Did We Just Find the Corrupt Hillary Clinton Cash Quid Pro Quo?

Since the pre-publication publicity began about Clinton Cash, family loyalists have been faithfully trotted out on news shows to bash author Peter Schweizer as a right-wing hack and claim there was nothing new about anything contained in the book even as they admitted they hadn’t read it. But most tellingly, they have asserted that talk of any quid pro quo between foreign entities that funneled cash to the Clintons and U.S. policy from 2009 to 2012 is ridiculous.

To be fair, some of the leaks about the book’s content bolstered that point. To unpack just one of the allegations, it must be admitted that the notion that contributions from Colombia to the Clinton kitty was the reason why the Obama administration pushed ahead with a free-trade deal with that important American ally is absurd. But the sale of the Uranium One company that controls a major source of that rare and strategic material is something else entirely. The tale of how the Putin regime wound up in possession of American uranium mines is complicated. But boiled down to its essentials, the facts are clear. Those who stood to profit by the sale of the Canadian firm that controlled the mine to Rosatom, a company owned by the Russian atomic energy agency, poured massive amounts of money into the coffers of the Clinton Global Initiative. And Putin allies invited Bill Clinton, who had a history of involvement and profiting by his association with shady figures and governments in the former Soviet Union, to speak in Moscow for half a million dollars. Not long after, the State Department’s committee tasked with the duty of approving foreign investment in strategic materials in the United States approved the sale.

Clinton apologists are claiming today that there is no proof that the secretary of state intervened in the decision made by the department’s committee. But that means nothing. Cabinet officials have many ways of conveying their wishes to subordinates.

What is most suspicious about the involvement of the Clintons in this matter is the deceptive behavior of their foundation. Contributions from the Canadian who profited from the sale to the Clinton Global Initiative as well as others connected to his company and stood to gain from the deal were not fully reported and were only discovered when journalists examined the tax returns of those involved.

Even worse, these sorts of donations expressly violated the undertakings given by Hillary Clinton to President Obama upon accepting her appointment at State to publicly disclose all donors. That these donations were hid from public view is, at the very least, a sign of a mens rea—guilty knowledge and willful intent to do wrong, and not a mere oversight.

For the foundation to now tell us that they will be more transparent in the future and will not take money from countries that are not U.S. allies is meaningless. The avalanche of cash from less than savory foreign powers and businesses to the Clintons has already happened. The foundation that supports Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton in high style has accumulated $250 million in assets by trading on the influence not only of a former president but also of a sitting secretary of state and a possible future president.

Let’s be frank about these donations. While the Clinton Global Initiative is reported to have helped fund a lot of good work around the planet, the same can be said of many other charities that do far more. The reason why this charity and the three people who run it have grown immensely rich is not because of their much-publicized good intentions and good deeds but because foreign governments and international businesses believe donating to it will do them a world of political good. The nice term for such activity on the part of the Clintons is influence peddling. A less flattering way of describing it would be corruption.

As I wrote earlier this week, there is no precedent for an ex-president to be running such a large charity or for him to be doing so while his spouse serves as secretary of state and plotting a future run for the White House. None but the Clintons, who seem to play by different rules than everybody else on everything from perjury to government emails, would have even tried this, let alone get away with it. But now that Hillary is running for president, this can of worms is being opened and what we’re discovering isn’t pretty.

At this point, it’s no longer possible to dismiss the Clinton Cash controversy as recycled trash. Clinton has a lot of questions to answer about letting Putin get hold of American uranium after her family was funneled a ton of cash from Russian associates. Her only possible defense is that she made this decision because she genuinely believed in the comical “reset” with Putin’s Russia, which constitutes evidence of the sort of bad judgment that makes her time at State appear to be an even bigger failure than we thought. And her family foundation needs to answer questions about false tax returns and violated agreements.

This would be bad news for them even if Hillary were retiring to private life. But for a presidential candidate, even one with massive assets and without strong rivals for her party’s nomination, this is a potential catastrophe.