2016

Hillary Advisor's Foreign Influence-Hustling Fits Long Pattern Of Corruption




White House aide Sindey Blumenthal testifies in a 1999 deposition before a grand jury in Washington. AO View Enlarged Image

Sleaze: So Hillary confidante Sid Blumenthal tried to cash in on post-war Libyan spoils while advising the then-secretary of state on Libyan policy. Such foreign influence-peddling is nothing new for the Clintons. It dates back to the '90s.

The New York Times reports that Blumenthal, who previously worked in the White House as chief attack dog for the Clintons, fed some two dozen "intelligence" memos on Libya to Hillary in 2011 and 2012, even though he didn't work at State. She, in turn, circulated them among top diplomats in Libya, including the ambassador, Chris Stevens, who was killed in the 2012 Benghazi attacks.

The memos had little to do with diplomacy and almost everything to do with steering U.S. and Libyan policy in favor of lucrative reconstruction projects proposed by Blumenthal's New York employer, Constellations Group. The projects required State Department permits as well as local OKs.

Blumenthal's back-channel lobbying, which Hillary supported in staff emails, was conducted while he worked for Hillary's family charity, the Clinton Foundation. It adds to pay-to-play revelations already reported by Peter Schweizer in his book "Clinton Cash."

Schweizer documents how several foreign entities who made payments to the foundation, and to Bill Clinton through exorbitant speaking fees, received in return favors from Hillary's State Department.

The author describes "a pattern of financial transactions involving the Clintons that occurred contemporaneously with favorable U.S. policy decisions benefiting those providing the funds," including donors who got help brokering deals in Colombia, Haiti and Canada.

But this pay-to-play pattern started long before the Clintons cashed in on Hillary's diplomatic power.

During the '90s, the Clintons turned the White House and much of the executive branch into a giant yard sale, selling for campaign cash everything from sleepovers in the Lincoln Bedroom to seats on foreign trade junkets to exports of classified missile technology to China.

A parade of foreign influence hustlers gaining easy access and warm receptions in the West Wing included:

• James Riady and John Huang, who pleaded guilty to making millions of dollars in illegal campaign donations to Bill Clinton's presidential campaigns in '92 and '96, which were followed by favorable trade deals for their Jakarta-based Lippo Group, as well as White House meetings between Indonesian strongman and human-rights abuser Suharto and President Clinton.

• Loral Space & Communications CEO Bernie Schwartz — another big Clinton donor — who got Clinton to sign a waiver letting Loral use Chinese rockets to launch U.S. satellites, a deal that transferred secret missile technology to Beijing and helped it improve the accuracy of ICBMs aimed at our West Coast.

• Convicted Clinton donor Johnny Chung, another Chinese bagman, made more than 50 White House visits. They included a 1995 trip in which he handed Hillary's chief of staff, Maggie Williams, a check for $50,000 in her office, a violation of fundraising laws.

The Clintons never stopped using public office to line their pockets. The pattern goes on, and it should disqualify them from returning to the White House.


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