(Newt Gingrich) – Hillary Clinton held her first press conference in years yesterday to address a few of the questions everyone wants to ask about her emails. But the focus on Clinton’s emails misses the larger and more dangerous scandal, of which the private server is only a symptom.
The poorly-defended personal server in her closet, her use of a personal email account for all of her official business, her unilateral decision to erase more than 30,000 emails, her narrow definition of “official” as emails sent to U.S. federal government addresses (when several of her top aides also used personal email accounts) – are all outrageous, yes. But none of these go to the heart of the Clinton scandal.
The key fact is that a former president of the United States and his wife, a U.S. senator, then Secretary of State and always a possible future president, have raised nearly $2 billion dollars–a significant part of it from foreign governments–for their family foundation.
That figure actually understates the total amount of money flowing through the Clinton empire since they left the White House. There have been extraordinarily highly paid speeches and consulting gigs. There have been extraordinarily large book advances (the most recent of which almost certainly did not earn back the advance). There have been expensive trips on private planes and yachts to stay at private mansions.
The IRS has investigated churches and Tea Party groups run by grandmothers to determine the extent of their political activities. The FBI has investigated Republican governors for corruption or abuse of office on the most tenuous grounds.
Yet apparently neither has any interest in the $2 billion raised for the personal foundation of America’s most prominent political family.
Given the national security issues at stake–and the national security consequences that may already have occurred–Congress needs to look at questions much larger than Hillary’s email. It needs to look at the Clinton Foundation’s income and expenditures. Because the Clintons didn’t just raise $2 billion. They also spent $2 billion.
Who gave the money is one question.
Who got the money is another question.
Whom did they favor with their largesse? What personal business transactions occurred parallel to foundation activities?
You may think that these questions are grasping at straws. But consider Breitbart’s report about Peter Schweizer’s new book, which will be published in May. Schweizer spent a year investigating the Clinton empire. Among his findings, according to Breitbart:
The tiny North Carolina company, VCS Mining, also included on its board Bill Clinton’s co-chair of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC), former Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive.
…VCS’s coveted gold mining exploitation permit was apparently such a sweetheart deal that it outraged the Haitian senate, since royalties to be paid to the Haitian government were only 2.5%, a sum mining experts say is at least half the standard rate.
The State Department directed billions of dollars in aid to Haiti while Hillary was secretary. The Clinton Foundation directed many millions more. Bill Clinton also co-founded the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund which directed an additional half-billion dollars of donations to Haiti. Bill Clinton was also named the U.N. special envoy to Haiti.
It is a surpassing coincidence that Hillary’s brother suddenly decided to enter the mining business in Haiti and that the company on whose board he sat received a very favorable mining deal from the Haitian government.
Schweizer wrote me that this “gold mine is a minor revelation.” He further wrote that the scale of Clinton corruption “is scary stuff.”
Of course, we know that many foreign countries have given the Clinton Foundation millions of dollars directly, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Algeria, Australia, Germany, and Norway, among others. As the San Diego Union-Tribune put it in a recent editorial:
The House and Senate Judiciary Committees should undertake comprehensive investigations.
We need to know when meetings were held, when money in every form (speech, consulting, book, gift, travel, foundation, campaign) came in, what the various interlocking interests of the donors were, how the money was spent, and what side deals went on between the donors, the beneficiaries and the various members of the Clinton world.
When people can see the chart and timeline (and it will be enormous because raising and spending $2 billion requires a lot of relationships and activities) they will begin to see the scale of dishonesty, self-dealing, and corruption that is sure to be at the heart of the Clinton empire.
In addition to understanding the Clintons, the House and Senate Judiciary Committees need to write new laws updating and enforcing the Constitutional prohibition on foreign governments giving money to federal officials.
This explosion of foreign money into our political system is a dangerous threat to American independence and to the self-government of the American people. It must be investigated and stopped.
Mr. Gingrich is a former Republican Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.
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