Peter Schweizer, whose book and film “Clinton Cash” exposed the pay-for-play dark side of the Clinton Foundation, tells Breitbart News it is the beginning of the end for the “non-profit,” even as Hillary Clinton runs for president as the Democratic nominee.
“The Clinton Foundation is going to implode,” Schweizer, who is the Breitbart News senior editor-at-large and also the president of the Government Accountability Institute, says.
“Even if it survives the current scandal without foreign money it will be a shadow of its former self. I think the Clintons will walk away from it–and soon,” he said.
The Clintons probably didn’t expect their emails to become public, but because of petitions Judicial Watch filed in federal court, judges have ordered the State Department to release the emails after they are vetted for national security.
“I’ve said from the beginning that the emails were key,” Schweizer says.
When Clinton served as President Barack Obama’s first secretary of state, she conducted all electronic correspondence through a private email account housed at a server operated outside the State Department.
Among other things, the private email account and server, apparently located at the couple’s home in Chappaqua, New York, meant that congressional and journalist requests for the secretary’s electronic correspondence were thwarted because those requests would be for correspondence through an official email account that did not exist.
“I firmly believe that the server was set up precisely because of the Clinton Foundation and speaking fee pay-to-play system,” Schweizer says. “You have to have a means of communication for such a global enterprise that can be hidden. Fortunately for the American people, the server was discovered.”
The central narrative of Clinton Cash is that the Clinton Foundation functioned as bag man for the Clinton family as they brokered deals and in the case of the former first lady used her authority as secretary of state to grant favors to the foundations benefactors. Because the foundation accepted donations from registered lobbyists, corporations and foreign governments–all of which are restricted and or regulated by federal law, the foundation was the perfect vehicle for corruption, cloaked in the mantle of charity. Monday the foundation announced it would not accept foreign contributions if the former first lady wins the White House in 2016.
In an Associated Press story posted Tuesday, the numbers tell the story.
At least 85 of 154 people from private interests who met or had phone conversations scheduled with Clinton while she led the State Department donated to her family charity or pledged commitments to its international programs, according to a review of State Department calendars released so far to The Associated Press. Combined, the 85 donors contributed as much as $156 million. At least 40 donated more than $100,000 each, and 20 gave more than $1 million.
GOP candidate for president Donald J. Trump made his case against the Clinton Foundation in his remarks Wednesday in Austin, Texas.
“It is impossible to figure out where the Clinton Foundation ends and the State Department begins,” he said to
“It is now abundantly clear that the Clinton’s set up a business to profit from public office,” Trump said. “They sold access and specific actions by and to them for money.”
The New York developer said it was and old game for the Little Rock’s most famous power couple. “It goes back to the Arkansas days, and it continued during the White House days with the sale of the Lincoln Bedroom to large donors.”
The previous night, in Akron, Ohio, the Republican nominee told his supporters packed into the sports arena at the University of Akron the Clinton Foundation scandal demands for a special counsel to lead an investigation.
“The amounts involved, the favors done and the significant numbers of times it was done require an expedited investigation by a special prosecutor,” he said. “After the FBI and Department of Justice whitewash of the Clinton email crimes, they certainly cannot be trusted to quickly or impartially investigate Hillary Clinton’s crimes.”
Schweizer said even from a distance the pay-for-play narrative was obvious to him.
“I think the narratives in Clinton Cash speak for themselves. People are not stupid,” he said.”They realize that when a foreign oligarch throws lots of money at the Clintons they are expecting something in return. And the Clintons are happy to play along. Why else were top State Department aides taking email requests for favors from foreign oligarchs?”
Unlike journalists attacking Republican targets, Schweizer, who earned his bachelors at George Washington University and his masters from Oxford University, have taken heavy artillery from the media–only to be vindicated by releases of emails from the former secretary of state and her aides that betrayed the practice of fixing problems and granting favors through the Clinton Foundation often outside the official protocols of the State Department.
“The first line of defense against Clinton Cash was to attack me,” he said. “They tried to dismiss this as a right wing attack. That didn’t work. So then they said “there is no real evidence.” But that didn’t work either.”
Then, came the media blackout, he said.
“They tried to ignore the Clinton Foundation scandal. This is why we didn’t hear anything about the Clinton Foundation at the Democrat National Convention,” he said.
Schweizer said the blackout ended when more emails were released that detailed the inner workings of the practices he had researched from the outside and described in Clinton Cash. “Now the emails have confirmed what was argued in Clinton Cash: there was pay-to-play. So now they want to walk away from it and pretend its not a big deal.”
Now typically left-wing media outlets are going on the record with calls to close its foreign cash window or even shut down the Clinton Foundation for good.
The Boston Globe, a long-time supporter of Democratic candidates and supporters since its founding in 1872, published an Aug. 16 editorial calling for the foundation to be shuttered.
Winding down the foundation, and transferring its assets to some other established charity, doesn’t have to hurt charitable efforts. If the foundation’s donors are truly motivated by altruism, and not by the lure of access to the Clinton’s, then surely they can find other ways to support the foundation’s goals. And in four or eight years, the Clinton family could always form a new foundation and reestablish their charitable efforts.
Even the Huffington Post, easily the Number 1 go-to site for left-wing news posted a banner headline across its front page: “Just Shut It Down,” while linking to an article from The New York Times about the foundation.
After otherwise reliable media allies went turncoat, Clinton’s campaign manager Robin Mook hit the airwaves to knock down the story, which led to the awkward question Mook did not want to field: Why not have Hillary Clinton hold her first press conference in 263 days?
Mook must have been shocked when MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace, a adamant critic of Trump, pressed him on the the Democratic nominee’s no-press conference strategy.
“Why not put her out there to answer questions that she could certainly handle if your defense is true?” Wallace asked.
Mook replied that Clinton has given 350 interviews and is taking question all the time, but Wallace pressed the attack again.
The former press aide to President George W. Bush told Mook she did not mean a three-minute, ground-ruled interview, but a real press availability with her traveling press corps, which included a sympathetic Andrea Mitchell from NBC News.
Mook smirked and struggled to contain a nervous laugh.
“We’re considering everything everyday and she’s been anwering questions and she’ll continue to do that,” Mook said.
Schweizer said there are still stories to tell even if the Clinton’s walk away from Clinton Foundation,
“We got kooky leads for sure, but we also got tips from people who do business overseas in the developing world and who witnessed how foreign companies benefited from ties to the Clinton’s,” he said.
“But there is no question: people are afraid to talk openly about this,” he said.
“The Clinton’s have a very powerful and intimidating political machine.”
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