Charity Watchdog: Clinton Foundation A ‘Slush Fund’

Charity Watchdog: Clinton Foundation A ‘Slush Fund’

Published April 26, 2015

Facebook0 Twitter55 livefyre2006 Email Print



http://nation.foxnews.com/sites/nati...ation-ap_2.jpgreuters


By Isabel Vincent, NY Post
The Clinton Foundation’s finances are so messy that the nation’s most influential charity watchdog put it on its “watch list” of problematic nonprofits last month.

The Clinton family’s mega-charity took in more than $140 million in grants and pledges in 2013 but spent just $9 million on direct aid.

The group spent the bulk of its windfall on administration, travel, and salaries and bonuses, with the fattest payouts going to family friends.

On its 2013 tax forms, the most recent available, the foundation claimed it spent $30 million on payroll and employee benefits; $8.7 million in rent and office expenses; $9.2 million on “conferences, conventions and meetings”; $8 million on fund-raising; and nearly $8.5 million on travel. None of the Clintons are on the payroll, but they do enjoy first-class flights paid for by the Foundation.

In all, the group reported $84.6 million in “functional expenses” on its 2013 tax return and had more than $64 million left over — money the organization has said represents pledges rather than actual cash on hand.

Some of the tens of millions in administrative costs finance more than 2,000 employees, including aid workers and health professionals around the world.

But that’s still far below the 75 percent rate of spending that nonprofit experts say a good charity should spend on its mission.

http://nation.foxnews.com/2015/04/26...ion-slush-fund

How foreign cash made Bill and Hillary ‘filthy rich’

By Bob Fredericks

April 20, 2015 | 10:48pm

https://thenypost.files.wordpress.co...0&h=480&crop=1

Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton

Hillary Rodham Clinton used her clout as secretary of state to do favors for foreign donors who gave millions to her family foundation — and who paid millions more to her husband, Bill, in speaking fees, a new book charges.Records show that of the $105 million the former president raked in from speeches over 12 years, about half came during his wife’s four-year tenure at the State Department.

The claims in “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich” come just a week after she launched her presidential campaign.

They raise questions about shady foreign money flowing into the Clinton Foundation — and what actions Hillary took in her official capacity in exchange for the cash.

“During Hillary’s years of public service, the Clintons have conducted or facilitated hundreds of large transactions,” writes author Peter Schweizer, according to The New York Times, which first reported the story.

“Some of these transactions have put millions in their own pockets.”

Schweizer — a former speech-writing consultant for President George W. Bush — said he found a clear “pattern of financial transactions involving the Clintons that occurred contemporaneous with favorable US policy decisions benefiting those providing the funds.”

https://thenypost.files.wordpress.co...0&h=346&crop=1

One example of an alleged quid pro quo cited by the Times and other sources involved the State Department’s backing of a free-trade agreement with Colombia that benefited a company founded by a big donor to the Clinton Foundation.

Hillary opposed the trade deal when running for president in 2008 because of the South American country’s poor record on workers’ rights.

But then the company, Canadian-based Pacific Rubiales, and its founder, Clinton Foundation board member Frank Giustra, donated “millions” to the foundation, The International Business Timesreported.

In 2010, the State Department under Hillary lauded Colombia’s human rights record, allowing Giustra’s company to reap huge profits.
The book also examines lucrative development contracts awarded to foundation donors following the devastating Haitian earthquake in 2010. And it reports that Hillary’s brother, Tony Rodham, sat on the board of a small North Carolina mining company that in 2012 got one of only two coveted “gold exploitation permits” from the government of Haiti — the first issued in more than 50 years, according to the website Breitbart.

https://thenypost.files.wordpress.co...pg?w=230&h=395


Bill Clinton himself was paid $1 million by a Canadian bank and major shareholder in the Keystone XL oil pipeline as the State Department was considering the project, Schweizer charges.

Records show that Bill’s earnings from appearance fees — both foreign and domestic — spiked at $17 million in 2012, Hillary’s last year at State.

During Hillary’s four-year stint as secretary of state, the ex-president earned about $48 million of a $105 million speaking haul amassed between 2001 and 2013.

More than half of the $48 million was paid by companies in China, Japan, Canada, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the Cayman Islands, among others.

The author writes that “of the 13 Clinton speeches that fetched $500,000 or more, only two occurred during the years his wife was not secretary of state.”

Bill Clinton is believed to be the richest living ex-president and one of the 10 wealthiest ever.

