Saturday, May 30, 2015

Clinton.com - A "Model" Charity

Legal expert on whether donations to Clinton Foundation are bribes: 'If it quacks like a duck, chances are it's a duck' 
Two legal experts tell Breitbart News Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation could be in legal peril for violating United States statutes, as found in 18 U.S. Code § 201 – Bribery of public officials and witnesses.

When asked if the donations to the Clinton Foundation by defense contractors including Boeing (which subsequently received State Department approval of sales of their products to foreign governments) constituted a violation of domestic bribery statues, Law School Professor and Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) expert Michael Koehler tells Breitbart News, “I’ll answer that question by quoting a former law professor who was fond of saying ‘if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck chances are it is a duck'”

Former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Andy McCarthy thinks there’s enough evidence for the FBI and DOJ to launch an investigation into whether Hillary Clinton broke federal statutes that prohibit the bribery of public officials.

“There is certainly a reasonable basis for federal agents and prosecutors to investigate whether there was an understanding that Secretary Clinton would be influenced in the performance of her official duties by lavish donations to her family foundation, and, indeed, that the Clinton Foundation was operated as a racketeering enterprise,” McCarthy tells Breitbart News.

“This is the theory on which the Justice Department has proceeded in the prosecution of Senator Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) — in fact, the main difference between the two cases may be that the staggering sums of money that were poured into the Clinton Foundation by supplicants who benefited from Hillary Clinton’s stewardship of the State Department dwarf the amounts involved in the Menendez indictment,” McCarthy continues. . .
The sheer audacity of the Clinton's money laundering racket, combined with the unwillingness of the media to seriously question or investigate them is simply appalling. There's really no excuse possible.

For the Petra Nemcova part of today's story, I'm going with Ace's headline: A Tsunami of Graft: Bill Clinton Heroically Raised Money for the Tsunami Vicitms, By First Securing a $500,000 Payment For his "Charity"
If she can handle alligators
she can handle Bill
Motherf***ers.

There is a special place in hell for this clan of grifters.

Deborah Sontag reports:
To commemorate the 10th anniversary of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Petra Nemcova, a Czech model who survived the disaster by clinging to a palm tree, decided to pull out all the stops for the annual fund-raiser of her school-building charity, the Happy Hearts Fund.
Petra is one of many previous Rule 5 winners.
She booked Cipriani 42nd Street, which greeted guests with Bellini cocktails on silver trays. She flew in Sheryl Crow with her band and crew for a 20-minute set. She special-ordered heart-shaped floral centerpieces, heart-shaped chocolate parfaits, heart-shaped tiramisù and, because orange is the charity's color, an orange carpet rather than a red one. She imported a Swiss auctioneer and handed out orange rulers to serve as auction paddles, playfully threatening to use hers to spank the highest bidder for an Ibiza vacation.
The gala cost $363,413. But the real splurge? Bill Clinton.
The former president of the United States agreed to accept a lifetime achievement award at the June 2014 event after Ms. Nemcova offered a $500,000 contribution to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. The donation, made late last year after the foundation sent the charity an invoice, amounted to almost a quarter of the evening's net proceeds -- enough to build 10 preschools in Indonesia.
Or buy 4 years of Sid "Vicious" Blumenthal.
Happy Hearts' former executive director believes the transaction was a "quid pro quo," which rerouted donations intended for a small charity with the concrete mission of rebuilding schools after natural disasters to a large foundation with a broader agenda and a budget 100 times bigger.
"The Clinton Foundation had rejected the Happy Hearts Fund invitation more than once, until there was a thinly veiled solicitation and then the offer of an honorarium," said the former executive director, Sue Veres Royal, who held that position at the time of the gala and was dismissed a few weeks later amid conflicts over the gala and other issues.
Come on, Bill, have you no shame? Oh, that's right.
A longer digest at Business Insider-- which notes it is "extremely rare" for one charity to pay money to another so-called "charity."

It also notes the charity that was supposedly getting the benefit of Clinton's star power raised less money the year he got his "award" than it did the previous year. . .
Remember, the Clinton.com "charity arm" spends about 10% of it's income on good works, the remainder goes to Clinton lifestyle support (e.g. flying), and salaries for Clinton hacks to wage partisan warfare.

And contrary to what liberals might like to sell you, the issues with the Clinton.com are not problems with "America's broken campaign finance system": The Clintons’ cash is not part of a “broken political system”
Nicholas Kristof at the New York Times makes an important, impassioned plea for all of us to remember that the tens of millions of dollars that Bill and Hillary Clinton have been raking in recently is not some indication of a character flaw on their part. It’s only a symptom of the morally bankrupt, political swamp which can suck down even the best of folks.
The problem is not precisely the Clintons. It’s our entire disgraceful money-based political system… Most politicians are good people. Then they discover that money is the only fuel that makes the system work and sometimes step into the bog themselves.
. . . Jim was quick to point out the rather glaring flaw in this argument. It’s true that playing in the American Game of Thrones can be an expensive proposition, and when vast sums of money begin flowing, problems can and do follow. But that’s not the case with the Clintons because they weren’t collecting all that cash to fund an election.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Bill and Hillary weren’t hitting the$700,000-per-speech-in-Nigeria circuit because they want to self-finance her campaign – at least, as far as we know. Bill and Hillary don’t want that money as “fuel to make the system work.” (Jeff Jacoby calculates that the Clintons’ average speaking fee is nearly five times what the median US household earns per year.) They want their $30 million per year for themselves – although we know they don’t spend it on private jets, because the Clinton Foundation already pays for all of their travel expenses.
Hillary Clinton isn’t funding her presidential campaign with her own cash… at least that we know of yet. And why would she? First of all, her own team estimates that it’s going to cost a couple of billion to haul her scandal plagued baggage train back into the West Wing, and the Clintons aren’t sitting on that kind of money yet. (At least not as far as anyone can prove.) Their total stated worth wouldn’t get her through the primary season. Besides, there have been people lined up and waiting to throw campaign cash at Hillary since long before the words “considering a run” ever crossed her lips. Why risk your own money when you can run the table with donations from the faithful?
Pretty good deal, go to a party with a pretty young model, get half a million bucks donated to your charity, which goes to paying for your lifestyle, all tax free!

The Clintons are to campaign finance reform as Al Capone was to prohibition.

Wombat-socho checks in from his new home town with "Rule 5 Sunday: Welcome To Las Vegas."

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