Clinton is campaigning in Las Vegas. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)




In a fitting end, The Clinton Global Initiative will shutter operations at their main office in New York City for good on Tax Day, April 15, 2017.
WARN filing with the Department of Labor indicates that the 22 remaining employees employed there will be terminated on that date and that the official reason given for the layoffs is a “discontinuation of the Clinton Global Initative.”
The CGI came under scrutiny during the 2016 election. The many foreign government donors and wealthy benefactors the organization claimed contributed to the belief that the organization was a “pay-to-play” operation designed to enrich the Clintons by trading on their political influence, and by using the speaking circuit as a way to elevate the “Clinton” brand while Hillary Clinton campaigned for president.
Clinton defenders countered those allegations by citing the many charitable organizations the CGI funded around the world.
However, as a report from the New York Observer notes, the criticisms began to reemerge in the wake of Clinton’s electoral loss to now President-elect Donald Trump due to the nearly immediate decision by those same wealthy and foreign donors to distance themselves from the foundation — or  fundraising — arm of the initiative:
[A]s soon as Clinton lost the election, many of the criticisms directed toward the Clinton Foundation were reaffirmed. Foreign governments began pulling out of annual donations, signaling the organization’s clout was predicated on donor access to the Clintons, rather than its philanthropic work. In November, the Australian government confirmed it “has not renewed any of its partnerships with the scandal-plagued Clinton Foundation, effectively ending 10 years of taxpayer-funded contributions worth more than $88 million.” The government of Norway also drastically reduced their annual donations, which reached $20 million a year in 2015.
The CGI was founded in 2005 to supplement the Clinton Foundation and serve as a networking apparatus to help in fundraising efforts. However, as the Observer notes, the language used to define the goal of the initiative was unclear. “Rather than directly implementing projects, CGI facilitates action by helping members connect, collaborate, and make effective and measurable Commitments to Action—plans for addressing significant global challenges,” the CGI website states.
Clinton was dogged during the waning days of the 2016 election by allegations stemming from an email exchange detailing a memo made public by WikiLeaks in October that the Clinton Foundation was running a scheme to amass a fortune using the Clintons’ political influence:
From the Post:
The memo from [top Clinton aide and Clinton Foundation employee] Douglas Band, made public Wednesday by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, lays out the aggressive strategy behind lining up the consulting contracts and paid speaking engagements for Bill Clinton that added tens of millions of dollars to the family’s fortune, including during the years that Hillary Clinton led the State Department. It describes how Band helped run what he called “Bill Clinton Inc.,” obtaining “in-kind services for the President and his family — for personal travel, hospitality, vacation and the like.”
The alleged abuses of the Clinton Foundation and the CGI are also detailed in the book, “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich” by Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute.

Thursday, November 24, 2016

Trump Got Money From Clinton Donor in 2015. A Lot Of Noise About Nothing. It Was Before He Was A Candidate.



‘It’s troubling’: Alleged ‘pay-to-play’ Clinton donor also contributed to Trump Foundation

 



‘It’s troubling’: Alleged ‘pay-to-play’ Clinton donor also contributed to Trump Foundation
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster




After spending months on the campaign trail criticizing Democratic rival Hillary Clinton for her alleged “pay-to-play” politics, a new report reveals that one of the most generous Clinton Foundation donors at the center of the shady blend of business and politics has also contributed to President-elect Donald Trump’s eponymous nonprofit organization, the Trump Foundation.
“I think it’s troubling,” Peter Schweizer, author of the book “Clinton Cash,” told ABC News. “He’s somebody that donated to the Clinton Foundation, and this is a problem. … I think there’s no other way to read it other than they are hoping to get some favor in return.”
According to the Trump Foundation’s 2015 tax filings, which became public Tuesday, the Victor Pinchuk Foundation donated $150,000 to the Trump Foundation in the fall of 2015 — the only donation Ukrainian businessman Victor Pinchuk’s organization ever made to Trump, Thomas Weihe, head of the foundation’s board, said.
A spokesman for Pinchuk told the Washington Post that the donation to the Trump Foundation was payment for a 2015 speech Trump gave via video link at a conference in Kiev.
But Pinchuk, who is reportedly worth more than $1 billion, gave much larger sums to the Clinton Foundation. Over the years, the billionaire has donated between $10 million and $25 million to the Clinton Foundation and has lent his private plane to the Clinton family, according to the New York Times.
Pinchuk’s name arose during the campaign alongside accusations of “pay-to-play” politicking by Clinton when she served as secretary of state. His name is seen in State Department emails revealed by Citizens United as being invited to a small dinner party hosted by then-Secretary Clinton.
Trump used those instances — and many others — to fuel his attacks against Clinton while he was on the campaign trail.
“They should give the money back,” the New York developer said of the Clintons. “Countries that influenced her totally and also countries that discriminated against women and gays and everybody else. I mean, that money should be given back. They should not take that money.”
Now Schweizer, who is an informal adviser to Trump, is calling on the president-elect to take a taste of his own medicine, telling ABC he needs to return Pinchuk’s donation.
“I think one of the reforms that needs to take place is that the Trump Foundation should not take any donations from businessmen from the United States or internationally,” he said. “It’s just simply a gateway to trying to curry favor with the president-elect.”
The problem with the revelation is it severely weakens Trump’s argument that it was Clinton — not he — who was the morally unacceptable and corrupted candidate. In addition, Pinchuk’s donation stirs up even more debate centered around concerns about the incoming president’s ability to separate his business dealings from his White House interactions.
“The implication is that Trump, like Clinton, has close ties with international figures ― and unlike Clinton, corporate investments all over the world,”  Sheila Krumholz, the executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, told the Huffington Post. “These kinds of cases raise questions about whether, while acting as public officials, people like Trump would be able to discharge their duties without bias in favor of their international ties.”

Monday, August 22, 2016

Another Right Wing Conspiracy? Nope, This One Comes From The Left!


Nail in the Coffin: Huffington Post Calls for End to Clinton Foundation: ‘Just Shut it Down’


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The Huffington Post, one of the world’s most trafficked news sites, featured a headline on Sunday calling for the closure of the embattled Clinton Foundation. The left-wing outlet’s front page banner linked to a New York Times article, which highlights, among other things, that Bill and Hillary Clinton’s billion dollar nonprofit has “accepted tens of millions of dollars from countries that the State Department — before, during and after Mrs. Clinton’s time as secretary — criticized for their records on sex discrimination and other human-rights issues.”

The Huffington Post is just the latest outlet to acknowledge that the explosive research, found first in Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Peter Schweizer’s New York Times bestselling book Clinton Cash, has inspired a massive movement of journalists and political figures — on the left, right, and center — calling on the Clintons to dismantle their problematic nonprofit.
The Times piece shines the spotlight on “a deal involving the sale of American uranium holdings to a Russian state-owned enterprise” — another revelation first revealed inClinton Cash — “… which involved major Clinton charitable backers from Canada …” as “another example of the foundation intersecting with Mrs. Clinton’s official role in the Obama administration.”
Video: What Happens to the Clinton Foundation if Hillary Wins?