Most estimates put the power couple’s combined net worth at $100 million to $200 million.
BILL CLINTON IS BELIEVED TO BE THE RICHEST LIVING EX-PRESIDENT AND ONE OF THE 10 WEALTHIEST EVER.
Some of the fees were paid at the Clintons’ request to their foundation — netting domestic donors a fat tax break. But most went directly to Bill, and the fees make up the family’s main source of income, The Washington Post reported.

Following Hillary’s decision to run for president, the foundation itself announced last week it would accept donations only from Australia, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Canada, Germany and Norway.

The 186-page book will go on sale May 5, but Hillary wasted no time dismissing it.

“We’re back into the political season and, therefore, we will be subjected to all kinds of distraction and attacks and I’m ready for that. I know that that comes, unfortunately, with the territory,” she said Monday in Keene, NH.

“It is, I think, worth noting that the Republicans seem to only be talking about me. I don’t know what they’d talk about if I wasn’t in the race, but I am in the race and hopefully we’ll get on to the issues,” she added.

Allison Moore, spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, responded by bringing up Hillary’s use of a private email account for official business and her deletion of thousands of emails

http://nypost.com/2015/04/20/book-cl...y-filthy-rich/

I will be very surprised if there is any way that Hillary can hold up under this scrutiny. Whether she actually made a "deal" for donations or whatever is really irrelevant to me. What matters more to me is the fact that they're involved at all in these 501 C 3 tax fraud "charities".

Pass the FairTax and Shut. Them. Down.

And Lois Lerner was where on this?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Newmexican

And Lois Lerner was where on this?

---

Exactly, the same place she was on all 501 C 3 tax fraud "charities".

FairTax Now! Shut them down.

I have no intention of voting for Hilary or any democrat.

Why is the "charity watchdog" unnamed? Anonymous stories are worth very little, IMO.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by kevinssdad

I have no intention of voting for Hilary or any democrat.

Why is the "charity watchdog" unnamed? Anonymous stories are worth very little, IMO.

---

Good catch! The charity watchdog is Charity Navigator, according to American Thinker (newspaper editing has really lost its once great luster), and shame on the New York Post editing team for missing this important piece of information.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/...atch_list.html

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by kevinssdad

I have no intention of voting for Hilary or any democrat.

Why is the "charity watchdog" unnamed? Anonymous stories are worth very little, IMO.

---

Charity Navigator.
http://www.charitynavigator.org/

Clinton Foundation Put On Charity ‘Watch List’ Along With Al Sharpton’s Shady Nonprofit

CHUCK ROSS
Reporter
04/26/2015



​The Clinton Foundation has joined Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network on a list of naughty nonprofits maintained by Charity Navigator, a prominent charity monitor.

The Clinton Foundation was put on Charity Navigator’s “watch list” last month,The New York Post reported on Sunday.
The foundation has come under intense scrutiny of late amid revelations it received millions of dollars in donations from foreign governments while Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state. Money also flowed to the foundation from companies and businessmen who benefited from their relationship to the Clintons.Furthermore, analysis of the foundation’s tax forms showed it spends a relatively small percentage of its income on charitable activity.

Charity Navigator created a watch list last year to include any charity that does not “meet our criteria.” Organizations are placed on the list when Charity Navigator becomes “aware of conduct that may affect a donor’s decision to support that charity.”

Of the Clinton Foundation, Charity Navigator wrote: “We had previously evaluated this organization, but have since determined that this charity’s atypical business model can not be accurately captured in our current rating methodology,” while noting “our removal of The Clinton Foundation from our site is neither a condemnation nor an endorsement of this charity.”

Charity Navigator’s list includes 23 organizations in total. Besides the Clinton Foundation and Sharpton’s National Action Network, other high-profile organizations on the list include the Red Cross and the Sierra Club.

National Action Network’s listing is due to the organization’s failure to pay payroll taxes for its employees. The New York Times reported in November that Sharpton and his group have a total of $4.5 million in pending state and federal tax liens.

The Red Cross is included on the watch list based on reports that it spends too little of its revenue on programs to further its mission.

The Sierra Club is on the list because it allegedly failed to get permission to publish the names of several businesses in North Carolina used in a report about Duke Energy.

In its justification for placing the Clinton Foundation on its watch list, Charity Navigator cited numerous recent articles concerning donations from foreign governments.

It cited a Feb. 19, Wall Street Journal report claiming “at least 60 companies that lobbied the State Department during [Hillary Clinton’s] tenure donated a total of more than $26 million to the Clinton Foundation.”

