Philip Elliot pens the following review for TIME Magazine of the new documentary “Clinton Cash,” based on the bestselling book by Peter Schweizer. Read the excerpt below.
It would be easy to dismiss an hour-long film adaptation of Peter Schweizer’s book about the charitable-political-nonprofit complex of Bill and Hillary Clinton as nothing more than conservative propaganda. But sitting in a Manhattan screening room late Wednesday, it quickly became clear that conservatives weren’t the intended audience for Clinton Cash.
Environmentalists. Anti-nuke activists. Gay-rights advocates. Good-government folks. They’re all going to find themselves increasingly uncomfortable over claims that the likely Democratic nominee, in the film’s words, takes cash from the “darkest, worst corners of the world.”
The 60-minute indictment of the Clintons will soon find its way to an awful lot of televisions ahead of November’s elections. Based on a heavily researched book by the same name, Clinton Cash is careful in laying out a series of facts that are mostly true, though both the book and the movie sometimes draws connections and conclusions that aren’t as solid as their evidence.
“When it comes to the Clintons, you have to follow the money,” Schweizer says in a rough-cut previewed for TIME.
No doubt, there are many places where dotted lines are smudged into solid ones, and some assumptions are made where concrete evidence of quid pro quo is impossible to prove. But as a work of persuasion, the movie is likely to leave on-the-fence Clinton supporters who see it feeling more unsure about casting a vote for her. Made by the conservative Breitbart News’ executive chairman, Stephen K. Bannon, and director M.A. Taylor, this film rises above the traditional campaign hit job.
[…]
There are a lot of leaps of logic in the film, but the insinuations, told through a pattern of favorable results following cash to Clintons, make for a disheartening watch. For instance, Clinton pal Joe Wilson, a former U.S. Ambassador at the center of the Bush-era controversy over weapons of mass destruction, allegedly got a leg up for his investment firm with help from the Clintons in South Sudan. Then there is a $100 million pledge to the Clintons that coincided with favorable contracts in Nigeria and a $1.4 million speaking fee for Bill Clinton personally. Investor Marc Rich, who received a controversial last-minute pardon in 2001, even makes an appearance.
This is not a movie that is going to dissuade the #imwithher crowd from supporting Clinton. But it is a movie that might keep disaffected liberals at home, energize the Sanders supporters to keep up the fight even after their preferred candidate bows to reality and serve up new fodder for conservative talking heads on cable news. This isn’t a game-changing movie, but one that could keep some less enthusiastic voters on the sidelines.
Read the rest here.
Watch the film’s trailer below:
Listen to Peter Schweizer discuss the film with Alex Marlow on the Friday edition of Breitbart News Daily on SiriusXM: