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Newly Released Emails Add to Concern About Clinton Foundation Conflict of
Interest
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/newly_released_emails_clinton_fo
undation_conflict_of_interest_20160812/
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Posted on Aug 12, 2016
Hillary Clinton speaking in Geneva, Switzerland during her time as U.S.
Secretary of State in 2011. (Flickr / CC
2.0(https://www.flickr.com/photos/us-mission/5494843958/) )
With the release this week of a new batch of emails to and from people who
were on her staff when she was secretary of state, Hillary Clinton's email
problem won't be going away anytime soon. The emails have raised new
concerns about the relationship between the United States government and the
Clinton Foundation, a relationship that has been under scrutiny for years.
"A conservative anti-Clinton group, Judicial
Watch(http://www.judicialwatch.org/) , sued the State Department under the
Freedom of Information Act for emails from Clinton's top aide, Huma Abedin,
during her time at the State Department," Justin Fishel writes on the ABC
News
website(http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hillary-clinton-emails-explained/stor
y?id=41275551) . "They are separate from the 55,000 pages of emails Clinton
has already turned over."
Out of the 296 emails released, Judicial Watch says 44 were not handed over
to the State Department during the official investigation of Clinton's email
server. CNN
reports(http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/09/politics/hillary-clinton-emails-judici
al-watch/) :
In one instance, top Clinton Foundation official Doug Band lobbied Clinton
aides for a job for someone else in the State Department. In the email, Band
tells Hillary Clinton's former aides at the department-Cheryl Mills and Huma
Abedin-that it is "important to take care of (redacted)." Band is reassured
by Abedin that "Personnel has been sending him options."
In a 2009 email, Band directs Abedin and Mills to put Gilbert Chagoury, a
Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire and Clinton Foundation donor, in contact with
the State Department's "substance person" on Lebanon.
"We need Gilbert Chagoury to speak to the substance person re Lebanon," Band
wrote. "As you know, he's a key guy there and to us and is loved in Lebanon.
Very imp."
"It's jeff feltman," Abedin responded, referring to Jeffrey Feltman, who was
the US ambassador to Lebanon at the time. "I'm sure he knows him. I'll talk
to jeff."
According to
NPR(http://www.npr.org/2016/08/10/489462473/new-emails-raise-questions-about
-ties-between-clinton-foundation-and-state-dept) , a senior official in
Clinton's campaign stated "that the email exchanges between Band and Abedin
did take place, but did so as top personal aides to the Clintons, not as
officials carrying out business related to the foundation."
Judicial Watch explains in a press
release(http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watc
h-new-documents-show-top-clinton-aide-alerted-email-inquiry/) that Clinton
chief of staff Cheryl Mills in 2012 was "alerted of the request seeking
Clinton's email addresses."
"This is evidence that Cheryl Mills covered up Hillary Clinton's email
system," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton states in the press release.
"And you can bet if Cheryl Mills knew about this inquiry, then Hillary
Clinton did, too."
For some journalists, however, this new batch of emails simply confirms what
they have long known. James Grimaldi, a Pulitzer-Prize-winning reporter,
extensively covered the Clinton Foundation and the U.S. government for The
Wall Street Journal. In a 2015
piece(http://www.wsj.com/articles/ubs-deal-shows-clintons-complicated-ties-1
438223492) , Grimaldi and reporter Rebecca Ballhaus showed how donations to
the Clinton Foundation increased after Clinton's involvement in a Wall
Street tax-evasion case.
"A whistleblower had come forward, an American who was helping UBS find
Americans who wanted to dodge taxes in Switzerland, literally recruiting
them to open accounts in Switzerland that would be then hidden from the
Internal Revenue Service," Grimaldi said on a Democracy Now!
interview(http://www.democracynow.org/2016/8/12/did_companies_countries_buy_
state_dept) on Friday. Grimaldi continues:
The government, IRS and DOJ, wanted 50,000 accounts that they knew about in
which Americans were hiding taxes-hiding their income in the UBS Swiss bank
accounts so they wouldn't be taxed. In the end, UBS did not want to provide
those names, because there was a law in Switzerland that said they couldn't
reveal that kind of confidential information. In the end, they only gave
about 5,000 of those 50,000 names. And we saw the donations from UBS to the
Clinton Foundation increase from a little under $60,000 to $600,000, plus
they participated in a $30 million inner-city loan program and then hired
Bill Clinton to do speeches around the country for $1.5 million.
These new emails, Grimaldi continues in the interview, are just more
evidence of what he believes is a longer history of conflict of interest. He
explains how during the interim period when Clinton had left the State
Department but hadn't yet announced her bid for presidency, the Clinton
Foundation "ended up going back to the very countries that some people had
raised a lot of questions about." He also calls Mills the "keeper of all the
Clinton secrets."
Media reactions to the emails have ranged from calling them
"troubling(http://www.msnbc.com/hardball/watch/new-questions-after-more-emai
ls-released-741937731630) " to accusing Clinton of running a
"pay-to-play(http://hotair.com/archives/2016/08/11/tapper-pay-for-play-email
s-show-clintons-think-rules-dont-apply-to-them/) " State Department. This
new potential scandal comes as Clinton outlines her economic policy
plan(http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/11/politics/hillary-clinton-economy-detroit-
election-2016/) on the campaign trail and faces additional press
coverage(http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/11/us/politics/clinton-homes.html?sm
prod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share) of her elite economic
status.
As to the future of the relationship between the Clinton Foundation and the
U.S. government? "[T]here's a tension between the Clinton campaign for
president and the Clinton Foundation about what exactly will happen,"
Grimaldi says. "Those negotiations are well undercover. They're not
transparent. And I don't foreclose the possibility that the Clinton
Foundation will continue to operate and that they will raise money from some
of the same places."
-Posted by Emma Niles(http://www.truthdig.com/staff/emma_niles/)
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