[VIDEO] Heilemann: New Clinton Foundation Reports Worry Hillary Supporters

Bloomberg host John Heilemann said Friday that new revelations about the Clinton Foundation are causing concern among those close to Hillary Clinton, who thought controversy surrounding the political charity had finally subsided.

“This story coming back has a lot of people nervous, because it’s something a lot of folks who are around her thought was behind them, and now it’s back again,” Heilemann said.

ABC News reported Friday morning that Bill Clinton asked the State Department for approval to give lucrative speeches in two of the world’s poorest and most brutal regimes, Congo and North Korea.

The former president has made over $100 million from speeches since leaving office in 2001, sometimes from foreign government and business interests.

Some of his most lucrative speeches were delivered while Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state, a fact which has raised questions about whether organizations sought to influence State Department policy by paying the Clintons.

Heilemann noted that this intriguing discovery about Bill Clinton, and concurrent discoveries about Clinton aide Huma Abedin, were drawing attention away from Hillary Clinton’s burgeoning email scandal.

“For the past few weeks, the political world has been fixated on Hillary Clinton’s emails, but now two stories have changed the subject—and not in a good way,” Heilemann said.

Via: WFB

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Obama, Clinton Foundation Donors Sold ‘Green’ Fuel to Military for $149 per Gallon

San Francisco’s Solazyme also received millions in stimulus funds from DOE

The CEO and Board of Directors of Solazyme, a company the military paid $149 per gallon for “alternative” fuel, have donated more than $300,000 to Democratic candidates and committees, according to a Washington Free Beacon analysis.

Recipients of significant donations included the Obama Victory Fund and the Democratic National Committee. Additionally, Solazyme donated between $100,000 and $250,000 to the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

A Congressional Research Service (CRS) report found that the Department of Defense (DOD) paid Solazyme $149 per gallon for fuel made of algal oil, costing taxpayers a total of $223,500 in 2009. The group also received a $21 million stimulus grant from Department of Energy in 2009.

“Based in South San Francisco, Solazyme’s mission is to improve our lives and our planet by producing sustainable, high-performance oils and ingredients derived from microalgae,” the company states. Solazyme claims that their process serves as a better alternative to limited resources such as petroleum, vegetable oils, and animal fats.

Three members of Solazyme’s Board of Directors have donated hundreds of thousands to Dems, which include more than $50,000 in donations that benefited President Obama.

Solazyme’s co-founders, Jonathan Wolfson and Harrison Dillon, have together donated more than $7,000 to Democratic candidates and committees.

A member of Solazyme’s management team, Peter Licari, donated to both Republicans and Democrats before he was employed by Solazyme. Licari donated $16,000 to Republicans and more than $25,000 to Democrats while he was employed by Complete Healthcare Resources.

“Solazyme has been propelled over the years by an extraordinary group of people,” states Wolfson. “Our employees, customers, partners and investors have been and will continue to be our greatest resources.”

DOD has stated that one of its strategic energy goals is to expand its energy supply options by investing in alternative fuels such as the kind Solazyme produces. This type of renewable fuel comes at much higher cost than petroleum fuel.

From fiscal years 2007 to 2014, the DOD purchased 32 billion gallons of petroleum fuel for $107.2 billion, which comes to $3.35 per gallon. This means that Solazyme’s price per gallon was 44 times that of the average price of regular petroleum fuel.

Christine Travis, manager of corporate communications for Solazyme, said the $149 per gallon figure is “incorrect” and that the number is inflated due to research and development costs.

“The dollar amount you cited is incorrect because that total cost includes the R&D portion we performed at the request of the DOD that was part of the testing and certification program with the Department of Defense and the U.S. Navy,” said Travis.

Travis says that this month Solazyme announced they are supplying renewable fuel to UPS and that it has been a few years since they’ve worked with DOD on fuels.

However, she praised the Navy’s effort to increase their use of alternative fuels.

“We applaud the Navy for pursuing the bold goal of supplying its operations with 50 percent alternative fuels by 2020. Our dependence on oil from foreign nations—some of them hostile, some of them unstable—is one of the greatest threats to our security as a nation and to our allies overseas who rely on Persian Gulf oil and have no or insignificant indigenous petroleum resources of their own.”

