Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” the show’s political panel featuring Donna Brazile, Newt Gingrich, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann debated Hillary Clinton’s actions during her tenure as secretary of state and the illegality and appearance of impropriety laid out in the new book “Clinton Cash.”
Newt Gingrich said, “My point is, they took money from foreign governments while she was secretary of state that is clearly illegal. This is not about politics. It’s illegal and it’s dangerous to America to have foreign governments get in the habit of bribing people who happen to be the husband of the Secretary of State or the next President of the United States.”
Bloomberg Politics Mark Halperin said, “Here’s why you know this is serious because any Democrat almost any Democrat who is not on the Clinton’s payroll will tell reporters and others that these are serious issues, forget the politics. these are serious issues. The question for me right now is all these donors who gave and all the people who paid President Clinton to give speeches, what kind of communication did they have with people in the government? That may not be a quid pro quo but a lot of those were for people who wanted access to the Clintons.”
Bloomberg Politics John Heilemann said, “We all have examples of where the administration, Barack Obama’s administration knew this was a potential problem and that’s why they set up agreement they had with the family with Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton when he took the job as Secretary of State. There are now several that we know of at this moment several documented instances where whether or not it’s illegal where they broke their agreement with the administration. And when you think about the president having set a standard of being the most transparent and open administration in history and what the Clintons have done here clearly is not the most transparent and open and I think they’ve — whether it’s illegal or not violated the spirit of President Obama’s presidency.”
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