For weeks, the Democratic presidential candidate has been bombarded with questions about the apparent global nexus of influence peddling involving top aids to Clinton offering preferential treatment to million-dollar Clinton Foundation donors when she was the head of the State Department.
In a staggering sign of vulnerability, Bill Clinton told a room full of the foundation’s staff on Thursday that he will resign from the Clinton Foundation board if Hillary Clinton wins the White House in November. The former president also pledged to stop giving paid speeches, regardless of the outcome of Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid.
Still, even after the former president’s announcement, other Clinton Foundation projects – The Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) and the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership (CGEP) – said they would continue to collect donations no matter what happens in November.
Bill Clinton’s announcement followed former Democratic Pennsylvania Governor and longtime Clinton ally Ed Rendell’s remarks that the foundation should shutdown if Hillary Clinton became president.
“I definitely think if she wins the presidency, they have to disband it. I know it’ll be hard for President (Bill) Clinton because he cares very deeply about what the foundation has done,” Rendell told the New York Daily News. “It’d be impossible to keep the foundation open without at least the appearance of a problem.”
On Tuesday, the Boston Globe, which endorsed Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid, called for the “shut down” of the Clinton Foundation, should Hillary win.
“Even if they’ve done nothing illegal, the foundation will always look too much like a conflict of interest for comfort,” the Globe’s editorial board wrote.
“The new pledge is a stunning tacit admission of wrongdoing,” Schweizer wrote on Thursday, adding that “it comes too little too late and raises the obvious question: If it would be wrong for Hillary’s foundation to accept foreign cash as president, why wasn’t it wrong for Hillary’s foundation to accept foreign cash from oligarchs and countries who had business pending on her desk as Sec. of State?”
Schweizer continued: “Moreover, if, as has been confirmed by numerous mainstream media organizations, Hillary Clinton violated her ethics pledge with the Obama administration to disclose all Clinton Foundation donations, why should the American people believe she would now honor a new pledge to forgo bagging cash from foreign oligarchs and countries?”
That’s a question that the Clinton’s may not have an answer to, according to those in the government corruption watchdog community.
“It is very difficult to see how the organization called the Clinton Foundation can continue to exist during a Clinton presidency without that posing all sorts of consequences,” John Wonderlich, the interim executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, told the Times. “What they announced only addresses the most egregious potential conflicts.”

Tuesday, August 2, 2016

Khizr Khan Is A Mole, A Clinton Fundraiser With Unsavory Ties




Clinton Cash: Khizr Khan’s Deep Legal, Financial Connections to Saudi Arabia, Hillary’s Clinton Foundation Tie Terror, Immigration, Email Scandals Together


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Khizr Khan, the Muslim Gold Star father that the mainstream media and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have been using to criticize Donald J. Trump, has deep ties to the government of Saudi Arabia—and to international Islamist investors through his own law firm. In addition to those ties to the wealthy Islamist nation, Khan also has ties to controversial immigration programs that wealthy foreigners can use to essentially buy their way into the United States—and has deep ties to the “Clinton Cash” narrative through the Clinton Foundation.

Khan and his wife Ghazala Khan both appeared on stage at the Democratic National Convention to attack, on Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s behalf, Donald Trump—the Republican nominee for president. Their son, U.S. Army Captain Humayun Khan, was killed in Iraq in 2004. Khizr Khan, in his speech to the DNC, lambasted Donald Trump for wanting to temporarily halt Islamic migration to America from countries with a proven history of exporting terrorists.
Since then, Clinton operative George Stephanopoulos—who served as a senior adviser to the president in Bill Clinton’s White House and is a Clinton Foundation donor as well as a host on the ABC network—pushed Trump on the matter in an interview. Trump’s comments in that interview have sparked the same mini-rebellion inside his party, in the media and across the aisle that has happened many times before. The usual suspects inside the GOP, from former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to House Speaker Paul Ryan to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to Ohio Gov. John Kasich, have condemned Trump in one way or another. The media condemnation has been swift and Democrats, as well their friends throughout media, are driving the train as fast as they can.
VIDEO: FBI INTERVIEWS CLINTON IN EMAIL PROBE: CAMPAIGN

But until now, it looked like the Khans were just Gold Star parents who the big bad Donald Trump attacked. It turns out, however, in addition to being Gold Star parents, the Khans are financially and legally tied deeply to the industry of Muslim migration–and to the government of Saudi Arabia and to the Clintons themselves.
Khan, according to Intelius as also reported by Walid Shoebat, used to work at the law firm Hogan Lovells, LLP, a major D.C. law firm that has been on retainer as the law firm representing the government of Saudi Arabia in the United States for years. Citing federal government disclosure forms, the Washington Free Beacon reported the connection between Saudi Arabia and Hogan Lovells a couple weeks ago.
“Hogan Lovells LLP, another U.S. firm hired by the Saudis, is registered to work for the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia through 2016, disclosures show,” Joe Schoffstall of the Free Beacon reported.
The federal form filed with the Department of Justice is a requirement under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, which makes lobbyists and lawyers working on behalf of foreign governments and other agents from abroad with interests in the United States register with the federal government.
The government of Saudi Arabia, of course, has donated heavily to the Clinton Foundation.
“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has given between $10 and $25 million to the foundation while Friends of Saudi Arabia has contributed between $1 and $5 million,” Schoffstall wrote.
Trump, of course, has called on Hillary Clinton to have the Clinton Foundation return the money.
“Saudi Arabia and many of the countries that gave vast amounts of money to the Clinton Foundation want women as slaves and to kill gays,” Trump wrote in a Facebook post back in June, according to Politico. “Hillary must return all money from such countries!”
“Crooked Hillary says we must call on Saudi Arabia and other countries to stop funding hate,” Trump posted in a separate Facebook posting at the time. “I am calling on her to immediately return the $25 million plus she got from them for the Clinton Foundation!”
Of course, to this day, Hillary Clinton and her Clinton Foundation has kept the money from the Saudi Arabian government.
Schoffstall’s piece in the Washington Free Beacon also notes how Hogan Lovells lobbyist Robert Kyle, per Federal Election Commission (FEC) records, has bundled more than $50,000 in donations for Clinton’s campaign this year.
Khan’s connections with the Hogan Lovells firm run deep, according to a report from Law.com written by Katelyn Polantz.
“Many lawyers at Hogan Lovells remember the week in 2004 when U.S. Army Capt. Humayun Khan lost his life to a suicide bomber,” Polantz wrote. “Then-Hogan & Hartson attorneys mourned the death because the soldier’s father, Khizr Khan, a Muslim American immigrant, was among their beloved colleagues.”
Polantz wrote that Khan worked at the mega-D.C. law firm for years.
“Khan spent seven years, from 2000 to 2007, in the Washington, D.C., office of then-Hogan & Hartson,” Polantz wrote. “He served as the firm’s manager of litigation technology. Although he did not practice law while at Hogan, Khan was well versed in understanding the American courts system. On Thursday night, he described his late son dreaming of becoming a military lawyer.”
But representing the Clinton Foundation backing Saudi Arabian government and having one of its lobbyists bundle $50,000-plus for Clinton’s campaign are hardly the only places where the Khan-connected Hogan Lovells D.C. mega-firm brush elbows with Clinton Cash. 
The firm also handles Hillary Clinton’s taxes and is deeply connected with the email scandal whereby when she was Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton set up a home-brew email server system that jeopardized classified information handling and was “extremely careless” according to FBI director James Comey.
“A lawyer at Hogan & Hartson [Howard Topaz] has been Bill and Hillary Clinton’s go-to guy for tax advice since 2004, according to documents released Friday by Hillary Clinton’s campaign,” The American Lawyer’s Nate Raymond wrote in 2008, as Hillary Clinton ran for president that year. “The Clintons’ tax returns for 2000-07 show combined earnings of $109 million, on which they paid $33 million in taxes. New York-based tax partner Howard Topaz has a broad tax practice, and also regularly advises corporations on M&A and executive compensation.”
Breitbart News’ Patrick Howley, in a deep investigative piece on Hillary Clinton’s email scandal, late last year uncovered how Topaz’s firm—which employed Khan while Topaz did Hillary Clinton’s taxes—is also connected to the email scandal.
“Topaz was a partner at Hogan & Hartson, which later merged to become known as Hogan Lovells, where Topaz continues to practice. The firm’s lawyers were major donors to Hillary Clinton’s first presidential campaign,” Howley wrote.
For her private email system, Clinton used a spam filtering program MX Logic.
