Hillary
Hillary Clinton is entering the presidential race in a cloud of
scandal surrounding foreign contributions to the Clinton family
foundation and her use of a private email account and server to
conduct official business while secretary of state. But she and her
husband are no strangers to scandal.
Travelgate
Soon after her husband became president in 1993, first lady Hillary
Clinton allegedly engineered the firing of seven employees of the
White House travel office and the hiring of a firm with ties to the
Clintons to replace them. Multiple investigations absolved the
president of involvement but Hillary Clinton was found to have made
false statements to investigators.
Hillarycare secrecy
When first lady Hillary Clinton convened her task force to create her
husband's national healthcare program, it included multiple
representatives from government, the health and insurance industries
and academics. Despite the obvious potential for conflicts of interest
in closed deliberations, the task force's meetings were kept secret
throughout its existence.
Whitewater
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Bill and Hillary Clinton were
associates of Jim and Susan McDougal in the Whitewater Development
Corp., an Arkansas real estate investment firm that went under when
McDougal's Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan was closed by federal
regulators for illegal accounting. Taxpayers lost $73 million due to
Guaranty. The Clintons lost an estimated $67,000 on their investment,
but McDougal helped pay off Bill Clinton's campaign debts, and Hillary
Clinton's law firm received an unknown sum in fees for representing a
Guaranty project that also failed.
Filegate
Hundreds of FBI background files on officials in previous Republican
presidential administrations were improperly given in 1993 and 1994 to
Craig Livingstone, the director of White House security who was a
Hillary Clinton favorite. No illegal activity was ever proven, and
Livingstone ultimately resigned.
Removing files from Vince Foster's office
Vince Foster was President Clinton's deputy White House counsel and
long-time friend of Hillary Clinton. He committed suicide in 1993, and
his body was found in a park just across the Potomac River from the
White House. Files were also allegedly removed from his White House
office before investigators were able to secure it as part of the
official probe into his death.
Lost Rose Law Firm billing records
Congressional and Justice Department investigators began issuing
subpoenas in 1994 for Hillary Clinton's billing records as a partner
in the Rose law firm at the center of the Whitewater scandal. She said
her role was incidental, but when the records mysteriously turned up
in the White House in 1996, they showed she met repeatedly with key
figures in the scandal.
Commerce Department's "pay to play" junkets
Seats on Commerce Department international trade missions were sold to
corporate figures in return for big contributions to President
Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, who
was reported to have opposed the scheme, died when one of the missions
crashed in Croatia, leading independent counsel Daniel Pearson to
leave his investigation unfinished.
Renting Lincoln Bedroom
More than 800 people stayed overnight in the Lincoln bedroom of the
White House during President Bill Clinton's tenure. At least $5.4
million in campaign contributions from many of those guests went into
Clinton's re-election effort. Among the paying guests were movie
producer Steven Spielberg, Dreamworks SKG head David Geffen and
long-time Hollywood powerhouse Lew Wasserman.
John Huang
A close associate of Indonesian industrialist James Riady, Huang
initially was appointed deputy secretary of commerce in 1993. By 1995,
however, he moved to the Democratic National Committee where he
generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal contributions
from foreign sources. Huang later pleaded guilty to one felony count
of campaign finance violations.
Charlie Trie
Like John Huang, Trie raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in
illegal contributions from foreign sources to Democratic campaign
entities. He was a regular White House visitor and arranged meetings
of foreign operators with Clinton, including one who was a Chinese
arms dealer. His $450,000 contribution to Clinton's legal defense fund
was returned after it was found to have been largely funded by Asian
interests. Trie was convicted of violating campaign finance laws in
1998.
Johnny Chung
Gave more than $366,000 to the Democratic National Committee prior to
the 1996 campaign, but it was returned after officials learned it came
from illegal foreign sources. Chung later told a special Senate
committee investigating 1996 Clinton campaign fund-raising that
$35,000 of his contributions came from individuals in Chinese
intelligence. Chung pleaded guilty to bank fraud, tax evasion and
campaign finance violations.
No controlling legal authority
Then-Vice President Al Gore repeated the phrase "there is no
controlling legal authority" at least seven times during a news
conference called to explain his multiple telephone calls from the
White House to solicit contributions to the Clinton-Gore re-election
campaign in 1996. In fact, the law was and remains clear that partisan
campaign contributions cannot be solicited on or using federal
property.