In regards to co-founders and board of directors donating to Democrats, Travis said Solazyme has no policy on political contributions.

“Our company does not have a PAC, and our company does not have a policy on employee or board member political contributions,” Travis said. “Anyone in our company can support anyone they want.”

Via: WFB

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Clinton Foundation Donor Wants His $1.5M Back In Sex Abuse Case

Attorneys representing Clinton Foundation donor and Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss are seeking his pound of flesh from Jacqueline Long, a woman who has publicly accused him of sexual abuse.

The high-profile Democratic donor’s attorneys filed a petition Aug. 4 seeking “harsh sanctions” against the Colorado woman following a June 8 The Daily Caller News Foundation article that reported her allegations. They claim Long violated the confidentiality provision of a $1.5 million settlement agreement the two signed in May 2013.

The Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia has scheduled a hearing this morning to determine the next step in the long-running saga.

The latest chapter began last December when Wyss gave a $5 million commitment to the Clinton Foundation’s No Ceilings project to help women and girls, an effort personally championed by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

At the time, no one knew that Wyss had executed a $1.5 million settlement, in part over Long’s allegations he had sexually abused her.

Wyss’ attorneys asked the Philadelphia court to order Long to reimburse him for the $1.5 million he paid in the settlement, as well $68,000 in attorney fees, and a daily fine of $200 until payment is completed. Wyss also asked the court to imprison Long if she fails pay in full within 30 days.

Neither Wyss nor his lawyers have publicly denied Long’s abuse charges. Wyss attorney Carolyn Short merely described Long as a “disgruntled employee.”

Long was an employee of his HJW Foundation and his California vineyard. Her attorney alleged a week before the 2013 settlement that the case was about “personal physical injuries and physical sickness she suffered literally at the hands of Mr. Wyss.”

Via: Daily Caller

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Planned Parenthood Received Millions of Dollars After Lobbying Clinton’s State Department

Planned Parenthood lobbied the Department of State many times during Hillary Clinton’s tenure there and received tens of millions of dollars from foreign policy agencies over the past few years, according to a new report.

As secretary of state, Clinton attacked the Mexico City Policy, which bans federal funding of abortion overseas. Her husband revoked the policy during his administration and President Obama lifted the ban upon taking office in 2009. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which is tied to the State Department, steered more than $100 million in funding to Planned Parenthood, its international affiliates, and the pro-abortion Population Council between 2010 and 2012, according to the Government Accountability Office—about 20 percent of the nearly $500 million pro-abortion organizations received from taxpayers during that time frame.

The taxpayer dollars that Planned Parenthood received dwarfed the $3.4 million that Planned Parenthood spent on lobbying during President Obama’s first term, according to a report from Women Speak Out PAC, a partner of the Susan B. Anthony List, and American Rising. Government records document more than 30 instances of Planned Parenthood lobbying federal agencies, including the State Department while Clinton was serving there.

Congress is now considering bills to deny taxpayer funds to the nation’s largest abortion provider after undercover video surfaced from the non-profit Center for Medical Progress showing Planned Parenthood officials casually discussing the harvesting of fetal organs and the price of body parts. The group released a fourth video Thursday showing executives at Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains carving up aborted babies while saying “it’s a baby” and “another boy.” The executive identified as Savita Ginde also tells the undercover videographers, who posed as prospective organ buyers, how Planned Parenthood justifies the sale of those organs.

“In public I think it makes a lot more sense for it to be in the research vein than, I’d say, a business venture,” she said. Planned Parenthood has responded to the scandal of the videos by claiming the fetal body parts are used for research on numerous occasions.

Clinton is the top recipient of campaign donations from workers at the nation’s largest abortion provider, including a $2,700 donation from the CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, Vicki Cowart. The nearly $10,000 she received from Planned Parenthood employees and executives is about 20 times more than the rest of the presidential field combined.

Neither the Clinton campaign nor the Clinton Foundation responded to requests for comment.

Pro-life activists, including Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of SBA List, have criticized Clinton’s support for abortion and Planned Parenthood throughout her political career.