Charity Navigator also noted that on Feb. 26, Politico reported the Clinton Foundation failed to inform the State Department of a $500,000 donation it received from the Algerian government.

The foundation has received numerous donations from foreign governments, including many in the Middle East. The governments of Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia have sent millions to the charity.

While Charity Navigator focused only on the Clinton Foundation’s donors, it could plausibly add the organization’s low payout rate to its watch list rationale.

Last month, the website The Federalist looked at the Clinton Foundation’s IRS filings for the period between 2008 and 2012. According to its analysis, only 15 percent of the $500 million raised during that span when towards grants for other organizations.
Nearly $110 million was paid out in the form of salaries and benefits while $25 million went towards travel expenses. Almost 60 percent of the organization’s disclosed revenue — or $290 million — was listed under the category of “other expenses.”

That pattern continued into 2013, The Post notes. Of the $140 million in money the Clinton Foundation received in 2013, only $9 million was given out as charity to other groups.

In general, groups that monitor charities’ activities say a good charity spends at least 75 percent of its income on causes related to its core mission.

The Clintons’ operation of their family charity has raised questions about transparency, potential conflicts of interest and of — as Mitt Romney characterized it earlier this week — possible bribery.

One government watchdog appeared to agree with the latter observation.

“It seems like the Clinton Foundation operates as a slush fund for the Clintons,” Bill Allison, a senior fellow at the government watchdog Sunlight Foundation, told The Post.

On Sunday, the Clinton Foundation released a statement admitting “we made mistakes.” The Foundation said earlier this week that it plans to refile several years of tax returns because it failed to disclose all of its donations. (RELATED: Clinton Foundation Fesses Up: ‘We Made Mistakes’)

According to Charity Navigator, it monitors groups for six months until it determines issues identified by the watch list are resolved.

http://dailycaller.com/2015/04/26/cl...ady-nonprofit/

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Judy

Good catch! The charity watchdog is Charity Navigator, according to American Thinker (newspaper editing has really lost its once great luster), and shame on the New York Post editing team for missing this important piece of information.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/...atch_list.html

---

Thanks, Judy, and thanks to Newmexican for getting that info so quickly. Since I am not familiar with Charity Navigator, now I've some self education to do, reckon?

Not only has newspaper editing lost its luster, as I hinted in the post about Constitutional Amendment, it seems that education has destroyed the King's English and/or the American language. People writing and speaking using double negatives while reporting or making speeches, how is one to know what they mean? (I won't even bring up what they didn't experience, Brian Williams, NBC) Oooops, I meant to leave him anonymous.. Aw, shucks.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by kevinssdad

Thanks, Judy, and thanks to Newmexican for getting that info so quickly. Since I am not familiar with Charity Navigator, now I've some self education to do, reckon?

Not only has newspaper editing lost its luster, as I hinted in the post about Constitutional Amendment, it seems that education has destroyed the King's English and/or the American language. People writing and speaking using double negatives while reporting or making speeches, how is one to know what they mean? (I won't even bring up what they didn't experience, Brian Williams, NBC) Oooops, I meant to leave him anonymous.. Aw, shucks.

---

Check with these folks before you give money to charity. :D

What can they really do to Hillary thou. Dem voters will ignore it as either they don't pay attention to politics at all or they will easily buy into the BS that its the GOP or tea party *crazies* creating this stuff. Congress will try and investigate but the Dems will keep it stuck up. The DOO (Department of Obama, formerly the Department of Justice) are the ones who would need to bring formal charges and we know Obama will never have that happen. So in the end the Dems will still vote for Hillary and any against her are racist, hateful, anti women liars. As usual the political elite class is above the law and will never see charges brought against them,

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ReformUSA2012

What can they really do to Hillary thou. Dem voters will ignore it as either they don't pay attention to politics at all or they will easily buy into the BS that its the GOP or tea party *crazies* creating this stuff. Congress will try and investigate but the Dems will keep it stuck up. The DOO (Department of Obama, formerly the Department of Justice) are the ones who would need to bring formal charges and we know Obama will never have that happen. So in the end the Dems will still vote for Hillary and any against her are racist, hateful, anti women liars. As usual the political elite class is above the law and will never see charges brought against them,

---

The same thing will happen that happened to Lois Learner on the IRS scandal and Eric Holder on fast and furious gunwalking scandal ..... nothing.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Newmexican

Charity Navigator.
http://www.charitynavigator.org/

Clinton Foundation Put On Charity ‘Watch List’ Along With Al Sharpton’s Shady Nonprofit

---

Talk about thieves of a feather flocking together,....
***************************************
Americans first in this magnificent country

American jobs for American workers

Fair trade, not free trade

Report: Clinton Foundation Tried to ‘Strong-Arm’ Leading Charity Watchdog

BY: Daniel Bassali
May 11, 2015 7:36 am

A month before Hillary Clinton called for more transparency as an official candidate for president, her foundation tried to “strong-arm” a charity watchdog group that placed them on its watchlist, a report alleges.

