On Sunday, Hillary Clinton said there should be “no individual too powerful to jail” and the author of the explosive book alleging Clinton used the State Department for favors to Clinton Foundation donors says that rule should apply to the Democratic front-runner as well.
“Clinton Cash” author Peter Schweizer says the Clintons are also still profiting off the pardon of Marc Rich, one of the ugliest – and last – acts of President Bill Clinton in 2001.
In a debate hosted by NBC and the Congressional Black Caucus Institute, the Democratic White House hopefuls were asked about their differences in reforming Wall Street. Sec. Clinton scolded Sen. Bernie Sanders for being critical of her and President Obama for accepting campaign donations from Wall Street, but he also highlighted where their positions are similar.
“There is no daylight on the basic premise that there should be no bank too big to fail and no individual too powerful to jail. We agree on that,” said Clinton.
Clinton is under FBI investigation for conducting all of her State Department business through a home server and possibly breaking the law for how she handled classified and top secret information. Last week, reports revealed that the FBI expanded its probe of Clinton into whether she used the State Department to reward donors to the Clinton Foundation.
Schweizer says as long as everyone seems interested in punishing corruption in the markets, in politics and elsewhere, Clinton ought to be closely investigated as well.
“If you look at recent prosecutions for political corruption, whether that’s Gov. (Bob) McDonnell in Virginia, whether that’s Sen. (Rober) Menendez in New Jersey or a former governor down in Alabama, people have been prosecuted on far less developed patterns of taking payments and doing favors than in the case of Hillary Clinton,” said Schweizer.
While Schweizer’s book contends there is a pattern of corruption from Hillary Clinton at the State Department, he says the Clintons were clever in how they constructed their charitable organization.
“They basically circumvented laws that say you can’t take money from foreigners in a way that will influence a political campaign. So they take it instead as speaking fees and as donations to the Clinton Foundation,” said Schweizer.
But he says they still have huge legal problems.
“The international anti-bribery standards, which Hillary Clinton endorsed as secretary of state says that bribery can include donations going to a charity run by a politician. So the fact the Clinton Foundation does charitable work really does not let them off the hook,” said Schweizer.
So what will come of the FBI investigation?
“We want to believe and think that decisions to prosecute for criminal conduct are just going to be based on the facts and there’s not going to be a political component to it, but I think very few of us are naive enough to think that’s the way the world actually works,” said Schweizer.
“I would say the odds of a criminal referral from the FBI are fairly high but I think the Department of Justice actually acting on that I would say is fairly low,” said Schweizer.
He also believes if there are any charges they will be minor ones related to the server and classified information and Clinton will face no charges on corruption. The probe into classified information got another jolt on Tuesday when a letter from the inspector general for the intelligence community was released that showed even more highly sensitive material was discovered on Clinton’s unsecure server.
But Schweizer says there is much more on the corruption front as well. A case in point he says, is the ongoing windfall the Clinton Foundation appears to be getting 15 years after Bill Clinton pardoned Marc Rich. Schweizer detailed the money chain recently in the New York Post.
The pardon came on January 20, 2001, Clinton’s final day in office.
“Marc Rich was an international fugitive. He was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List. He made a lot of money by trading with rogue regimes like the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran, apartheid South Africa, North Korea. He basically acted as an oil middle man for these roguish governments,” explained Schweizer.
At the time, even many liberal voices like the New York Times and Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., slammed Clinton for the pardon. Clinton himself later said it was one of his biggest political mistakes. But Schweizer says the shady details didn’t end in 2001.
“A lot of people were shocked and then when they found out Denise Rich, Marc Rich’s ex-wife, had donated $450,000 to the Clinton Foundation and another million to the Democratic Party right before that pardon took place, people immediately drew those connections. I think those connections are real but that’s not the end of the story,” said Schweizer.
Namely that the pardon is still paying dividends.
“If you look at some of the biggest donors to the Clinton Foundation, you will find that these are individuals who were longtime business partners with Marc Rich, that they were his personal attorneys, that they were his media people. There’s a collection of individuals that have poured tens of millions of dollars into the Clinton Foundation that are directly tied to Marc Rich,” said Schweizer.
It will ultimately be into the billions because Schweizer says Gilbert Chagoury has promised to donate a billion dollars by himself to the Clinton Foundation. He says Rich and Chagoury smuggled oil out of Nigeria and sold it on the black market.
But the real total of Rich-related donations remains a mystery.
“The Clinton Foundation, contrary to their promises, has actually not even disclosed all of its contributors. We know there are at least a thousand, based on some of their fundraisers, that were never disclosed and those donors were people that were precisely in Marc Rich’s industry,” said Schweizer.
Rich died in 2013 and the pardon was 15 years ago, but Schweizer says if the money coming in is directly the result of that action, a crime is still being committed. He says McDonnell was convicted and Menendez charged with corruption based on much more speculation than is taking place with the Clintons.
“It behooves us, I think, to get an explanation from prosecutors as to why these individuals get prosecuted but the Clintons don’t,” said Schweizer.