“For more than two decades, her cozy relationship with Planned Parenthood was a source of cash and powerful political support. In light of yet another video brutally detailing the reality of abortion and harvesting of baby organs, it is a massive liability,” she said.

The Clinton campaign has drawn heavily from pro-abortion professionals. One of its top officials in Iowa, the nation’s first primary state, is Lily Adams, daughter of Planned Parenthood’s president, Cecile Richards. Jane Emerson, the women’s outreach director of Clinton’s failed 2008 campaign, previously served as CEO of the abortion provider’s South Carolina operations.

Planned Parenthood has also partnered with Clinton’s controversial family foundation, helping with six projects under the Clinton Global Initiative umbrella. The Clinton Foundation did not respond to a request for comment.

Clinton, a recipient of the Margaret Sanger Award, initially defended the billion dollar organization when the Center for Medical Progress released several hours of undercover video showing Planned Parenthood officials casually discussing the harvesting of fetal organs and the price of body parts. Those videos captured numerous officials and medical personnel discussing the various techniques that the abortionist employees to recover intact body parts, which would violate federal law. Three congressional committees are now investigating Planned Parenthood over these violations.

Clinton has since backed away from outright support of the organization. After a third video was released Tuesday showing a former organ retrieval technician discuss how clinics financially benefit from the practice, Clinton told the New Hampshire Union Leader that she found the imagery “disturbing.”

“I have seen pictures from them and obviously find them disturbing,” she said. “This raises not questions about Planned Parenthood so much as it raises questions about the whole process, that is, not just involving Planned Parenthood, but many institutions in our country … If there’s going to be any kind of congressional inquiry, it should look at everything and not just one [organization].”

Dannenfelser said that Clinton’s tepid support for the investigation was smart politics as voters react to the video scandal.

“Hillary Clinton, like many Democrats have painted themselves into a corner by supporting abortion on-demand, up until the moment of birth, paid for by taxpayer dollars. The more Americans learn the truth about this extreme position, the more they will reject it,” she said.

Via: WFB

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Swiss bank's donations to Clinton Foundation increased after Hillary intervention in IRS dispute

Donations to the Clinton Foundation by Swiss bank UBS increased tenfold after Hillary Clinton intervened to settle a dispute with the IRS early in her tenure as secretary of state, according to a published report.

According to the Wall Street Journal, total donations by UBS to the foundation grew from less than $60,000 at the end of 2008 to approximately $600,000 by the end of 2014. The Journal reports that the bank also lent $32 million through entrepreneurship and inner-city loan programs it launched in association with the foundation, while paying former President Bill Clinton $1.5 million to participate in a series of corporate question-and-answer sessions with UBS Chief Executive Bob McCann.

Though there is no evidence of wrongdoing, ties between the Clinton Foundation, major corporations and foreign governments have come under increasing scrutiny as Hillary Clinton begins her presidential campaign. The UBS case is unusual in that it shows a top U.S. diplomat intervening on behalf of a major overseas bank in a situation where federal prosecutors and the Justice Department had been the lead entity. 

Clinton's campaign acknowledged to Fox News that she did intervene, but maintained that was only because the Swiss -- at the ministerial level -- raised this issue with the secretary of state. 

"Secretary Clinton is proud of her time at the State Department, and about the work she did and the decisions she made for the betterment of our security and our prosperity," campaign spokesman Nick Merrill said. "Any suggestion that she was driven by anything but what's in America's best interest would be false. Period." 

UBS' legal battles with the U.S. government date from 2007, when a whistleblower told the Justice Department that UBS had helped thousands of Americans open secret accounts to avoid U.S. taxes. In 2009, the bank paid a $780 million fine and turned over the names of 250 account holders to U.S. authorities as part of a deferred-prosecution agreement. 

However, that same year, the IRS requested that UBS turn over the names of U.S. citizens who owned 52,000 secret accounts worth an estimated $18 billion. The bank maintained that doing so would be a violation of Swiss privacy laws. The Journal reports that UBS enlisted the Swiss government to settle the matter. Clinton, recently sworn in as secretary of state, first met with her Swiss counterpart, Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey, in March of 2009. 

