“Clinton Cash” author Peter Schweizer says there is an unmistakable pattern of Clinton Foundation donations greasing the skids for political favors throughout Hillary Clinton’s congressional and diplomatic career and no one has been able to discredit the facts in the book.
The thrust of the book is that the Clinton Foundation raked in millions and even billions of dollars from foreign donors who subsequently saw their most important issues addressed favorably by the State Department.
The book has rocked the Clinton campaign for weeks, as the Clinton Foundation was forced to admit that it took foreign donations while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, refiled years worth of tax returns to set the record straight and revealed some 1,100 donors that it hadn’t previously disclosed.
Schweizer says there are a lot of different threads to follow in the various episodes, but he says the basic plot is as old as politics itself.
“This is the oldest story in politics. Follow the money. If you follow the money in this case, you’re talking about a scale of money that is unprecedented,” said Schweizer. “It’s a classic case of money in politics. When you give money, you want access and you want a favorable opportunity to get things done for your benefit.”
This week, Bill Clinton has spoken out in defense of the foundation’s activities and stated it did nothing that was “knowingly inappropriate.” At another event, when asked what the money went for, Clinton joked, ‘I just work here. I don’t know.’
Schweizer is a bit stunned by the response.
“I really think it’s been odd, frankly. On the one hand, they’ve said that there’s nothing here, but on the other hand they can’t stop talking about the book,” he said
From Paul Begala hammering the book on Twitter to a new website and email alerts focused on the book, Schweizer says the Clintons are in major damage control mode.
“If they think there’s nothing there or the book is a dud as they’ve called it, they seem to be taking a lot of actions that show them to be scrambling,” said Schweizer.
He believes the real reason for the concern among Clinton allies is an crystal clear pattern of Hillary Clinton’s State Department rewarding Clinton Foundation donors.
“This is not a book with anonymous sources. There’s not hyperbole here. It’s just laying out the facts. It’s laying out the template of the flow of funds to the Clintons over the template of her official actions as secretary of state. When you do that, you find this very troubling pattern between the two,” said Schweizer.
Schweizer says the actions of the Clintons are especially galling given the laws firmly in place to prohibit foreign donations to political campaigns and political action committees and clear limits on foreign lobbying of the U.S. government.
“Yet the Clintons have set up this apparatus through the Clinton Foundation and through these so-called speaking fees that I think are more influence payments to Bill Clinton. These mechanisms are a way around foreign entities being able to influence our politics. You see the money pouring in and you see the decisions and the actions being taken for the benefit of those who are paying the Clintons,” said Schweizer.
All of this allegedly took place during Mrs. Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state despite explicit demands from President Obama and the Senate Foreign Relations for the foundation to accept no foreign donations and for its records to be available for review.
“If I was Barack Obama, I would be absolutely furious. This was a condition upon Hillary taking the job as secretary of state. We now know that almost immediately overnight, they violated that agreement,” said Schweizer, who says Obama now needs to decide whether Hillary Clinton’s presidential ambitions will trump the search for the truth in this case.
“Are they going to let that supersede the fact that the Clintons flat-out lied to them. In this memorandum of understanding, it was very explicit that they were going to reveal all donors. We now know that they didn’t do that, that there were millions of dollars from some very, very sensitive deals involving very, very sensitive people that was flowing to the Clinton Foundation,” he said.
“Clinton Cash” also asserts that some of the money coming into the foundation was given by some very questionable characters, including African warlords and other disreputable figures. Schweizer believes the company the Clintons were keeping is worth noting.
“I think it’s another red flag flag. You’ve got a guy, for example, like Gilbert Chagoury in Nigeria, who has been convicted in Geneva, Switzerland, for money laundering and aid and abetting a criminal enterprise. What he was basically doing was helping the Nigerian dictator (Sani) Abacha take billions of dollars out of the country and put them into Swiss bank accounts,” said Schweizer.
He says people like Chagoury don’t give huge amounts of money to the Clinton Foundation or anyone else just out of generosity.
“That’s the kind of person they are spending a lot of time with and taking money from. A guy like Gilbert Chagoury operates in a political culture like Nigeria that is rife with paying bribes. The idea that he’s going to give a large sum of money for the Clintons and not expect something in return is just patently ridiculous,” said Schweizer.
The book further contends that the quid pro quo for Clinton Foundation donors are not unique to the years Mrs. Clinton was running the State Department. Schweizer says it was evident during her years in the U.S. Senate as well. One chapter in the book focuses on a nuclear issue involving India.
“The Indian government wanted access to U.S. civilian nuclear technology. In 2006, legislation was introduced to that effect. Hillary Clinton was not particularly supportive of that. She in fact supported three killer amendments that were designed to undermine that bill,” said Schweizer.
“Well, millions of dollars flowed to the Clinton Foundation. Bill Clinton got eight speeches from Indian interests. By 2008, she had completely reversed course and come out in favor of unrestricted access to U.S. nuclear technology by the Indian government,” he said.
Schweizer believes any doubts about whether donations to the Clinton Foundation played a role in the policy shift were answered by one of India’s key players on the issue. Sant Chatwal was a friend and financier for Sen. Clinton who won a prestigious award from the Indian government for convincing her to change his mind.
“When he described in interviews what he did, he talked about the fact that getting this bill through cost him millions upon millions of dollars,” said Schweizer.
The policy flip-flops did not stop there, especially after Sen. Clinton became Secretary Clinton.
“There are a number of examples in the book where she publicly espoused one position or supported a piece of legislation. But then when she became secretary of state, she reversed course. The question becomes are these just all coincidences or in these dozens of instances is something more afoot,” said Schweizer.
The key to finding iron-clad proof may be gone since Clinton had her personal email server wiped clean of more than 30,000 “personal” emails from her time at the State Department. Schweizer is convinced that controversy is directly related to the Clinton Foundation scrutiny.
“I believe the deletions occurred in large part precisely because of these kinds of transactions and communications we’re talking about. But they’re certainly not necessary to convene a grand ury and investigate these subjects,” said Schweizer.
And that is where Schweizer hopes all of his evidence eventually leads: to a serious legal investigation of the Clintons’ actions.
“My hope is that somebody with subpoena power either on Capitol Hill or a prosecutor is going to convene a grand jury or investigate these matters further,” he said.