Monica Lewinsky and impeachment
President Clinton became only the second chief executive ever
impeached by the House of Representatives in 1998 after being found
guilty of obstructing justice and committing perjury in connection
with a grand jury investigation of his sexual relationship in the
White House with intern Monica Lewinsky. He remained in office,
however, after the Senate failed to convict him. When the news of the
Lewinsky scandal broke, Hillary famously blamed a "vast right-wing
conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day
he announced for president."
Pardongate
Shortly before leaving the Oval Office, Bill Clinton issued a number
of controversial pardons for controversial individuals represented by
lawyers with ties to the administration. The most controversial was
convicted tax evader Marc Rich who was pardoned after his former wife
made big contributions to the Clinton presidential library and to
Hillary Clinton's 2000 Senate campaign.
The Bosnia airport sniper lie
During her unsuccessful 2008 campaign for the Democratic presidential
campaign, Hillary Clinton claimed to have come under sniper fire
during her arrival as first lady at an airport in Bosnia in 1996. She
recanted her claim after CBS News broadcast video of the arrival that
demonstrated there was no sniper fire.
The email scandal
While serving as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, Hillary Clinton
used a private email account and a server located at her residence in
Chappaqua, N.Y., to conduct official government business. In a March
10, 2015, news conference at the United Nations, she said she did this
as a matter of personal "convenience" and that she deleted thousands
of emails she considered personal. Federal laws and regulations
require government employees to preserve personal emails that deal
with official business.
The Clinton Foundation
After leaving the White House in 2001, Bill Clinton established a
foundation in his name to raise funds for his presidential library. In
the years since, the foundation - now known as the "Bill, Hillary and
Chelsea Clinton Foundation" - has raised hundreds of millions of
dollars for worthy causes, with much of it coming from foreign
governments, corporations and individuals. Critics claim the
foundation is a tool for special interests to cultivate favorable
relationships with the former and possible future president.
Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and
prosecutes government corruption, today released its 2012 list of
Washington's "Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians." The list, in
alphabetical order, includes:
" Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL)
" Secretary of Energy Steven Chu
" Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and UN Ambassador Susan
Rice
" Attorney General Eric Holder
" Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL)
" Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ)
" President Barack Obama
" Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV)
" Rep. David Rivera (R-FL)
" Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2012/12/31/10-most-corrupt-politicians-of-2012/
*Hillary Clinton is perhaps the most corrupt Secretary of State in
American history. The Clinton Foundation was getting massive windfalls
from foreign governments and entities at the same time that Hillary
was doing favors for them.
* For Hillary Clinton to base her presidential campaign on "toppling
the 1%" is like her husband campaigning in favor of sexual abstinence.
Hillary is apparently basing her presidential hopes on the unlimited
gullibility of American voters.
* The real 1% issue is how the Federal Reserve has rigged the economic
game to crucify the middle class with zero interest rates. Folks who
relied on their savings have been devastated at the same time the
Federal Reserve artificially inflates stock values to benefit the
richest Americans.
* Instead of fixing this injustice, Hillary wants politicians to have
even more power to dictate who gets what. But Hillary's entire career
proves that politicians cannot be trusted with arbitrary power.
For as long as Hillary Clinton has been on the national scene, she has
left a path of destruction and wreckage in her wake that is both
impressive and terrible to behold. She is a testament to the extent
of damage that can be done by one person determined to conquer
everything before her in the quest for unlimited power and
self-gratification. The only prize left to her in American politics
is the presidency, which she has always felt is hers by right. Indeed,
she would have attained it were it not for the upstart community
organizer, a fellow admirer of Saul Alinsky, who spoke in volumes but
said nothing.
Before accompanying her husband to the White House as our first
co-president, Mrs. Clinton was working hard on becoming the person we
now know her to be. As with her husband, the goal has always been the
attainment of power masquerading as public service. Setting an
example for the Obamas to emulate, the Clintons put self-absorption
and personal victory before all else. The Clintons have always served
themselves, and nothing else.
Do you recall the slime that was Whitewater, in which the Clintons
dissembled and lied while their former business partners went to jail?
