by Kimberley A. Strassel
Hat tip: Dr. Jean-Charles Bensoussan
Mrs. Clinton’s State Department and her family foundation were one seamless entity
This is the week that the steady drip, drip, drip of details about Hillary Clinton’s
server turned into a waterfall. This is the week that we finally
learned why Mrs. Clinton used a private communications setup, and what
it hid. This is the week, in short, that we found out that the infamous
server was designed to hide that Mrs. Clinton for three years served as
the U.S. Secretary of the Clinton Foundation.
In
March this column argued that while Mrs. Clinton’s mishandling of
classified information was important, it missed the bigger point. The
Democratic nominee obviously didn’t set up her server with the express
purpose of exposing national secrets—that was incidental. She set up the
server to keep secret the details of the Clintons’ private life—a life
built around an elaborate and sweeping money-raising and self-promoting
entity known as the Clinton Foundation.
Had
Secretary Clinton kept the foundation at arm’s length while in
office—as obvious ethical standards would have dictated—there would
never have been any need for a private server, or even private email.
The vast majority of her electronic communications would have related to
her job at the State Department, with maybe that occasional yoga
schedule. And those Freedom of Information Act officers would have had
little difficulty—when later going through a state.gov email—screening out the clearly “personal” before making her records public. This is how it works for everybody else.
Mrs.
Clinton’s problem—as we now know from this week’s release of emails
from Huma Abedin’s private Clinton-server account—was that there was no
divide between public and private. Mrs. Clinton’s State Department and
her family foundation were one seamless entity—employing the same
people, comparing schedules, mixing foundation donors with State
supplicants. This is why she maintained a secret server, and why she
deleted 15,000 emails that should have been turned over to the
government.
Most
of the focus on this week’s Abedin emails has centered on the
disturbing examples of Clinton Foundation executive Doug Band
negotiating State favors for foundation donors. But equally instructive
in the 725 pages released by Judicial Watch is the frequency and
banality of most of the email interaction. Mr. Band asks if Hillary’s
doing this conference, or having that meeting, and when she’s going to
Brazil. Ms. Abedin responds that she’s working on it, or will get this
or that answer. These aren’t the emails of mere casual acquaintances;
they don’t even bother with salutations or signoffs. These are the
emails of two people engaged in the same purpose—serving the
State-Clinton Foundation nexus.
The
other undernoted but important revelation is that the media has been
looking in the wrong place. The focus is on Mrs. Clinton’s missing
emails, and no doubt those 15,000 FBI-recovered texts contain nuggets.
Then again, Mrs. Clinton was a busy woman, and most of the details of
her daily State/foundation life would have been handled by trusted
aides. This is why they, too, had private email. Top marks to Judicial
Watch for pursuing Ms. Abedin’s file from the start. A new urgency needs
to go into seeing similar emails of former Clinton Chief of
Staff Cheryl Mills.
Mostly,
we learned this week that Mrs. Clinton’s foundation issue goes far
beyond the “appearance” of a conflict of interest. This is straight-up
pay to play. When Mr. Band sends an email demanding a Hillary meeting
with the crown prince of Bahrain and notes that he’s a “good friend of
ours,” what Mr. Band means is that the crown prince had contributed
millions to a Clinton Global Initiative scholarship program, and
therefore has bought face time. It doesn’t get more clear-cut, folks.
That’s
highlighted by the Associated Press’s extraordinary finding this week
that of the 154 outside people Mrs. Clinton met with in the first years
of her tenure, more than half were Clinton Foundation donors. Clinton
apologists, like Vox’s Matthew Yglesias, are claiming that statistic is
overblown, because the 154 doesn’t include thousands of meetings held
with foreign diplomats and U.S. officials.
Nice
try. As the nation’s top diplomat, Mrs. Clinton was obliged to meet
with diplomats and officials—not with others. Only a blessed few
outsiders scored meetings with the harried secretary of state and,
surprise, most of the blessed were Clinton Foundation donors.
Mrs.
Clinton’s only whisper of grace is that it remains (as it always does
in potential cases of corruption) hard to connect the dots. There are
“quids” (foundation donations) and “quos” (Bahrain arms deals) all over
the place, but no precise evidence of “pros.” Count on the Clinton
menagerie to dwell in that sliver of a refuge.
But
does it even matter? What we discovered this week is that one of the
nation’s top officials created a private server that housed proof that
she continued a secret, ongoing entwinement with her family
foundation—despite ethics agreements—and that she destroyed public
records. If that alone doesn’t disqualify her for the presidency, it’s
hard to know what would.
Write to kim@wsj.com.
Kimberley A. Strassel
Source: Wall Street Journal
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Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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