The Cold Clinton Reality - Why isn't the IRS investigating the Clinton Foundation?

[Ubiquitous]

Hillary and Bill Clinton are asking for a third term in the White
House, and voters who want to know what this portends should examine
the 12-page memo written by a Clinton insider that was hacked and
published Wednesday by WikiLeaks. This is the cold, hard reality of
the Clinton political-business model.

Longtime Clinton aide Doug Band wrote the memo in 2011 to justify
himself to lawyers at Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett who were reviewing
his role and conducting a governance review of the Clinton
Foundation at the insistence of Chelsea Clinton. In an email two
weeks earlier, also published on WikiLeaks, Ms. Clinton said her
father had been told that Mr. Band’s firm Teneo was “hustling”
business at the Clinton Global Initiative, a regular gathering of
the wealthy and powerful that is ostensibly about charitable
activity.



.
Poor innocent Chelsea. Bill and Hillary must never have told her
what business they’re in. If she had known, she would never have
hired a blue-chip law firm to sweep through the hallways of the
Clinton Foundation searching for conflicts of interest. Instead of
questioning Mr. Band’s compensation, she would have pleaded with him
never to reveal the particulars of his job in writing.


But she didn’t, and so Mr. Band went ahead and described the
“unorthodox nature” of his work while emphasizing his determination
to help “protect the 501(c)3 status of the Foundation.” That’s the
part of the tax code that has allowed the Clinton Foundation to
remain tax-exempt on the premise that it is dedicated to serving
humanity.

Mr. Band graciously copied John Podesta, then adviser to the board,
who would eventually become Hillary’s campaign chief. His helpful
reply was to suggest that Mr. Band “strip the defensive stuff out”
and later “go through the details and how they have helped WJC” [
William Jefferson Clinton].

The Band memo reveals exactly what critics of the Clintons have
long said: They make little distinction between the private and
public aspects of their lives, between the pursuit of personal
enrichment, the operation of a nonprofit, and participation in U.S.
politics.

Mr. Band writes that he and his colleague Justin Cooper “have, for
the past ten years, served as the primary contact and point of
management for President Clinton’s activities—which span from
political activity (e.g., campaigning on behalf of candidates for
elected office), to business activity (e.g., providing advisory
services to business entities with which he has a consulting
arrangement), to Foundation activity.”

This excerpt and all the potential conflicts it describes, plus
Chelsea’s warning about business “hustling” at foundation events,
would seem more than ample cause to trigger an IRS audit of the
foundation. For that matter, why aren’t the IRS and prosecutors
already on the case? Any normal foundation has to keep records to
show it is separating its nonprofit activity from any for-profit
business.

Mr. Band’s memo confirms that donors were not seeking merely to help
the sick and the poor. He explains that the Clinton Foundation had
“engaged an array of fundraising consultants” over the past decade
but “these engagements have not resulted in significant new dollars
for the Foundation.” In other words, it wasn’t working as a
conventional charity.




Mr. Band then explains how he and his Teneo partner Declan Kelly
had to carry the fundraising load, and did so by packaging
foundation solicitations with other services such as a meeting with
Bill Clinton, $450,000 speeches or strategic advice. Many of the
donations, from U.S. companies like Coca-Cola and Dow Chemical and
foreign firms like UBS and Barclays, occurred while Hillary
Clinton was Secretary of State.

Why exactly were donors writing checks? The Band memo makes clear
that donations untied to additional Clinton or Teneo services
weren’t all that appealing to potential supporters. This is
significant, because the large grant-making foundations in the U.S.
are almost entirely run by Clinton voters. So you know they weren’t
turned off by the brand name. They’d contribute more if they thought
they were also buying goodwill and influence with a current
Secretary of State and a potential future President.

***

We don’t applaud WikiLeaks or the theft of information, and these
hacks deserve a firm U.S. government response. But the emails are
public and they will confirm for many Americans their worst
suspicions about the people who run their government.

It’s also worth noting that in the vast digital trove of Mr.
Podesta’s stolen emails we haven’t noticed emails from Mrs. Clinton.
Perhaps they don’t exist. But American voters shouldn’t worry merely
about the emails released before the election. What emails or memos
exist that these hackers, Russian or not, could be withholding for
leverage after the election with another President Clinton?

The Clinton campaign has suggested that Donald Trump has praised
Vladimir Putin because the Russian has something on the Republican.
The question is what do any number of possible bad actors know about
Bill and Hillary Clinton’s mixing of business, charity and politics?


--
Four-star General Cartwright will serve 5 years in prison for lying
once to the FBI over classified material. Apparently, he was not a
Democrat.