On March 13, Charity Navigator, a watchdog group focused on providing transparency into charity organizations, placed the Clinton Foundation on its CN Watchlist for not answering questions about foreign donations from questionable governments, accepting donations from at least 60 companies that also lobbied the State Department, and violating their Memorandum of Understanding with the White House to disclose their donors all while Clinton was Secretary of State.

The Clinton Foundation engaged in an aggressive behind-the-scenes effort to disqualify and pressure Charity Navigator to take them off their list.

“They felt they were of such importance that we should deviate from our normal process. They were irritated by that,” Ken Berger, former CEO of Charity Navigator, said.

Maura Pally, CEO of the Clinton Foundation, argued with Berger over the phone multiple times. The foundation suggested the Charity Navigator add a Republican as a co-chair so that the Clintons could shield themselves politically by claiming they were under a partisan attack.

The Clinton Foundation will remain on the CN Watchlist for at least 6 months.

http://freebeacon.com/politics/repor...r-poor-rating/

From New York Magazine.
The Clinton Foundation’s Behind-the-Scenes Battle With a Charity Watchdog Group

By Gabriel Shermanhttp://img1.nymag.com/imgs/daily/int...29.h352.2x.jpg
Photo: Pool/2014 Getty Images

Last Wednesday, Bill Clinton ratcheted up Clintonworld’s counter assault on Clinton Cash, the book by conservative author Peter Schweizer that ignited the latest media frenzy over the former First Couple’s $2 billion foundation. “There's just no evidence," Clinton defiantly told CNN's Christiane Amanpour during an interview at the Foundation’s confab in Morocco. "Even the guy that wrote the book apparently had to admit under questioning that we didn't have a shred of evidence for this, we just sort of thought we would throw it out there and see if it flies, and it won't fly."

Clinton’s analysis is flawed in at least one regard. As my colleague Jonathan Chait recently wrote, the Clintons’ web of murky relationships and opaque finances exacts a political cost whether or not their critics ever find a there there. The Clintons, more than anyone, should know that negative press — true or not — can have potentially catastrophic consequences. Remember, it was David Brock’s 1993 American Spectatorarticle alleging that Arkansas state troopers arranged Bill’s trysts, which sparked Paula Jones’s sexual harassment lawsuit, which led to the Supreme Court case, which led to Monica Lewinsky lying under oath about the affair, which led Linda Tripp to turn the tapes over to Ken Starr, which led to impeachment.

The Clinton Foundation scandal cycle is already spinning off new complications. A case in point: After being the subject of a spate of negative newspaper accounts about potential conflicts of interest and management dysfunction this winter — long before Clinton Cash — the Clinton Foundation wound up on a "watch list" maintained by the Charity Navigator, the New Jersey–based nonprofit watchdog. The Navigator, dubbed the "most prominent" nonprofit watchdog by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, is a powerful and feared player in the nonprofit world. Founded in 2002, it ranks more than 8,000 charities and is known for its independence. For a while, the Clinton Foundation was happy to promote Charity Navigator’s work (back when they were awarded its highest ranking). In September 2014, in fact, the Navigator's then-CEO, Ken Berger, was invited to speak at the Clinton Global Initiative.Of course that was before the Foundation was placed on a list with scandal-plagued charities like Al Sharpton's National Action Network and the Red Cross.

Since March, the Foundation has embarked on an aggressive behind-the-scenes campaign to get removed from the list. Clinton Foundation officials accuse the Navigator of unfairly targeting them, lacking credible evidence of wrongdoing, and blowing off numerous requests for a meeting to present their case. "They're not only punishing us for being transparent but are not being transparent themselves," Maura Pally, the Foundation's acting CEO, told me by phone from Morocco last week. "Charity Navigator doesn't disclose its donors, but we do and yet that means we're suffering the consequences."