Do you remember Mrs. Clinton earning $100,000 in profit in 1979 on a
$1,000 investment over the course of only 9 months in volatile cattle
futures, about which she knew nothing, thanks to help from a highly
placed Tyson Foods connection? Tyson profited handsomely in Arkansas,
with state loans and appointments. We are to believe that Clinton
studied the Wall Street Journal to achieve a feat against which the
odds were one in 250 million. Do you recall the Rose Law Firm billing
records that magically appeared in Mrs. Clinton's White House office,
years after they had been subpoenaed? Or the death of Vince Foster
under rather extraordinary and inexplicable circumstances, and the
lies and cover-up that followed? Do you recall that while testifying
before congressional investigators as first lady, she answered "I
don't know" or "I don't remember" 250 times?
Do you recall Travelgate, in which the Clintons destroyed reputations
and careers to reward campaign donors? What about the endless parade
of women, long known to Mrs. Clinton and laughably passed off by her
as "ministering" to a troubled young woman in the matter of Miss
Lewinsky? Nevertheless, when the truth came out, she was entirely
happy to exploit the illusion of victimhood for her own martyrdom in
the cause of political advancement.
Wherever Mrs. Clinton goes, destruction follows. Of course, like the
current president, nothing is ever her fault. She knows nothing. She
is the innocent victim of all around her, endlessly bemoaning her fate
as the victim of a vast right-wing conspiracy that somehow has
directed the events of her life even before there was a vast
right-wing conspiracy.
Make no mistake: the Clintons, and Hillary Clinton in particular, hold
the American public in utter contempt, but especially so their own
supporters. How else to explain the countless frauds, crimes, and
lies they perpetrate upon their devotees, whose own intellectual
honesty is devalued to nothing by their loyalty? And how else besides
intellectual dishonesty to rationalize somehow being a Hillary Clinton
supporter?
As if Benghazi was not enough, and it should have been even with the
little that has come to light thus far, news broke this week about the
culture of pure corruption, decay, immorality, criminality, and
scandal that has been our Department of State under Mrs. Clinton. We
were regaled with liberal celebrations of the mythical "Greatest
Secretary of State" ever, while those paying attention could not
identify a single advancement in the image or policies of the United
States during her tenure. Certainly the blame for that does not fall
entirely upon her, given whose policies she was advocating, but she
still opted to be the person who advanced those destructive policies,
putting our country at risk and lowering its standing throughout the
world. This reality was recently driven home by the revelation that
the Clintons and President Obama struck a deal under which she
accepted the post of secretary of state in exchange for Obama's
support in 2016.
Regardless of the means, we are now being provided a window into what
actually occurred under Mrs. Clinton's stewardship. No doubt we will
once again be treated to a river of alibis. Like the president, we
will be asked by Mrs. Clinton's public relations mercenaries to
believe that the structure over which she presided was entirely
foreign to her, and that despite her zeal to take credit for any
exercise of power as head of that structure, any wrongdoing by those
carrying out her organizational mission statement is somehow not
attachable to her. Like the president, her good name has been
hijacked by those actively doing wrong under her very nose. Also like
the president, rampant wrongdoing and criminality occurring in her
very presence met with no censure whatsoever, which is becoming
increasingly difficult to reconcile with the real world in which the
rest of us live. Either she entirely failed morally as a leader
because she knew what was happening and ignored it (or worse, actively
participated in it), or she entirely failed in terms of competence for
not even being that pathetic.
For those paying attention, we are being treated to a preview of
coming attractions. Indeed, every day under President Obama is a
preview of the presidency of Hillary Clinton, if we are so reckless as
to accept her self-serving proposal of figurative marriage. Unlike
Mr. Obama, however, about whom we knew nothing before his rise, the
Hillary Clinton preview of coming attractions has been running on a
near-continuous loop for the better part of 30 years.
As the State Department scandal deepens, and as more people
potentially refuse to take the fall for the advancement of an utterly
corrupt politician, perhaps our knowledge of Mrs. Clinton will deepen
-- as if we really needed to know more to understand who and what she
is. We should be grateful as a nation for the gift of foresight. May
it finally enlighten those who so far have proved poor excuses for
sensible American citizens.