Over the next three months, the Journal reports, the U.S. and Switzerland engaged in a series of complex negotiations. Citing diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks as well as people involved in the case, the Journal reports that the U.S. pressed Switzerland to work for the release of American journalist Roxana Saberi, who was being held by Iran. Another issue Clinton brought up was alleged violations of international sanctions by a Swiss energy-consulting company thought to be providing civilian nuclear technology to Iran. The Swiss embassy represented U.S. interests in Iran, which has not had formal diplomatic relations with Washington since 1979. 

After Saberi's release that May, the shutting down of the Swiss energy company's Iran operations that July, and the expressed willingness the Swiss government to accept some low-level detainees from Guantanamo Bay, the Journal reports settlement talks intensified. 

Under the terms of the deal, which was announced by Clinton and Calmy-Rey July 31, UBS would turn over information about 4,450 account-holders, a fraction of the 52,000 sought by the IRS.

The deal was criticized by members of Clinton's own party in Congress. Then-Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich. called the agreement "disappointing." 

In recent weeks, Clinton's corporate ties have been harped on by Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has made some gains on her in polls of early-voting states. 

Via: Fox News

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[COMMENTARY] Is Obama taking Hillary out? by Monica Crowley

Illustration on Obama’s designs to undermine Hillary Clinton’s candidacy by Linas Garsys/The Washington Times 

Clinton is not going to be the Democratic nominee for president.

Yes, the conventional wisdom is that she is still the prohibitive favorite, armed with big money, big connections, and the Big Dog, Bill.

But the so-called “wisdom” is “conventional” for a reason.

As a result of endless sordid scandals and predictably Clintonian evasions, her poll numbers on everything from favorability to trustworthiness are in a nosedive. A battery of new polls in key swing states such as Colorado and Iowa show her losing to a number of GOP challengers.

She’s also taking incoming from the left, particularly from Vermont senator and socialist Bernie Sanders, who is scoring major crowds and an increasing percentage of the Democratic vote, indicating that the leftist base sees him as a viable option and not merely a vehicle to register discontent with Mrs. Clinton.

Polls this early in the cycle can be unreliable. But they do indicate a significant downward trend for her that must have her campaign at DEFCON 3.

None of this, however, is her most serious problem. Instead, it’s something much closer to home, much more insidious, much more dangerous than anything else.

It’s President Obama. And he just made his move.

Here’s how it’s likely going down:

The Clintons and the Obamas have a long history of bad blood, dating to the 2008 primary race. After Mr. Obama creamed her, he offered her the plum gig of secretary of state. Friends close, enemies closer. She tried to get her dirty tricks consigliere, Sidney Blumenthal, a top position in the State Department, which Mr. Obama pointedly denied. So she hired him anyway through the Clinton Foundation.

Through Mr. Blumenthal, she was fed all kinds of intelligence on global hotpots such as Libya, much of it inaccurate, as she circumvented traditional government communication chains via her private email server. What was she hiding from Mr. Obama? And why? Perhaps because she trusted Mr. Obama about as much as she trusted Bill.

Mr. Obama didn’t trust her, either. In a recently disclosed email, Mrs. Clinton complained that she heard “on the radio” that there was a “Cabinet meeting” that morning and wondered if she could attend. The secretary of state — fourth in line to the presidency — was frozen out, so she set up her own fiefdom.

Mr. Obama needs a successor whom he can control to ensure that the “fundamental transformation of the nation” continues. He cannot control either of the Clintons. In a revealing “tell” this week, he said, “In 18 months, I’m turning over the keys. I want to make sure I’m turning over the keys to somebody who is serious about the serious problems that the country faces and the world faces.”

He will therefore back the one person he knows will do his bidding: his vice president, Joe Biden, whom he summons to his side for every critical photo op, including the announcement of the Iran deal. There’s more going on there than just symbolism.

So here’s the likely plan: Mr. Biden will announce that he is running for president (the reported dying wish of his late son, Beau). After a respectable amount of time, Mr. Obama will announce that while he admires all of the Democratic candidates, Mr. Biden has earned his particular loyalty.

Via: Washington Times

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MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD SKELETONS REMAIN IN HILLARY CLINTON’S CLOSET

No sooner had Hillary Clinton announced the start of her U.S. presidential campaign than several skeletons popped out of her closet.

The Clinton Foundation skeleton, at worst, gave foreign contributors a “pay to play” influence at the U.S. State Department, or, at best, the appearance of such. If the former, the Clintons have taken Harry Truman’s motto, “the buck stops here,” to mean millions of them.

Another skeleton is Hillary’s unauthorized use of a private email server along with her erasure of those communications while announcing her candidacy.

A third skeleton, Benghazi, is being examined by Chairman 

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC)

85%

 of the House Select Committee which is investigating the matter.

These three skeletons demand, and are receiving, close scrutiny. However, a fourth and much more damning skeleton—Hillary’s Muslim Brotherhood connection—still escapes scrutiny. Interestingly, in connection with the Benghazi investigation, three Hillary aides have been subpoenaed by Gowdy to produce emails. The one who has yet to do so completely is the one with the closest ties to the Brotherhood—Huma Abedin.

The subpoena stems from Gowdy’s efforts to track what communications were made by Hillary and her staff concerning Ambassador Chris Stevens movements prior to the Benghazi attack. Of interest also will be why efforts were undertaken after the attack to minimize involvement by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Some background about the Brotherhood is needed to understand its driving force and why, under Hillary’s leadership as Secretary of State, a decision would have been made to embrace an organization determined to eliminate America and her allies.

Because our Middle East allies understand this background, they have outlawed the group.

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928 as a Sunni Islamist religious, political and social movement. Founder Hassan al-Banna’s fundamental goal was Islam’s global domination. That effort quickly turned violent. As its influence grew, its tentacles spread to 80 other nations, laying the groundwork for an envisioned global caliphate.

An early influential Brotherhood member, Sayyid Qutb, wrote of the need to cleanse the world of Western influence by imposing sharia. Years later, his work became Osama bin Laden’s and Ayman al-Zawahri’s “bible.” But, feeling the Brotherhood was not moving fast enough to achieve global Islam, they created an offshoot group—al-Qaeda—to quicken the pace.

At various times, as the Brotherhood gained influence causing domestic instability, nations cracked down on it. To survive, it renounced violence—birthing numerous splinter groups to do its violent bidding.

In 1981, one such group assassinated a Middle East peace apostle—Egyptian President Anwar Sadat—for his peace treaty with Israel. Hamas was another terrorist splinter group.

Viewing America as an obstacle to Islam’s global dominance, the Brotherhood—to this day—seeks to destroy America, informing followers to be “patient” as it so plots to do so.

In the 1990s, Brotherhood leaders mapped out a secret war plan to accomplish this—one discovered completely by accident in 2004. Despite this discovery and our knowledge about what is in the plan (such as using Muslim Brotherhood front companies within the U.S. and making claims of Islamophobia whenever Islam is criticized), the Brotherhood openly continues implementing that plan today. Meanwhile, under Obama’s tutelage, the federal agencies responsible for protecting us from such a threat fail to do so.

Just like Osama bin Laden’s 1997 declaration of war against America received little media attention, so too did the Brotherhood’s 2010 war declaration against America by its Supreme Guide, Muhammad Badi.

Badi called for jihad against “the Muslim’s real enemies, not only Israel but also the United States. Waging jihad against both of these infidels is a commandment of Allah that cannot be disregarded.”

The Brotherhood’s long running anti-American platform properly inhibited U.S. recognition of the group. But, incredibly, under the Obama/Clinton team, that changed overnight.

Failing to support our long-time ally, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Obama welcomed the Brotherhood with open arms in June 2011—without even demanding it withdraw its war declaration or otherwise renounce its anti-American platform.

The skeleton in Hillary’s closet now in need of close scrutiny is how the Muslim Brotherhood instantly converted—in the Administration’s eyes but not those of the Brotherhood itself—from foe to friend.

Of note in all this is that the family of Hillary’s now longest serving assistant, Huma Abedin, has enjoyed an intensely close relationship with the Brotherhood for decades. Her father, Zyed Abedin, served as editor of an anti-Semitic journal funded by an Islamist; her mother, Saleha Mahmood Abedin, replaced him as editor in 1993 when he died. As editor, Saleha has promoted the Muslim Brotherhood (she is a member of its female division), violent jihad and the “right” of women to be repressed under sharia.

