Part of Hillary Clinton’s role as Secretary of State may have been to help promote American companies abroad; however, that doesn’t take into account Boeing’s tremendous generosity when it came to all things Clinton after Hillary went out of her way to push the company’s interests in Moscow back in the day.
Fox News is raising new questions today. But the long tail and paper trail of Hillary Clinton in this regard is bound to continue to dog her campaign.
Clinton facing new ethics questions on role in Boeing deal
A sales plug in Russia in 2009, though, may have proved especially fruitful. While touring a Boeing plant, Secretary of State Clinton said, “We’re delighted that a new Russian airline, Rossiya, is actively considering acquisition of Boeing aircraft, and this is a shameless pitch.” In 2010, Boeing landed the Russian deal, worth $3.7 billion. And two months later, the company donated $900,000 to the Clinton Foundation.
Increasingly, Hillary’s allies are being left to fall back on the “no smoking gun” defense, but that’s hardly an acceptable measure of integrity for someone seeking the highest office in the land. It certainly wouldn’t be acceptable to the media were Hillary a Republican. Hillary’s husband Bill also benefited directly from Boeing’s generosity. Hopefully the family is finally situated well enough to not need another windfall thanks to a potential Hillary presidency. But then, there is Chelsea and her family to think about, now, after all.
Clinton defenders say there is no smoking gun. “There’s zero evidence that Hillary Clinton went to bat for Boeing for any reason other than to benefit the U.S. economy and U.S. workers,” said former Clinton/Gore adviser Richard Goldstein.
But the financial connections don’t end there. Boeing also paid former President Bill Clinton $250,000 for a speech in 2012. It was a speech that was approved by the State Department’s Ethics Office — which according to an Associated Press report often approved the ex-president’s speaking engagements within days.
The Washington Post reported on the cozy relationship back in 2014, indicating critics may well have even more strings to pull on as regards this latest sorted Clinton tale.
For Hillary Clinton and Boeing, a beneficial relationship
On a trip to Moscow early in her tenure as secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton played the role of international saleswoman, pressing Russian government officials to sign a multibillion-dollar deal to buy dozens of aircraft from Boeing.
A month later, Clinton was in China, where she jubilantly announced that the aerospace giant would be writing a generous check to help resuscitate floundering U.S. efforts to host a pavilion at the upcoming World’s Fair.
Boeing, she said, “has just agreed to double its contribution to $2 million.”
Clinton did not point out that, to secure the donation, the State Department had set aside ethics guidelines that first prohibited solicitations of Boeing and then later permitted only a $1 million gift from the company. Boeing had been included on a list of firms to be avoided because of its frequent reliance on the government for help negotiating overseas business and concern that a donation could be seen as an attempt to curry favor with U.S. officials.