Navigator executives counter that the Foundation has demanded they extend the Clintons special treatment. They also allege the Foundation attempted to strong-arm them by calling a Navigator board member. "They felt they were of such importance that we should deviate from our normal process. They were irritated by that," says Berger.

The feud is a microcosm of all that is exhausting about the Clintons' endless public battles. Generally, it goes like this: bad press about their lack of transparency sparks some real-world consequence or censure, the Clintons complain that they’re being held to an unfair standard while their critics contend that they expect to be able to write their own rules, and the resulting flare-up leads to more bad press.

The trouble with Navigator started on Wednesday morning, March 11. Foundation officials became alarmed when they received an anonymous email from the watchdog's Donor Advisory committee informing them they would be added to the list on Friday, March 13, unless they could provide answers to questions raised in newspaper accounts. Among the press controversies the Navigator cited: A Wall Street Journal report that noted "at least 60 companies that lobbied the State Department during [Hillary Clinton's] tenure donated a total of more than $26 million to the Clinton Foundation.” Politico, meanwhile, revealed that the Foundation failed to report to the State Department a $500,000 donation from the Algerian government, a violation of the ethics agreement the Clintons had arranged with the Obama White House. Politico also reported that the Foundation’s former CEO, Eric Braverman, quit after a “power struggle” with “the coterie of Clinton loyalists who have surrounded the former president for decades.”

With the publication of Clinton Cash on the horizon, Clintonworld surely knew landing on the Navigator’s watch list would be a public-relations debacle.By early March, Clinton campaign officials were holding regular war-room meetings to orchestrate their defense against the book. Over the next few days, Foundation officials desperately attempted to contact Navigator executives to rebut their claims but, inexplicably, couldn’t get through to anyone on the phone. On the evening of Friday, March 13, Pally sent a detailed email rebuttal. "All of the other organizations on your watch list have had substantiated allegations of financial, fiscal or other impropriety,” she wrote, according to an email the Foundation provided to New York. “The stories you cite about the Clinton Foundation merely point to donations, or gossip around our operations, none of which constitute any wrongdoing.”

It didn't work. During a tense phone conversation on the afternoon of March 17, Pally and Berger argued over the merits of the media's claims about the Foundation. Pally said they were without substance; Berger insisted that since the newspapers published the articles, they were relevant. "Our whole thing is, if major media outlets say there's something here that you should be aware of, we're not going to be judge and jury on what the media says," Berger later told me. "We felt there had been enough questions." As a matter of practice, the Navigator doesn’t conduct its own investigations. On its website, they state: “Charity Navigator … takes no position on allegations made or issues raised by third parties, nor does Charity Navigator seek to confirm or verify the accuracy of allegations made or the merits of issues raised by third parties that may be referred to in the CN Watchlist.”

The Navigator invited the Foundation to respond publicly on their website. Instead, Pally asked Berger to meet and review confidential copies of the Foundation's handbook, “Global Code of Conduct,” and board bylaws. Berger declined, feeling it was another effort of backroom dealing and spin. "We were not opposed to having a sit-down meeting. The point was, what is it that we're going to cover? We've already been around the block. What's the value of this?"

Last week, after I contacted the Foundation about being on the watch list, Pally rekindled talks with the Navigator. "I remain at a loss as to what information we can provide to address Charity Navigator’s concerns and be removed from the Watchlist," she wrote Tim Gamory, the Navigator's acting CEO. (Berger left the group last month to start his own consulting business.)
Sure enough, the watch list designation has provided Clinton’s antagonists with more ammunition with which to attack Hillary’s campaign. Already, critics are citing Charity Navigator’s list as a reason to open a federal investigation into the Clintons’ finances. For its part, the Clinton camp sees the episode as another reason to feel aggrieved. But even some Clinton advisers have been frustrated that they don’t appear to have learned from past self-inflicted wounds. One source told me that last year, a senior adviser lobbied the Foundation to appoint a Republican co-chairman to its board, which was stacked with Clinton loyalists. The adviser submitted a list of GOP names. “It was to shield [the Clintons] from the things they’re reading about now,” the source said. “It didn’t happen.”

Unfortunately for Hillary’s campaign, the Navigator’s policy is that charities that land on the list stay there for a minimum of six months. Sandra Miniutti, the Navigator’s spokesperson, told me that, in order to get off the list, the Clintons need to publicly address each of the controversies raised by the media with a convincing response.

The clock is ticking.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer...-watchdog.html