Via: Breitbart

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Report: Clinton Brother Promised Political Favors For Cash, Did Not Deliver

After the earthquakes that rocked Haiti in 2010 left hundreds of thousands of people homeless, Bill Clinton’s half-brother promised a Houston businessman he could help land contracts to rebuild.

Roger Clinton took $100,000 from the man on the promise that influence from his brother could get him a contract through the Clinton Foundation for a project building new houses, The New York Times reports.

The Houston builder, Wayne Coleman, proposed to build cheap, concrete homes for the Haitians who lost theirs in the disaster, and paid Clinton $5,000 per month to make sure he could do that.

The plan didn’t pan out, though, as Coleman told the Times, Bill Clinton took a tour of his demonstration home, but in the end chose to go with a different company.

According to Coleman, Roger Clinton’s lawyer, Walter Wiggins Jr., got involved in the deal to lend some credibility to the whole situation, but it didn’t help.

“He was basically trying to help Roger, because Roger was kind of a screwball, you could never pin him down on anything,” Coleman told the Times. “I probably lost about half a million dollars over all on the whole thing.”

Roger Clinton wasn’t the only member of the Clinton extended family, trying to profit off the disaster in Haiti, though.

Tony Rodham, brother of Hillary Rodham Clinton, sat on the board of one of just two mining companies given permits to dig for gold in the country.

In 2012, while Clinton worked as U.S. Secretary of State, the small North Carolina company, VCS Mining, received a “gold exploitation permit” from the Haitian government, the first issued in over 50 years.

The project in Haiti is the only project listed on the VCS Mining website.

Via: Daily Caller

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Head of Clinton Foundation: The Clintons are paranoid loonies

Clinton Foundation head Donna Shalala** privately expressed concerns about Bill and Hillary Clinton’s mental state in the mid-1990s, saying they had become “paranoid” and fixated on “right-wing conspiracies,” according to previously unpublished audio recordings obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

In 1994, four years before Hillary Clinton said a “vast right-wing conspiracy” was trying to take down her husband’s presidency, top aide Shalala said this theory was already embraced by the Clintons.

“They’ve become paranoid. Paranoia. Thinking people are out to get them, this right-wing conspiracy stuff,” said Shalala, who was the head of Health and Human Services during the August 1994 interview.

This isn’t new to anyone who has watched the Clintons. In addition to being grifters with no sense of propriety, they are clinically diagnosable as paranoids under DSM-5. What makes this newsworthy is that everyone knows this, even their cronies, but no one in the press has reported on it until now.

“[The Clintons are] feeling sorry for themselves. They talk about [conspiracies] all the time,” said Shalala. “That there really is a conspiracy out there to get us. That we don’t have a chance, people don’t understand how much good we’ve done. Our message isn’t getting across because these people are beating us up.”

Shalala said documents about supposed right-wing conspiracies were also being distributed to White House staffers.

“There is a feeling in the White House, and I don’t know whether it’s [James] Carville or [Paul] Begala or who’s giving them the materials,” said Shalala. “But sitting on the desks of their staff there’s these materials on this right-wing conspiracy.”

Rather than abating since they made their Clampett-esque exit from the White House, literally taking the furniture with them, the feelings of persecution seem to have metastasized– at least in regards to Hillary. Bill was confident enough to party with a pedophile. Her use of a private email server and having a handler follow a reporter into the bathroom are great examples of the ongoing paranoia. It also explains Hillary avoiding press questions and unscripted encounters with voters.

**Full disclosure. I have seen Donna Shalala in a tennis skirt (Montrose Park tennis courts, Washington, DC) and survived with only 20% of my body turned to stone, minor loss of sight in my left eye, and a permanent gag reflex at the sight of small curd cottage cheese.