“Hogan & Hartson handled the patent for MX Logic’s email-filtering program, which McAfee bought the small company for $140 million in 2009 in order to acquire,” Howley wrote. “The MX Logic company’s application for a trademark for its SPAMTRAQ program was filed in 2004 on Hogan & Hartson stationery and signed by a Hogan & Hartson attorney. Hogan & Hartson has been responsible for MX Logic annual reports. The email company’s Clinton links present more evidence that Clinton’s political and legal establishment was monitoring her private email use.”
If that all isn’t enough, that same Hogan & Hartson law firm—now Hogan Lovells—employed Loretta Lynch, the current Attorney General of the United States. Lynch infamously just a few weeks ago met with Bill Clinton, Hillary’s husband and the former president, on her private jet in Phoenix just before clearing Hillary Clinton of any wrongdoing when it came to her illicit private email server system.
Khan’s own website for his own personal law firm KM Khan Law Office shows he represents clients in the business of buying visas to enter the United States. One of his specific areas of practice, according to the website, is “E2 Treaty Investors, EB5 Investments & Related Immigration Services.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the U.S. Senate’s Judiciary Committee, has detailed how the EB5 immigration program is “riddled with flaws and corruption.”
“Maybe it is only here on Capitol Hill—on this island surrounded by reality—that we can choose to plug our ears and refuse to listen to commonly accepted facts,” Grassley said in a statement earlier this year. “The Government Accountability Office, the media, industry experts, members of congress, and federal agency officials, have concurred that the program is a serious problem with serious vulnerabilities. Allow me to mention a few of the flaws.”
From there, Sen. Grassley listed out several of the “flaws” with the EB5 immigration program that Khan works in:
– Investments can be spent before business plans are approved. 
– Regional Center operators can charge exorbitant fees of foreign nationals in addition to their required investments.  
– Jobs created are not “direct” or verifiable jobs but rather are “indirect” and based on estimates and economic modeling.
– Jobs created by U.S. investors are counted by the foreign national when obtaining a green card, even if EB-5 money is only a fraction of the total invested.
– Investment funds are not adequately vetted. 
– Gifts and loans are acceptable sources of funds from foreign nationals.
– The investment level has been stagnant for nearly 25 years.
– There’s no prohibition against foreign governments owning or operating regional centers or projects.
– Regional centers can be rented or sold without government oversight or approval.
– Regional centers don’t have to certify that they comply with securities laws.  
– There’s no oversight of promoters who work overseas for the regional centers.
– There’s no set of sanctions for violations, no recourse for bad actors.
– There are no required background checks on anyone associated with a regional center.
– Regional centers draw Targeted Employment Area boundaries around poor areas in order to come in at a lower investment level, yet the jobs created are not actually created in those areas.
– Every Targeted Employment Area designation is rubberstamped by the agency.
– Adjudicators are pressured to get to a yes, especially for those politically connected. 
– Visas are not properly scrutinized. 
– Visas are pushed through despite security warnings.
– Files and applications lack basic and necessary information to monitor compliance.
– The agency does not do site visits for each and every project.
– There’s no transparency on how funds are spent, who is paid, and what investors are told about the projects they invest in.
That’s not to mention the fact that, according to Sen. Grassley, there have been serious national security violations in connection with the EB5 program that Khan works in and around already. In fact, the program—according to Grassley—was used by Middle Eastern operatives from Iran to attempt to illicitly enter the United States.
“There are also classified reports that detail the national security, fraud and abuse. Our committee has received numerous briefings and classified documents to show this side of the story,” Grassley said in the early February 2016 statement. “The enforcement arm of the Department of Homeland Security wrote an internal memo that raises significant concerns about the program. One section of the memo outlines concerns that it could be used by Iranian operatives to infiltrate the United States. The memo identifies seven main areas of program vulnerability, including the export of sensitive technology, economic espionage, use by foreign government agents and terrorists, investment fraud, illicit finance and money laundering.”
Maybe all of this is why–as Breitbart News has previously noted–the Democratic National Convention made absolutely no mention of the Clinton Foundation or Clinton Global Initiative. Hillary Clinton’s coronation ceremony spent exactly zero minutes of the four nights of official DNC programming talking about anything to do with perhaps one of the biggest parts of her biography.