Via: Red State

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WHISTLEBLOWER: Senior State Department Officials Under Hillary Clinton Quashed Investigations into Alleged Misconduct

AP

The Washington Examiner has followed up on a previous report exposing the Clinton State Department’s efforts to cover up alleged misconduct with new details about some of the “most egregious” examples of investigations thwarted by agency staff, and the frustration felt by investigators:

The eight cases mentioned in the memo included an incident in which at least five members of Clinton’s security detail allegedly solicited prostitutes in a number of countries while on official travel, including on trips to Russia and Colombia. A diplomatic security guard was permitted to continue overseeing Clinton’s security operations at a Moscow hotel after allegedly soliciting prostitutes “despite obvious counterintelligence questions,” the memo said.

A top official in the bureau of diplomatic security “reportedly told [an investigator] to shut down the four investigations” into the accused security guards, three of whom received one-day suspensions before being transferred to other assignments.

Another case involved a regional security officer in Lebanon who was alleged to have sexually assaulted local embassy staff, and who had a “long history of misconduct allegations” at his other posting in North Africa and the Middle East. Officials looking into the matter were given just three days to investigate, after a State Department official described the inquiry as a “witch hunt.” An inspector general’s report published in 2014 noted that investigators “encountered resistance” from senior State Department officials, who exhibited “undue influence and favoritism” in the case.

Perhaps the most egregious of the episodes involved “an ambassador in Belgium” who in May 2011 was accused of “ditch[ing] his protective security detail in order to solicit sexual favors from both prostitutes and minor children,” according to an inspector general’s memo. A subsequent review found

a number of flaws in the subsequent probe of the Belgian ambassador.

“[Diplomatic security] assigned an agent from its internal investigations unit to conduct a preliminary inquiry. However, two days later, the agent was directed to stop further inquiry because of a decision by senior department officials to treat the matter as a ‘management issue,’” the Linick report said.

“The ambassador was recalled to Washington and, in June 2011, met with the undersecretary of state for management and the then chief of staff and counselor to the secretary of state. At the meeting, the ambassador denied the allegations and was then permitted to return to post,” the report continued. “The department took no further action affecting the ambassador.”

Patrick Kennedy, the State Department’s undersecretary for management, told the inspector general’s office that he declined to pursue the Belgian matter further because “solicitation of a prostitute … was not a crime in the host country.”

Before becoming Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton successfully defended a child rapist she (most likely) believed to be guilty.

Via: WFB

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[FLASHBACK] Highlights From the New York Times’ 2008 Hillary Clinton Endorsement

AP

In June 2007, just as the Democratic presidential primary was heating up, Bill and Hillary Clinton wrote a $100,000 check to a New York Times charity group. In January 2008, the Times editorial board endorsed Hillary over her much trendier rival, Barack Obama. The endorsement makes for an intriguing read in retrospect. Here are some highlights:

Fawning praise

The Times editor clearly had a difficult time choosing between the “brilliant” Hillary Clinton and the “incandescent” Barack Obama. Ultimately, it seems, it was Hillary’s “abiding, powerful intellect” that won the day. “We are hugely impressed by the depth of her knowledge, by the force of her intellect and by the breadth of, yes, her experience,” the editors wrote.

‘Firstness’ fatigue

The Times was definitely excited to have a choice between two historic candidates, but was getting tired of hearing about it all the time:

By choosing Mrs. Clinton, we are not denying Mr. Obama’s appeal or his gifts. The idea of the first African-American nominee of a major party also is exhilarating, and so is the prospect of the first woman nominee. “Firstness” is not a reason to choose. The times that false choice has been raised, more often by Mrs. Clinton, have tarnished the campaign.

No doubt the Times will maintain its intellectual consistency on the issue of “firstness” throughout the 2016 campaign.

If you like your plan, you can keep it

On the issue of healthcare, the Times favored Hillary because “She understands that all Americans must be covered—but must be allowed to choose their coverage, including keeping their current plans.”

Oops.

Obama’s naivety re: Iraq

Despite Hillary Clinton’s more hawkish voting record, the Times argued she was better equipped to handle the situation in Iraq. Obama, the Times presciently observed, most likely had not thought through his plans for Iraq beyond “end the war,” which could lead to disastrous consequences:

Mrs. Clinton seems not only more aware than Mr. Obama of the consequences of withdrawal, but is already thinking through the diplomatic and military steps that will be required to contain Iraq’s chaos after American troops leave.

Via: WFB

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